Wednesday, July 9. 2008

U.S. Senate to Investigate Web-based Micromarketing and Tracking

The New York Times is reporting today that the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee will hold hearings on how Internet marketers and ISP can track your surfing behavior. Watchdog agencies are suggesting that some are violating federal law. NebuAd, an Internet marketing company that works with ISPs to help track web activity is providing a way for Web users to "opt-out" of being tracked. There was no discussion in the article of how ISPs are now geotargeting Web activity but some of those commenting on the article recognized the use of IP-based location-based advertising. Once you know 'what' and 'who,' the next question is always 'where.'

GeoCommons Finder in Open Beta

It was in private beta for a while, but now everyone can play with Finder! the data sharing and download site. Data can be uploaded or download in shapefile, csv or KML. Or officially: "Finder is a browser-based application for finding, organizing and sharing GeoData in common formats." And, there's a shiny new User Guide (pdf).

Linux GPS/GIS Tutorial

James Gray writes an easy to follow tutorial: GPS and GIS: A Great Combination, Part I at the LinuxJournal. The GIS part is handled by QGIS.

Pogue on iPhone GPS

The New York Times tech guru is not impressed:

The new iPhone has true G.P.S. now, too, in addition to the fake G.P.S. of its predecessor — an ingenious system that shows your location on a map by analyzing nearby cellphone towers and Wi-Fi hot spots.

Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do with the G.P.S. According to Apple, the iPhone’s G.P.S. antenna is much too small to emulate the turn-by-turn navigation of a G.P.S. unit for a vehicle, for example.

Instead, all it can do at this point is track your position as you drive along, representing you as a blue dot sliding along the roads of the map. Even then, the metal of a car or the buildings of Manhattan are often enough to block the iPhone’s view of the sky, leaving it just as confused as you are.

On the whole he says it's a nice upgrade, but much of it comes from the new apps, which can run on the old device.

Old Poll, New Poll

Back in May we asked: Who do you think is the top innovator in geospatial in 2008 so far? 230 people responded.

Google 34%
The open source geospatial community 21%
Another organization 20%
ESRI 17%
Nokia 5%
Microsoft 4%
TomTom 2%
Yahoo 0%

Next up: Has the jump in gas prices changed where you spend your time?

Why Fire Eagle hasn't convinced Rory of the wonders of LBS

Rory Cellan-Jones writes at the BBC blog dot.life about his testing of Fire Eagle. I was disappointed that he didn't seem to get or take advantage of the control users have of their location information, but I was impressed he stated the problems he ran into and how he didn't get LBS.

First the problems:

That's the theory. In practice, I've found a couple of problems. I need to make the effort to update my location via Fire Eagle all the time - though as GPS comes to more phones that could happen automatically - and most of the time I just can't be bothered. And when I do, I'm still not sure why I want the world to know where I am.

I've tried using a couple of other services attached to Fire Eagle - but just downloading and signing up has tested my patience to the limits.

I think my main problem is the lack of a network effect - until there are plenty of location-based services and plenty of people are using them, the whole idea just won't have any mass appeal. And I'm still worried that it's a concept which may appeal more to advertisers and technology developers than to users - there does not seem to be any real "need" waiting to be fulfilled.

He bravely twitters that he doesn't get LBS only to be bombarded with tweeters "amazed that I didn't get it." He also received a tweet from Tom Coates (the Yahoo person leading the Fire Eagle charge) noting the app hadn't really launched yet.

I take a few things away from this story, which I expect is not that unusual. First off, Fire Eagle would not be the app I'd use to promote the wonders of LBS. As I've noted, it's for managing LBSs; in and of itself, it's not an LBS. Clearly, unless you are a bit sold on LBS, Fire Eagle is perhaps not worth your time for the reasons Rory mentions. Second, there's a sense, echoed by the Twitter responses, that acceptance of and demand for LBS is somehow genetic (or should be). That news hasn't reached Rory or dare I say many others on the planet. The marketing machine for LBS hasn't created the demand for some chunk of the market (yet). Finally, there's still this lingering notion that LBS is for advertisers, not for those sharing their locations. If LBS is to be ubiquitous, that sentiment needs to be overcome.