Sunday, May 31. 2009

Abaqus Offers Turnkey SaaS for "Personal Location-based Analytics"

Last week Abaqus announced a web portal called myGeoDiary (See image at right; click for larger graphic), a working proof of concept for their technology platform. Is it just another API to geoenable a social networking? Maybe. Shailendra Jain, CEO, explained to me that he believes his unique selling proposition is that the platform provides "rich ground for personal analytics." I have to admit that I never heard geotagging described in that fashion but it makes some sense because it emphasizes a deeper level of understanding of personal location-based data...that's if you want to go deeper on where you've been, record more descriptive information, and reference that information again in the future. Jain said any social network website that uses his platform can, "hold and store data for personal intelligence; then retrieve it for retroactive context."

Posted by Joe Francica in Social Networking at 14:57 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Thursday, May 28. 2009

Report to OMB on Privacy Addresses Personal Location Data Privacy

Gary Price at ResourceShelf/Docuticker let me know that the report Toward A 21st Century Framework for Federal Government Privacy Policy
was released yesterday. and includes recommendations on location privacy. The report is by the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board" and was presented to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. The report offers recommendations and updates to privacy policy touches on geospatial privacy on pages 22 and 23. Wish I could copy the relevant passages but the PDF is not cooperating.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in LBS at 13:52 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

Quote of the Week

"Yes, in the future you'll be able to do great things involving location, and I can't wait. But let's cut the crap. Today, people aren't doing that. At the moment, the type of clients that are using mobile don't really care about location."

- RingRing Media's Managing Director Ben Tatton-Brown discussing location-based mobile advertising in an article at Clickz RingRing Media describes itself as "The UK's leading independent mobile media agency."

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in LBS at 09:42 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Tuesday, May 26. 2009

Erricsson Offers up Cell Phone Location info to Protect Banks from Credit Card Fraud

Ericsson's IPX Country Lookup is a service that determines the location of a users phone to confirm the person is in the country where a credit card purchase is to be carried out. For the system to work:

- the bank must subscribe to the service it
- the carrier must have the Ericsson software on its network
- the user must turn on the phone at least once when in country
- GSM phones only

The user's exact location is not determined, just the country, and after that information is used, it's purged (though we know that's tough to do).

Ericsson pays the carrier a small fee for the location lookup. Ericsson will put a margin on that look up fee and charge it to the bank.

Sure sounds complex to get it all the stars aligned...but we'll see.

- PC World

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in LBS at 08:25 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Friday, May 22. 2009

Scrubbed Location Data Can Still Reveal Indentity

Philippe Golle and Kurt Partridge at PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) did research that suggests scrubbed location data from GPS and similar devices may not be as anonymous as once thought. Apparently, even with scrubbing home and work locations can be deduced, thus identifying the person. The paper (pdf) is here.

- The Register

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in LBS at 06:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Thursday, May 21. 2009

Vodafone to use Wayfinder to Advertise

Britain's Vodafone acquired Swedish Wayfinder last year and has announced it will use the technology to enable the logos of advertisers to appear on navigation maps, starting later this summer.

- mocoNews.net

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in LBS at 09:53 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |