Friday, September 26. 2008

Visa Commits to Mobile Launch on Android - including LBS

The first implementations will be for Chase cardholders. "The first applications will allow cardholders to receive notifications to their mobile devices about transaction activity on their accounts; obtain offers from a range of merchants; and use the built-in location-based technology developed by Google to map nearby merchants where they can redeem Visa offers and locate ATMs that accept Visa." Are we finally going to see the long talked about location-based offers?

- ITWire

The Microsoft Vision for Tagging Reality

This demo was shown at the Emerging Technology Conference at MIT yesterday:

In what was perhaps a more compelling demo, [Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig] Mundie showed a video of a woman in Seattle looking at a live scene through the camera on an ultra mobile pc device. On screen, the client was pulling data from a web based service to tag items in the scene — the names of buildings, the number of public transportation buses, information about how far away taxis were via GPS, etc. That’s the sort of useful, real world application that makes Microsoft’s vision of the future exciting.

Microsoft sees a bit of client-side computation, whereas Google sees a "dumb client" per blogger Josh Catone.

- SitePoint blog

Two Louisville Geo-Related Companies Look to Tax Incentives for Growth

HelloMetro, based in Southern Indiana, is considering a relocation to Louisville, where it could expand, adding 15 jobs.

Spatial Data Integrations, a Louisville company, plans a new freestanding building. It would also add 15 jobs.

- Business First