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WSJ Experiments With Location-Based News

cgseo — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:20:12 +0000

Checking-in at a venue around town with the Foursquare mobile location app could now come with a thought provoking payload: a news link related to the place you're at. The Wall St. Journal announced today that as a part of its new focus on covering New York City, links to Journal stories about various locations will now be offered as tips when Foursquare users check in. Some media observers have been critical of the partnership, focusing on the addition of a few new WSJ-related badges that Foursquare users can now add to their collection. That might seem like an underwhelming feature for a media giant like the Journal to add, but the addition of location-specific, hard news stories as tips is a very intriguing experiment that could point to a big new future for news. It also looks like a lot of fun. Sponsor Previous Foursquare media partnerships have been limited to delivering lightweight content like nearby restaurant reviews or stories about Olympic competition in Vancouver. The Journal is inserting good and bad news, though. Check in at the Mark Hotel on East 77th and you'll see the following, with a link to full coverage: "This 83-year-old landmark property's $200 million makeover is facing deep financial woes. Note the top-floor suites, which the hotel is struggling to convert into private residences." Hanging out at Goldman Sachs HQ? "The SEC has sued Goldman Sachs for fraud related to sub-prime mortgages and the collapse of the housing market. Goldman is fighting the charges." That's pretty cool. Of course lightweight tips about baseball games and museums are included as well. A representative from the Journal tells us that the tips are added by hand (not automatically) and that the company is very interested to see what will happen when nearby breaking news starts intersecting with check-ins. The company recognizes there's a risk of cognitive dissonance, we are told. People probably aren't expecting to hear about terrorism when they check in to a bridge or other location that's had such things reported about it. Augmented reality, as it were, isn't always pretty when it's good. If this experiment proves successful, we can only hope the idea will be expanded on by these companies and others. From public records, to social media to archival and current news stories - there is a rich depth of information tied to locations in any city that new tools could help unlock. Discuss

Android: Motorola Replaces Google’s Location Engine With Skyhook

cgseo — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:05:16 +0000

Tomorrow, Motorola will announce that it plans to replace Google's location services on its Android phones with Skyhook 's location engine. By default, all Android devices currently use Google's own location services to determine a phone's location based on GPS data from the phone and the location of nearby Wi-Fi access points and cellular towers. Skyhook, which pioneered this method to determine a device's location, made its name as the default location provider for Apple's iPhone and desktop operating systems. Adding Motorola to its partners will give Skyhook a strong foothold in the booming market for Android phones and applications. Sponsor Developers Won't Have to Change Anything The first Motorola devices with Skyhook's location services as the default will ship later this year. According to Skyhook, developers won't have to make any changes to their Android apps to work with Skyhook's location engine. Motorola will simply replace Google's libraries with Skyhook's Core Location services. As location becomes a more important part of a growing array of mobile apps, being able to quickly determine a phone's location even when inside and without a line of sight to the nearest GPS satellites becomes a necessity for developers. Skyhook, which launched in 2003, pioneered this system of using Wi-Fi access points to determine a device's location. Clearly, the engineers at Motorola felt that Skyhook's solution is currently superior to Google's services. Over the last few months, a number of the Android developers we talked to voiced frustration with the quality of Google's location services on Android. Indeed, some of the most popular location-based applications on Android like ShopSavvy and Flixster already use Skyhook's Android libraries instead of Google's built-in services. Discuss

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Android: Motorola Replaces Google's Location Engine With Skyhook

Two-Thirds of iPhone Users Now Use Location-Based Services at Least Once a Week

cgseo — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:20:49 +0000

While services like Gowalla and Foursquare still haven't become household names outside of the early adopter market yet, the technology behind these apps is now solidly mainstream. According to a new survey by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), about two thirds of iPhone owners now user location services at least once a week. Taking all cell phone users into account, 22% of adults between 25 and 34 use location services at least once a week, mostly to locate nearby points of interests, shops and services. Sponsor Focus: Location-Based Apps and Advertising The survey also asked users how likely they are to take action on location-based advertising on their mobile devices. According to the MMA, about half of those users who noticed ads in location-based apps took some action. On the other hand, only about 37% of respondents who noticed ads while sending or receiving text messages took any action based on these commercial messages. For those we noticed ads while browsing the web, this number was only 28% (which still seems rather high to us). Given that most people use location-based apps when they are already looking for a certain store or product, it makes sense that these users are more likely to respond to ads than people who are just browsing the web. Are Users Really Willing to Let Apps Track Them Passively in Return for Discounts? "Consumers are interested in allowing their phone to automatically share their location in exchange for perks, such as free use of mobile applications and mobile coupons." Interestingly, the MMA survey also notes that "consumers are interested in allowing their phone to automatically share their location in exchange for perks, such as free use of mobile applications and mobile coupons." While mobile coupons and other perks are definitely interesting to consumers, passive location services that track consumers in return for discounts have never really been tested in the wild. These services may sound good on paper, but the privacy implications of using these apps are hard to neglect and it remains to be seen if users are actually willing to give up their privacy in return for a 10% discount at Crate and Barrel. Chances are that we will see more of these passive tracking services once the iPhone 4 operating system arrives later this year. The current generation of the iPhone's operating system doesn't allow apps to run in the background and track your location, but this will be possible in the next version of the iPhone OS. Discuss

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Two-Thirds of iPhone Users Now Use Location-Based Services at Least Once a Week

Google Snaps Up Agnilux, Whatever That Is

cgseo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 02:00:00 +0000

Google has purchased Agnilux, a chip startup run by Apple refugees. After P.A. Semi was bought by Apple in 2008 for $278 million, several of the prime movers of that company, including Amarjit Gill, Executive VP of Sales and Business Development, along with several Apple employees, jumped ship and started Agnilux. A former Tivo executive also joined the company. P.A. Semi produces the chips that run the iPhone and iPad. Speculation has surrounded the theoretical Apple intel that might come with the company, the entertainment media background of some of its executives and the extraordinary secrecy of Agnilux. Sponsor Despite investigation by the New York Times , very little information is available on the company. In February, NYT talked about the company's website. That website no longer exists. When it did it had little information. "Hop over to the Agnilux Web site and you're told very little about the company beyond the location of its offices and the derivation of the company's name. Agni is Sanskrit for fire and Lux is the Latin for light." An anonymous source told the Times he thought the company was producing a server. Prior to accepting the Google deal, Agnilux held conversations with Cisco, Microsoft and Texas Instruments. It's uncertain whether they spoke with VCs or other investors. Discuss

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Google Snaps Up Agnilux, Whatever That Is

Maponics Releases "Ultra-Local" Data Internationally

cgseo — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 21:18:31 +0000

The neighborhood boundary data provider used by Google, Twitter, EveryBlock, CitySearch and other companies has expanded to include top cities in South America, Middle East, Africa and Asia. Norwich, Vermont based Maponics says it now also offers deeper coverage for leading US and Canadian markets, with new neighborhoods in 100 cities. Maponics says it is the first service to provide neighborhood boundaries on every populated continent on earth. Sponsor The company uses a combination of proprietary algorithmic and manual methods to determine where a neighborhood begins and ends; boundaries are updated quarterly. The data becomes most exciting when it's cross-referenced with other data sets. Twitter users, for example, will now be able to geotag and view Tweets by neighborhood in countries all over the world. If you're interested in learning more about Maponics, its sector and its relationship with Twitter, check out the excellent podcast interview DirectionsMag did with CEO Darrin Clement two weeks ago . Discuss

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Maponics Releases "Ultra-Local" Data Internationally

Beyond Street View: Google Photographers Begin Going Inside Businesses

cgseo — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:33:58 +0000

Google is now accepting applications from businesses to be among the first places the company sends photographers to take panoramic photographs of the insides of buildings. Street view? You aint seen nothing yet. We reported in February on rumors that this project was in the works. The company says the photographs will be taken by professionals trained in low-lighting, will be as unobtrusive as possible, will initially be traditional in format and will be stitched together to form panoramas in the future. Sponsor In September we wrote about a company called Micello , billed as Google Maps for the Indoors, which is creating floor maps for places like shopping malls around the country. That would make a nice compliment to the new indoor photography feature. Startups like Micello are probably no more worried about Google stepping on their toes than they were before, but the new indoor photography launch does have at least one independent professional photographer worried. "Did Google just put low- to mid-range commercial photographers out of business?," social photography blogger Aaron Hockley tweeted this morning. If that was a consequence of Google's new feature, the world would be much poorer for it. Discuss

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Beyond Street View: Google Photographers Begin Going Inside Businesses

If Location Apps are Games, How’s the Gameplay?

cgseo — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 03:45:00 +0000

One of the motifs you keep coming across when reading about Foursquare and Gowalla, the mobile location apps, is that they are games, and the games are fun. The most important thing when it comes to gaming is the most subjective, whether the players are having fun. But it's not the whole story. Were these apps structured to have gameplay, a through-line with obstacles and rewards? Are Foursquare and Gowalla, and apps like them, games by design? And if so, is the gameplay good? Sponsor If you're unfamiliar with the applications, users visit various real-world locations and check in via mobile device. On Foursquare, they score "badges" for visits and, if they've visited a given location more than any other place, they become the "Mayor" of that locale. "Parents often make chores a game to get their kids to do them," said Dylan Romero, Community Manager for The Great Game Experiment. "They hit the part of the brain dealing with achievement and reward to get more desirable results. I think Foursquare is more a game in this sense. If you want to incentivize customers, videogame or not, give them something to shoot for." "The game mechanics are designed to lead people through the experience of using the product," said Dennis Crowley, co-founder of Foursquare. In other words, gameplay is not in service to the game, but in service to the product. "The 'game' for me is to see if I can get a response or, even better, a perk out if it," Klavars, a Foursquare user, Tweeted. Although there is currently no reward, other than regard among the Foursquare community, presumably, some venues offer specials to Foursquare users. Gowalla differs in some important respects from Foursquare. Gowalla uses a series of icon-based rewards called stamps. Given that Gowalla was born from a design company, it's no surprise that the symbols are very attractive. Likewise its "items." Locations are sometimes tied to items that show up when you've checked in. You can hold the items or drop them off elsewhere, which means a given place may have more items than it had originally. The scoring of these items seems more traditionally game-oriented than Foursquare's simple badges. Gowalla also has the equivalent of badges in its pins which can be strung together into itineraries for trips.gowallaferry.png Gowalla also has the equivalent of badges in its pins which can be strung together into itineraries for trips. However, according to Gowalla's Josh Williams, the company doesn't see it as a game at all. "While there is certainly an element of entertainment and fun to be had while using Gowalla," he told us, "we view it first and foremost as a social networking service." "The iconic items are a bit of an experiment for us. Can we lay a transient piece of data across the service and allow people to interact with it by moving it from place to place, attaching meta-data to it (like a digital message in a bottle), or even attaching real world value to it, as in the case of the NBA tickets given away to a Nets basketball game last week. They're simply another way to interact with the world around you." Gowalla requires GPS and that's how a user checks in. Foursquare only requires you enter the address, which has led to cheating. However, gaming is not just in the rules but in the expectations. With Foursquare, the unwritten expectation is that if you check in at a place, you will be there for some time. Here the location app aspect of Foursquare creates an expectation in its gameplay. On Gowalla it is perfectly acceptable to check in to a place you can't really stay, like a landmark. It seems, then, that neither company has consciously designed their services to be games. But much in the same way that a kid finds a baseball diamond in a clearing in the woods, perhaps the users are the ones who've identified and acted upon, the latent gameplay. Because although Foursquare and Gowalla may not be games, there is a game that is being played with them. Gowalla, in requiring GPS and requiring no any real relationship to the place, might be less appealing on the location side of things. Playing Foursquare is also arguably simpler, and therefor more appealing to more people. I think it's fair to say that people with higher gameplay expectations will probably find Gowalla more appealing, regardless of creator intent. People who want quick fun with more of a social aspect may favor Foursquare. Discuss

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If Location Apps are Games, How's the Gameplay?

Glympse: Real-Time, Private Location-Tracking May be the Winning Formula

cgseo — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:14:22 +0000

A Redmond-based startup is introducing a location-based social sharing service called Glympse . With a mobile application that works on iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile devices, users share their location (aka a "Glympse"), allowing their friends to see that location on another phone or on any other Internet-connected device. Senders can customize who gets to see the Glympse they post, whether the recipient is just one person, a group, or even everyone they've added as a friend on a social network like Facebook or Twitter. The interesting twist to this service isn't the location-sharing aspect, of course - there are dozens of companies that allow for that today - it's the service's real-time nature and the thoughtfully included privacy features. Using a patent-pending timer option, Glympse users specify how long their location is visible to which select group of friends, with a maximum time of four hours before the location data expires. Sponsor Location is Not a Game, It's a Utility Unlike the current crop of location-based social networking services (think Brightkite, Loopt, Gowalla, Foursquare, etc.), Glympse isn't designed to find nearby friends, share tips about local businesses or collect rewards for check-ins. It employs no game mechanics to encourage participation - that is, you aren't given badges or points the more you use it. You don't get to become the "mayor" of a place by checking in there the most, like you do in Foursquare. In fact, Glympse can hardly be called a "mobile social network" at all. Glympse is more like a utility, and that may what ensures its success long after everyone tires of "checking in" just because they can. There are a number of scenarios where Glympse may prove useful. Their PR team says they've seen its earliest users sharing locations related to cross-country road trips, marathons, paragliding flights and afternoons of skiing. Although those standout occasions may give Glympse a "wow" factor, it's in answering the everyday "where are you?" type questions where Glympse could prove be the most useful. In the "What is Glympse?" introductory video , the company says sending a Glympse is easier than making a call or sending a text. That's not necessarily true, though. Calls and texts are sent with the push of a button where Glympse requires a multi-step process that begins with installing the application on your mobile device, if supported . But as mentioned later in the video, many states have banned texting or making phone calls while driving. That's where Glympse comes in. Before you leave work, school or your home, you could send out a Glympse. For the time you specify, those permitted to see your location can track where you are at any given moment in real-time courtesy of your phone's GPS capabilities. Live Updating Maps and Privacy Features That's right - Glympse doesn't "check you in," it tracks you. Much like those pricey "family locator" cell phone add-on plans do, but for free. The service also addresses the privacy issues surrounding location-sharing, even going so far as to work with a safety group called ConnectSafely.org when designing the service. In Glympse, adding friends isn't an "all or nothing" endeavor. That is, you don't choose whether to just accept or reject friends. You accept friends, then group them accordingly ("family," "friends," "work," etc.). Later, when you're ready to share your location, you choose which group or groups should see it. Only want the spouse and kids to tune in? Share a Glympse with family. At a large conference where you want to meet up with colleagues? Send a Glympse to your "work" group. And so on. Facebook Integration: A Plus, Not the Selling the Point Much of the news coverage related to Glympse's launch has to do with its Facebook integration. That's an interesting option to be sure, especially since Facebook plans to announce their own location-sharing service later this month, according to reports. But whether or not Facebook users actually care to see the locations of their friends is another matter entirely. Many Facebook users simply use the network to catch up with friends and family they don't get to see every day by posting on their wall, chatting via Facebook's IM service and by browsing their shared photos, videos and links. Whether or not a friend is on their way to a meeting right now may be completely irrelevant information to these users. Like the intrusions from other apps and games, Glympse's Facebook updates - which come via a large, embedded map placed in the News Feed - could very well end up being hidden from view by Facebook users who simply aren't interested in seeing that sort of data. In other words, it's arguable that Glympse's Facebook (and Twitter) sharing features aren't necessarily the key selling points of its service. Real-time live data, the utility aspect of the tool itself and its built-in privacy features, however, are. Hopefully, mainstream users will understand that before mistakenly dismissing it as just another Facebook app clogging up their News Feed with noise. Discuss

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Glympse: Real-Time, Private Location-Tracking May be the Winning Formula

The Modigliani Test: The Semantic Web’s Tipping Point

cgseo — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 08:06:00 +0000

In our recent posts about Structured Data , we've emphasized that most of the current initiatives have been around uploading new data to the Web - whatever the format. The U.S. and U.K. governments have led the way with their 'open data' websites, but much of that data isn't 'linked' yet . In other words, it's online - but siloed. So how do we get to the next stage of the Semantic Web, linking disparate data sets together so that people can begin to use that data? The tipping point for the long-awaited Semantic Web may be when you can query a set of data about someone not too famous, and get a long list of structured results in return. I've decided to term this 'The Modigliani Test.' Sponsor Amedeo Modigliani is one of my favorite artists. He was moderately famous during the early 20th century and has something of a cult following nowadays. But he's not Da Vinci or Picasso famous. What I'd like to do in a Semantic Web is type the following query into a search engine and get back a large list of results: tell me the locations of all the original paintings of Modigliani. As of today, there's no place to type that query in and get a list of structured data . The closest I can find to doing that is the Artcyclopedia entry for Modigliani, which has a list of locations for Modigliani artworks. It's great that they have the location data listed on one web page. However it's not structured data, so we can't query it. There's also not much order to the data, we have no idea if this is a comprehensive list, it's not verified data, and so on. In summary, there's a lot of data on the Web about the location of original art works - but much of it is in traditional 'document' web pages. What we're after is a giant database of art works, which anybody can query and re-use. Here's an early, overly geeky view at what a Linked Data of painting locations would look like (hat-tip @dakoller ): The above is a far from comprehensive list of art works by Hieronymus Bosch (a search for Modigliani, by the way, brought up zero results). Plus of course we need a much more intuitive UI, so that non-geeks can use it too. What do you think, when will The Modigliani Test be passed on the Web? Discuss

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The Modigliani Test: The Semantic Web's Tipping Point

Rally Up Brings Location-Based Social Networking to the iPad

cgseo — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 19:35:00 +0000

Rally Up , a new location-based social network with a strong focus on privacy , just became the first fully featured location-based social network with an iPad app. The app, which is available for free ( iTunes link ), includes all of the features of Rally Up's iPhone app. Thanks to making good use of the iPad's expanded screen estate, however, using the iPad app is far easier and a lot more fun. Sponsor Location-Based Services on the iPad: On Hold Until the WiFi + 3G Models Arrive The current version of the iPad has to rely on WiFi triangulation to pinpoint a user's location. As long as you are in a city, this works reasonably well. We expect to see more location-based iPad apps, including from Foursquare and Gowalla, once Apple launches the WiFi + 3G version of the iPad, which will include a GPS chip. For now, Loopt's Pulse is the only other location-based social network that has arrived on the iPad, but Loopt's app doesn't allow users to check in from the app and focuses on letting users browser photos, places, events and their friends streams instead. Rally Up on the iPad When we first reviewed Rally Up's iPhone service a few weeks ago, we noted that the application puts a very strong emphasis on privacy and allows you to tweak these privacy settings individually for every single on of your followers and the people you follow. As Rally Up's co-founder Sol Lipman told us, Rally Up is really more about connecting you to your "real" friends. It is important to note that Rally Up's sophisticated privacy controls also gives you the flexibility to follow whoever you want to and just broadcast very little to none of your location data to people you don't fully trust or know. Using the iPhone version of Rally Up is a lot of fun - in part thanks to the application's minimalist design - but as with so many iPad apps, the larger screen makes browsing your friends streams and looking at their locations on a large map a lot easier. Rally Up's iPad app also emphasizes the microblogging aspects of the service, where the extra screen estate comes in handy for posts with photos, for example. Discuss

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Rally Up Brings Location-Based Social Networking to the iPad