Monday, September 29. 2008

WSJ on IP Geolocation

The article reviews its use for marketing, compliance and fraud prevention. The usual suspects appear: Digital Envoy, Akamai and Quova.

Google Comes to Washington to Sell Cloud Computing to Feds

The Washington Post reports on the new 18 person office in Reston Town Center aimed at educating and then selling to the feds.

Google wants agencies and the firms working with them to give "cloud-computing" a try. That means, for example, using Google Maps and Google Earth to visualize massive amounts of information, or using Google's search tool to organize internal data, and storing that information on Google's servers "in the cloud." The enterprise versions of the tools, which come with extra storage and security features, cost around $50 per user, per year.

I figured Google already had a sales office there.

Update: Senator Proposes Making Dash-mounted GPS Legal in California

The governor signed the bill this past weekend.

- SF Gate

---- original post 8/8/08 ------
A current law bans anything from be affixed to the windshield (with few exceptions) or dashboard. Senator Jenny Oropeza has introduced Senate Bill 1567, the GPS Windshield Safety Act, which allow drivers to mount their devices on their windshields without fear of citation and out of reach of any restless back-seat toddler. So far so good: "Editors at several newspapers, including the Torrance Daily Breeze and the Long Beach Press-Telegram, have given it their stamp of approval. And both houses of the Legislature on Aug. 4 overwhelmingly approved the bill with broad bipartisan support." Now, on to the governor.

- California Chronicle

Corrections made 8/12. Source above cites Oropreza as author of the article and the bill and an Assembly member. She is, per comment, a State Senator. Her website confirms that.

Have LBS? Don't Need Post Codes

Damien Mulley makes that argument regarding Ireland (which has yet to implement post codes) but it runs into a snag: An Post (the Irish post office) owns the best data about addresses and OSI (Ordnance Survey Ireland) owns the best maps of the country. And they won't share. If they do, there's no need for post codes.

- Times Online

TechCrunch: Apple LBS Social Networks Not Ready for Mainstream Usage

Mark Hendrickson comes to that conclusion in The State of Location-Based Social Networking On The iPhone. Among the things that need to be enhanced: location updates in the background (Apple does not allow this yet), stability, ability to invite friends knowing they are supported handsets.

There's a round up of the six most popular apps including Moximity which headed to private beta last week. One differentiator: it's launching in one geography at a time. First up: hometown of Austin, TX. Also unique: the app pulls in your contacts from Facebook who are also on the service. There's more coverage of the company in its local paper.

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