LBS Tidbits
Social location service Loopt has appointed Steve Boom as president. He spent ten years overseeing Yahoo’s mobile offering, before joining mobile social network mig33; he’ll maintain a position there as he works at Loopt.
Sid Yadav explains why LBS uptake is so poor: hardware.
“In other words, location services aren’t facing a generation gap. They’re facing an equipment gap.”
Boston-based Scvngr has a new rewards program that allows businesses to customize what their patrons might do for prize, such as 20% off a meal or a free scoop of ice cream. Fifty Boston businesses are signed on for the launch. My concern: complexity: how many people are going to follow the directions to get those goodies? At one place you have to snap a picture, at another suggest new ingredients… that sound like a bit of work.
Eric Lai, who works for Sybase, argues that LBS is not for social stuff, but rather mundane enterprise business connections. Getting information to the right people onsite, using extra time to meet new potential customers, connecting with existing customers…
- ZDnet
OpenBuilding.com, a crowdsourced website for building a database of buildings (what else?) is now an iPhone app. It’s called Buildings (iTunes link):
Buildings is an application containing an encyclopaedia of architecture at the user’s fingertips. It supplies information, images and videos on over 2500 historic, contemporary and conceptual buildings. It lets the user find and learn about architecture nearby, across their country or overseas.
Using GPS technology to pinpoint the users location, Building is also a perfect mobile guide for travellers who can use their iPhone to find directions to buildings of interest.
MapQuest has updated its site again: it now adds additional language support, ability to embed maps within other websites, and to send data to GPS devices.
