We are always excited to see third parties developing useful tools and services on top of the Layar open platform. One of them is the newly released Hoppala Layerserver.

Hoppala Layerserver is a cloud POI hosting service for third party content providers. The basic idea is to free content providers from creating and maintaining their own Layar webservice code. It provides you with an easy way to integrate your existing Google map into Layar. But it can also import different file formats like KML, CSV, XML or Excel. The Hoppala website shows several different kinds of content integration.
Hoppala Layerserver works like a proxy between the Layar system and the content providers’ datapool. It basically holds the data in it’s own database, keeps it updated, does all the neccessary preprocessing like geocoding or image rendering and it also provides the Layar webservice. It gives you the POI url needed to finally run your own layer.

Hoppala Layerserver is an easy and comfortable way to get your own POI url without a single line of coding. Follow this easy step-by-step tutorial about how to create your own layer for the Layar Reality Browser without technical skills.

Please read this blogpost for other easy development tools like the PorPOISe server by Jens de Smit