Wednesday, August 26. 2009

BBC Using Google Gears to Deliver Location-based Content

For now the content is weather and spots from it Breathing Places efforts (about natural places) but the effort will grow to provide more options as part of BBC Learning Innovations. A demo under the working title BBC Open Air is a website one can visit from a desktop or mobile device. With Gears installed it will know your location and offer up appropriate content.

- BBC via Paid Content

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in LBS at 08:40 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Google Crowdsources Traffic: Will that kill waze?

Lots of buzz in the last day or so about Google using data from those using Google Maps Mobile to compile and share traffic data - especially for rural routes. (See for example Ars Technica.) It's been around in some areas for a while.

Several comments I saw said basically, "Waze is dead, Google killed it." Hang on - recall the Waze business plan while it includes sharing traffic data is about developing a base map from its users' travels, then selling that geodata. I don't know if it will work, but it's a very different money making proposition than say...Google's.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, LBS at 08:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, August 24. 2009

The Cycle Repeats

In the past few years pretty much all communications could be geotagged in one way or another.

E-mails could be geotagged, social networking apps could share location and soon, with a new API from Twitter, individual tweets will be geotagged. Each time the press repeats the cycle: this is bad, people can stalk you, will rob you when they know you are not home, people will "fake their location"...

Yes, that's all true and has been true with every implementation before this one. How, really, are geotagged tweets any different from what's come before? Is Twitter that much more important or real time or whatever that the impact will be different? Nextweb seems to think this is the first time any messages were geotagged in its Six Reasons why Twitter Geolocation is a really, really bad idea (do note the TWO "reallys").

If you feel the need to play in this world of sharing location, I encourage you to do so. But, look first at tools to manage that sharing beyond the apps themselves. Consider Fire Eagle (which I've gone on about before) and even new "limited time based" sharing services like Glympse (Fire Eagle folks - can you add that?)

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Social Networking at 06:00 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

Yelp Mobile: Bing Maps on Blackberry, GMaps on iPhone

TechCrunch notes the launch of the Yelp Blackberry app (Yelp is a restaurant review service) and the difference in map platform. So, why go Bing when Google was used for the previous app on the other platform?

Per the article: "Yelp says that Bing was used because the search engine provided map tile access, which was essential for movable maps on the app."

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

Friday, August 21. 2009

Twitter to Add Location Info to Tweets

I guess we knew it was coming. There are numerous ways to automagically add "real time" location to tweets already via third party apps. Now, Biz Stone notes on the Twitter blog the capability will be added to the API, then to the end user interface. By default, it will be "off." The benefits to users? Find tweets locally or follow tweets from an event (concert) or area (earthquake). The benefits to Twitter? $$$ (someday...)

Any word on the technology/platforms that will provide location? No. Anything on the API itelsef? Yes. Twitter lead on the project @rsarver (who joined the company from Skyhook Wireless) posted about the additions to the API and notes data delivery via GeoRSS (nice to hear that!). Why GeoRSS? "We picked the standard because we like the flexibility and the types of geospatial data it can describe."

See also: Brady Forrest's Radar post on the announcement

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Social Networking at 06:02 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, August 17. 2009

Yelp + Digg + Foursquare = GraffitiGeo

That's the equation from ReadWriteWeb and it sounds like a great short hand for the new GraffitiGeo which the site says will suffer from all the regular social media apps' problem: reaching critical mass. Mashable does like the "digg-like" voting but is looking toward the "augemented reality" version of GraffitiGeo where the information (mostly focussed on restaurant reviews) will appear as you "look through" your iPhone.

Because the app is location-based, it knows what's nearby. In the demo, they aim the app down the street from where they're standing and GraffitiGeo displays the ratings for all the restaurants on that block. If you're ever just wandering around looking for a place to eat, this could be a real timesaver.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Social Networking, Apple at 08:23 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |