LSQHA Blog Reviews

In the midst of the SXSW festival last month, we reviewed a mobile social network called LoKast . Our one lingering question about the app's utility, at the time, was were we really going to run around town staring at our phone to see if someone else nearby was running the same app? The answer was "no" then and is "no" now, but the difference now is that the iPhone OS 4.0 that was announced yesterday allows for background location multitasking . This opens up a whole new realm of experiences for the iPhone. Sponsor First, LoKast. LoKast is a self-described "disposable" social network. That is, as you move about and come near other people running LoKast, you can quickly interact with them. Then, when you move ot of range, you may never see them again. It is social networking based on location, without a persistent friends listing. So now, with background location monitoring, an app like LoKast is actually feasible. I can turn it on, leave it running and wander around town and perhaps have it notify me when I'm within range of someone. As Kim-Mai Cutler notes, background location also brings up some "slightly creepy" privacy concerns relating not only to applications running in the background, but also location based advertising. But what if you think about location based advertising like you think of iTunes' "Genius" function or all the other recommendation engine software you use? It may be tough to realize that you are not quite the unique snowflake you thought you were and that, indeed, everyday around three you end up at the same coffeeshop, but wouldn't it be nice for your iPhone to realize this and get you 20% off? Without you even having to lift a finger? Well, fine, maybe you have to lift an iPhone. The list of ideas for background location are endless. Of course, we'll have to see how quickly a battery gets drained with persistent GPS monitoring. Having the ability to let our phones deliver us information, as we move about the world, based on our location has some amazing potential. Think of EveryBlock , the hyperlocal news aggregator that Marshall Kirkpatrick went ga-ga over when it arrived in Portland. The block-level delivery of news wouldn't even need to wait for you to check it any more - it could simply deliver relevant information as you move about your day. Real-time rideshare services like Avego and Flinc suddenly become that much more feasible, in fast-paced, real-life situations. We could go on, but we have another couple of months before the next version of the iPhone OS comes out and we're already too excited as it is. What crazy, creepy or otherwise cool potential do you see with the new background location capabilities? Discuss

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What Background Location Brings to the iPhone

Nevermind complicated algorithms and personalized content streams according to past search patterns and the like - Google has, for only the second time in its history, decided to offer specific results, a sort of guidance, in response to select search terms. When users search for phrases such as "ways to commit suicide" or "suicidal thoughts", they now see the toll-free number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at the top of their results. We have to wonder - when will Google advise users buying cigarettes to seek help too? Sponsor The New York Times quotes Dr. Roni Zeiger, the chief health stategist for Google, as saying that the idea came from a Google user. "A mother wrote in a suggestion to us -- her daughter had swallowed something that she thought was dangerous, and she had a hard time finding poison control," Dr. Zeiger said. "Now when you search for poison control or similar queries, we make it straightforward to find the number for poison control." So can we be as callous here as to wonder where else the company might take this? Can anyone really take issue with a company offering the phone number of a suicide prevention hotline to those looking up phrases like "I want to die"? Perhaps this could be a new direction - rather than simply offering results directly related to a user's query, or looking to personalize content by looking at what friends and peers are looking at, or even looking at a users history, Google could offer up a Devil's Advocate set of results on every query. Looking for a brand new SUV? While you're at it, why not consider this beautiful, used bicycle that will help save the environment? Cheap cigarettes? Didn't you mean Nicorette gum? McDonalds? Why yes, we do have a few diet programs and some instructions on healthy eating. In reality, we think that this could be a great compliment to all those apps and engines out there that simply look to show you exactly what you're looking for before you ever even get to searching . Let's use the web to challenge ideas, not simply echo them. As long as results are clearly identified, is there a problem? While this is a loaded area to look at (questioning Google's action can be made to seem as if it were a promotion of suicide) we still think there are interesting implications to its actions that should be considered. Do we want Google to simply act as a firehose of data or can we expect it to tailor its results to do better for the world? And who's version of better will it go by if we do? What do you think? Discuss

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Google Gives Suicide Hotline Number For Certain Searches: Diets For Fast Food Next?

I waited for a year to get an iPhone, and I lost out on a year's worth of opportunities to use one as a result. I have one now and I still marvel at it almost every time I touch it. I expect to have a similar experience with the iPad - so I'm not going to wait. I want a full touchscreen, app-rich experience now. The iPad may be better for content consumption than creation, but I'm not ashamed to say I like to consume content with a good portion of my time. (Thanks for reading this blog I write on for a living, by the way, content consumers!) The experience may be better in a year, but I'm willing to pay for 70% of the ideal functionality today instead of getting nothing for a year. Here's what I'm excited to use it for. Sponsor This post is part of a pro/con series written with ReadWriteWeb's Mike Melanson. Click here to read his counter-point article iPad Schmipad: Who Needs Another Device? I just flew across the country twice in two days. I had a great time reading content I saved on Instapaper on my phone and paying a couple of games of a great little baseball app. Both of those are going to be way cooler on a full iPad screen. Gaming is going to be incredible - and there's going to be a whole lot of games. I look forward to using Tweetdeck on the iPad, the big touch screen is going to be great for the multi-column display of groups of Tweets. Mind mapping on the iPad is going to be great: dragging around nodes of related thoughts, visualizing interconnected concepts. Outlining ideas, dragging items from section to section and then emailing the outlines to computer in OPML format. Give me multitasking soon so I can listen to Pandora while doing that and I'll be even more excited. Do I look forward to seeing newspapers and magazines compete for my attention with their iPad apps? Oh yes, I sure do. My new favorite hyper-local news website Everyblock Portland is going to feel like such a futuristic news rag on a tablet that I might ask my dog to bring it to me in his mouth some mornings while I drink coffee. Is it perfect? No, the iPad obviously has serious shortcomings. The fact that it can't be tweaked and hacked is a serious (if expected) disappointment. If it was my only computer, I'd probably turn into a slovenly, uncreative shell of a human being (except for the web access). But it's not going to be my only computer. It's just going to be another awesome computer in my house. And I'm not going to wait to have the kinds of experiences I'll be able to have with an iPad. Life's too short, I'm getting an iPad sooner than later. Discuss

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Life's Too Short: I'm Getting an iPad Right Away

One of the emerging trends of the Mobile Web is using your phone to interact with the real world. We're not just talking about 'checking in' to locations, either. There's a world of more practical functionality that hasn't yet ramped up in the West - using your phone as a payment device (for example mobile ticketing ), getting special offers from retailers, downloading data from the Web via 'smart posters' on the street, and more. A key technology driving some of these interactions is NFC, which was one of Gartner's 8 Mobile Technologies to Watch in 2010 . It's a technology that you ought to become familiar with; whether you're a technologist, a marketer, or a consumer looking to make the best use of your smart phone (and aren't we all!). So in this post we give you an overview of what to expect from NFC. Sponsor What NFC is & Why You Should Care As we explained earlier this year , NFC (Near Field Communication) is a short-range communication technology for mobile phones. It's similar to Bluetooth and has a range of about 10 centimeters. There are three main use cases, according to its Wikipedia entry : Card emulation: the NFC device behaves like an existing contactless card; Reader mode: the NFC device is active and reads a passive RFID tag, for example for interactive advertising; P2P mode: two NFC devices are communicating together and exchanging information. Using the phone to emulate a smart card means that it can be a deployed as a payment device (similar to a credit card), identity card, security device, and more. This type of functionality is already common in Asia, but it hasn't yet taken off in the States. Using the phone as a reader allows the phone to interact with RFID-enabled objects in the real world, for example posters embedded with chips that connect to mobile web sites or applications. NFC in Mobile Phones & Services For these use cases to become a widespread reality, an NFC chip must be pre installed in most mobile devices. According to Dan Butcher from Mobile Commerce Daily , this probably won't happen until 2011 at the earliest. One issue is that NFC is not a current feature of the iPhone or Android, the tools of choice for many Web early adopters. However one handset manufacturer is showing the way with NFC: Nokia . Its Nokia 6131 NFC phone can be used as a credit card, travel card, loyalty card and a "multi-purpose smart card." Along with NFC handsets, NFC-enabled services will arise for applications such as mobile payments. As BusinessWeek reported recently , Alcatel-Lucent has announced a new mobile payment hosting service for mobile operators, in partnership with payments systems specialists Clear2Pay and PingPing. However, the article noted that other emerging mobile payment services aren't using NFC - including Nokia Money and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's new business Square ( our review ). NFC Has its Issues, But Also The Momentum... There are issues with NFC, perhaps the biggest being its limited range. In order for NFC to work, you need to hold your mobile phone close to the RFID tag or reader device. An alternative that has a longer range is DASH7 , which we'll review in an upcoming post. However NFC holds the most promise for delivering contactless mobile payments to consumers, along with other real world use cases. Image credit: nicolasnova Discuss

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NFC: Never Mind Credit Cards, Pay With Your Phone

Augmented reality (AR) has a long way to go before it achieves widespread acceptance and exposure to the public, but thankfully, many of the leading companies are continuing to make large strides towards this goal with commercialization of applications and the growing popularity of AR advertising. Earlier this month, metaio , one of leading vendors of AR software and services, updated its iPhone application junaio to version 2.0 in an effort to keep up with the growing AR browser market, but it is a truly useful implementation of AR in this app that will help the emerging technology reach more users. Sponsor Previously, the junaio app was its own social network that allowed users to create AR scenes by importing 3D models into still images captured from the phone's camera, but with the latest version of the software, junaio is now competing with Layar and Wikitude and others in the AR browser space. A few weeks after releasing the updated application, junaio announced it had formed a partnership with BART, San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit system, to bring live train data to the app. Subway maps have been one of the more popular implementations of AR on mobile phones, especially with Paris-based developers Presselite and their popular, award-winning Metro Paris Subway application. With this latest release, junaio is taking advantage of the API provided by BART to not only place locations of nearby stations in a user's field of vision, but also estimated arrival time of trains at each station displayed live in real-time in the AR point-of-view. The AR community needs more partnerships like this to be formed; it is practical applications like this that will push AR into the mainstream. There are a dozen different ways to find the nearest pizza place via an AR app on mobile devices, and frankly, that's getting a little old. It's not enough to just point me toward something, and I don't think that will be enough to convince enough of the general public to embrace the technology. Desktop-based webcam AR is way ahead of mobile AR in terms of providing practical applications. Examples include the USPS virtual box that helps customers determine which size box to use for shipping; the virtual mirror technology which helps customers try on sunglasses, hairstyles, clothing, makeup, shoes, etc.; and more recently, Samsung's TV sizer AR experience that lets users see what a new TV might look like mounted on their wall (see video below). These are the kinds of applications that are helping AR kick the reputation of being a gimmicky novelty technology and instead build one of practicality and usefulness. If mobile AR solutions are going to continue to gain corporate ads and sponsorships, they will need to find innovative ways other than pointing things out to survive in the long run. Discuss

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Practical Application is the Golden Ticket of Augmented Reality