Tuesday, April 1. 2008

LBS Apps Flood CTIA

A flood of LBS-related press releases hit us yesterday from CTIA. You can see all of them at LBS360.NET. A few notable highlights:

Check out a few of the YouTube vodcasts from Networks in Motion on the Atlas Book Navigator; and AAA Mobile on their nav device that can send your location directly for roadside assistance.

Getting real-time traffic information seems to be the hot topic with press announcements from TraffiCast's real-time road speed, TrafficGauge's traffic escape service on Blackberry's, Traffic2Go.com from Traffic.com for Java phones, and TrafficLand that aggregates live traffic video from a network of traffic cameras.

Garmin is touting how your cell phone can look like its nuvi PND and has completed alliances with MapQuest and Google allow a user who is sitting at their PC to send navigation information from Google or MapQuest to a Garmin PND with its "Send to GPS" function.

Blue Dasher Offers Differentiators on Street Level Photography

Blue Dasher came out with announcement today about their new street level photography. I see Blue Dasher distancing itself from other immersive technologies in three areas:

Density of photos. For the applications we might perceive today, I see the 1 photo/10 ft. as a benefit to realtors and prospective real estate buyers who are seeking as much information as possible and giving better "surround-view" perspectives. I could also see a 3D application in the future. But in general, although it looks like unnecessary oversampling, the data is there for other opportunistic applications.

Contextual Advertising. Need an ad placed in the 4500 block of Main Street? No problem. 7-Eleven needs a virtual billboard ad 1000 feet ahead of every c-store? No problem. I like the ability to place an ad wherever you want. It could be a boon for hyper-local ad placement. And ad agencies are probably salivating on placing virtual ads on the back of buses.

GPS Business News Celebrates Birthday, Adds Fee

I've cited GPS Business News regularly in the past year and find it a valuable addition to the geospatial media. The website/newsletter turns 1 this month and the free subscriptions needed to access the entire website are switching a fee based plan on April 3. The going rate will be $129/year but an intro rate for the next few weeks is $99.

via e-mail sent to subscribers

The Scoop on FireEagle

No, I didn't get an invite, but Brady at O'Reilly did and he explains how it works and why you should care.

Podcast: EU Investigates Geodata Acquisitions; Pitney Bowes Plans Growth, Rebranding

This week the European Union extended its investigations into the acquisition of Tele Atlas by TomTom and NAVTEQ by Nokia causing stocks to drop and some to wonder what's ahead. Here in the United States Pitney Bowes CEO talked up his plans for growth for its recently acquired MapInfo, along with a rebranding of the corporate parent. Our editors explore what's ahead on all three fronts.

Subscribe to Podcast RSS

Listen Now (to download, right click on the link at left and choose "save target as")

Read the show notes

Missed any podcasts? Want to subscribe via iTunes, Yahoo, etc? Here's the index with all the info.