Litchfield, Illinois – Optimac, Inc. today is pleased to announce that LOC won first place in the Messaging category and first place in the Social Sharing category at the 2017 MediaPost Appy Awards. LOC offers iOS users worldwide the ability to find interesting conversations fast and without the typical social network barriers. No friending, following, or connecting is necessary. Find chats on a map, conveniently listed by topic, or in augmented reality mode. Users can also pin emoji to the map to share their mood or mark important locations.

Language is no barrier in LOC because it provides real-time translation across 90 languages. Language translation is done on-the-fly, with no noticeable lag. Users can chat with other people from around the world and rely on LOC to translate all messages into the user’s native language. Users merely enable translation in the app’s settings, and LOC takes care of the rest.

LOC can be used to:
* Chat with friends and family
* Meet new people from around the world
* Pin moods and other emojis on the map
* Engage in conversations at sporting events, concerts, conferences, and more
* Collaborate with business colleagues
* Businesses can attract nearby customers
* Get live updates about breaking news from people who are there
* Users can share their location and get help when they need it

“LOC frees you from having to friend, follow, or connect in order to chat with people in your area or anywhere in the world,” explains Scott Gardner, iOS app developer, author, and industry speaker at Optimac, Inc. “When I set out to develop LOC, I wanted to make it easy to meet and chat with people at events or locations of interest, while still respecting user privacy. In LOC, you can truly chat with anyone, anywhere, anytime, without divulging your personal information. LOC unites the world with conversation.”

Users can find and join chats on topics or at locations that they’re interested in, or create their own. LOC is fast, secure, and easy to use. Chats appear on the map where they are created. Inactive chats will disappear from the map after approximately one day of inactivity. Active chats will keep on going.

Users can pin emoji to the map to share how they’re feeling or mark important locations or events. Emoji annotations only last an hour.

Augmented Reality mode lets users find and join chats happening right around them, and spot locations marked with an emoji.

Users can keep up with multiple conversations and quickly jump back into chats directly from their Watching list. It’s quick and easy to toggle watching on and off from within a chat or in the Watching list.

LOC also allows users to share chats and invite others to join them in a chat via their social networks, email, a text message, and more. If an invited party already has LOC installed on their device, they’ll jump directly into the chat. If they don’t have LOC installed yet, the link will take them to LOC in the App Store, where they can install it and then join the chat.

Users can also share their current location in a chat that other users can tap to go directly to that location on the map. LOC also includes a powerful search to be able to quickly find nearly any place on earth by name, address, or keywords, and jump to it with a single tap.

LOC translates user-created messages across 90 languages, and the app itself is translated into 12 languages, including Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), German, Spanish (Mexico and Spain), Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), and Russian.

“LOC makes it easy to chat with people in the neighborhood or around the world. Whether you’re just wanting to stay in touch with friends and family, or meet new people who share similar interests–even if you don’t speak the same language–all while protecting your personal information,” continues Scott. “There are endless possibilities with LOC, and I am excited to see what people come up with!”

Device Requirements:
* iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
* Requires iOS 10.0 or later
* Universal Application
* 35.5 MB

Pricing and Availability:
LOC 3.0 is free and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Social Networking category. For more information, please contact Scott Gardner.

LOC 3.0
Download from iTunes
MediaPost Appy Awards 2017 Winners
Media Assets

Headquartered in Litchfield, Illinois, Optimac, Inc. was founded by Scott Gardner who is an iOS app developer, author, and industry speaker. Gardner is the author of video courses, books, and articles on Swift and iOS programming, for publishers including LinkedIn Learning (fka the lynda.com website), Ray Wenderlich’s popular website, and Apress Media. All Material and Software (C) 2017 Optimac, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks and registered trademarks may be the property of their respective owners.