What do Yelp, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo think of “check-in” gaming

At the Where 2.0 conference, here’s the opinion of four of the major mobile-local-search players with respect to ‘check-in’ games like Foursquare or Gowalla:

• Yelp: Check-ins are part of the feature set
• Microsoft: We see ourselves as an ecosystem player; we are wide open to working with all of these players
• Yahoo: It’s very very exciting to see all these check-in games but we’re still early days
• Google: These apps are cool

What Blaise Aguera y Arcas of Microsoft Will Announce at Where 2.0

Blaise Aguera y Arcas, architect of Bing Maps, just took the stage at Where 2.0 to provide an update on Microsoft’s progress with
Bing Maps. During his keynote, he will announce the following:

- Bing Maps World Tour App Launch: Just about every month, Bing Maps gets a makeover in the form of new map imagery for locations worldwide.  The World Tour map app brings these updates to life using the Bing Map Apps framework, Silverlight and Azure.

- Bing Maps Oodle App Launch: Oodle.com, one of the fastest growing classifieds services is creating an app that will map rental housing on Bing Maps which will be available today.  The Oodle Rentals app will pull-in Oodle data, allowing users to look at various rental housing available from Oodle.com.

- Bing Maps Foursquare App Launch: Last week at SES New York, we announced our partnership with foursquare and plans to roll out the foursquare Everywhere app on Bing Maps in the coming weeks. Today, the app will be live and ready for use.

via Microsoft PR, details

Apple Patent: More Use of Accelerometer for Maps

The company received two patents this week: one related to using accelerometers, the other about broadband. The first is relevant to mapping: Methods and apparatuses for operating a portable device based on an accelerometer

For maps, Apple wants to use tilt-controls to help move throughout a map. When zoomed into a portion of a map, the iPad user might want to visualize a potential route and change the orientation or view of the mapped region. Rather than pinch-zooming or pan around the area, the user could simply rotate, tilt, or slide the tablet in a particular direction in order to adjust their view.

- Into Mobile

Singapore Offers OneMap

The first product of the city/state’s Singapore Geospatial Collaborative Environment (SG-SPACE) initiative is OneMap, the “first intelligent map information system that provides reliable, timely and accurate location-based information and services to the public.”

Developers are already onboard: Douglas Gan, CEO and Founder of ShowNearby, is among them, as are about 12 companies and organisations, including five public agencies.

It [OneMap, clarified per comment] looks like it uses the ESRI Flex app, but I could not confirm that from the code.

- Straits Times

Simple Geo Launches: MarketPlace and Storage Solutions in Place

The Marketplace allows developers (of which SimpleGeo already has 5000) to hook up with data providers (the examples are not NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas, but Foursquare and Gowalla) while the Storage Engine “is a cloud-based system to allow developers to store location and do queries on it.”

Partners include some companies that have “gone dark” of late: “DeCarta, ESRI, Localeze, MetaCarta, Quova, Stamen Design, and Weather Decision Technologies.” Expect press releases from some of these players today.

Here they come:

Quova
deCarta

- TechCrunch