Facebook IPO Might Spur Real Estate Geolocation App

According to the Washington Post, the impending initial public offering (IPO) by Facebook, with its expected windfall of cash from investors, might encourage some employees to go looking for housing. But the prospective home buyers are a bit picky. You see, they might not want to live next to someone who works for Google, for example, or any other competitor for that matter.

“You get a Yahoo guy against a Facebook guy against a Zynga guy against an Apple guy against a Google guy, then it's not just about the house,” real estate agent Carol Rodoni told the paper. “It's about the egos.”

So, how might you go looking for a house that wasn't near a competitor. Well, without violating privacy laws, might you start by see how your friends (...and their friends) are using location-based social media? If people are checking in with Google+ might they be a Google employee versus someone who is a checking in with Facebook Places? If they check in with foursquare does that mean they lean one way or another? What about Tweets with location enabled? Could you mine Tweets that indicate that a neighborhood favors Apple products and thus indicates an enclave of Apple employees, that is, given a proximal location to Cupertino, for example.

Seems like a great opportunity to map neighborhoods by social media preferences. Although mining that kind of "big data" could mean you might need a database appliance. Or maybe someone will come up with a simple solution that we might find in the app store soon? But which app store?

Think about it.

U.S. Supreme Court Unanimously Decides Warrant Needed by Police for GPS Tracking

The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled today that police must obtain a search warrant prior to before attaching a global positioning system (GPS) device to a suspect's car. According to the Journal, "The government argued that attaching the tiny device to a car's undercarriage was too trivial a violation of property rights to matter." Also according to the Journal, "The decision upholds a federal appeals court in Washington, which voided a drug conviction because police obtained evidence by using the GPS tracker to follow the suspect's movements without a valid warrant."

According to the New York Times, "That ruling avoided many difficult questions, including how to treat information gathered from devices installed by the manufacturer and how to treat information held by third parties like cellphone companies." The Times also reported that, "Though the ruling was limited to physical intrusions, the opinions in the case collectively suggested that a majority of the justices are prepared to apply broad Fourth Amendment privacy principles unrelated to such intrusions to an array of modern technologies, including video surveillance in public places, automatic toll collection systems on highways, devices that allow motorists to signal for roadside assistance and records kept by online merchants."

Writing in a majority opinion and reported by the Times, Justice Antonin Scalia said, "We hold that the government’s installation of a G.P.S. device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search.'"

Slightly Off Topic: An iPhone, an iPad and a Mac Air walk into a bar ...

So, I'm sitting at a conference last week and I look over at the guy next to me and lined up in front of him are an iPhone, iPad and a Mac Book. On the one hand, I'm fairly elated because I own some Apple stock  and I'm wondering if there is an iPod in his pocket. On the other I'm wondering if there is really a need for all three devices at once and just what can I do to get this guy some therapy.

I'm sure this may be even something you've begun to wonder as well. If I've got a phone and a laptop, do I really need a tablet as well? I don't know about you but I don't need another portable device just to answer email and play Apache Sim 3D (I can do that on my iPhone). Two is just fine for me; one in my pocket and one in my backpack. That's about all the room I have anyway.

Without a doubt, the tablet form factor is ideal for certain applications: Data gathering in the field, going lightweight for quick demos, and visualizing map-related data for meetings and presentations (although  this one is a bit dubious because a laptop could suffice just as easily).

Certainly, you need a communication device (phone) and a work device (take your pick, tablet or laptop). Would you give up your laptop for a tablet? How much do you think they are interchangeable? Have you moved everything to the cloud yet? You see where I'm going here.

The funniest thing I've seen so far is someone standing up to grab a quick photo and pointing their tablet device. It just looks so clunky! I mean, they do, still make nice digital cameras for that type of thing. Certainly, for my purposes, the 8 megapixel camera that comes with my iPhone 4S is sufficient for my needs in covering events. I leave my 10 megapixel Nikon home for family affairs.

Eventually I'll get a tablet but not before I can identify a true, personal or professional use that renders the other two devices as less than ideal.  But for now, I'm good.

Foursquare, NFC - Location-based Check-ins Made “Easier”

ReadWriteWeb provided details on near field communication (NFC) might be used by foursquare to make it easier to check-in to certain retail venues without the need to open the app and manually perform a search. Using NFC, the user merely swipes the mobile device near an NFC tag. Since people merely forget to "check-in" this new option certainly facilitates the process and lowers the barrier to utilizing location-based apps. It might even further the benefits of location-based adverting. See also our coverage of Blue Bite (1, 2).

-- ReadWriteWeb

Four New Patents Issued to TeleCommunications Systems Fills Holes in LBS Apps

TeleCommunications Systems Inc. (TSYS) had four patents approved by the U.S. Patent Office that address some additional functionality that may eventually be provided by mobile location-based service application developers, includeing:

• Method and System for Saving and Retrieving Spatial Related Information" (U.S. Patent No. 7,903,001)
• Method and Apparatus for Sending, Retrieving and Planning Location Relevant Information" (U.S. Patent No. 7,913,179)
• Wireless Network Location-Based Reference Information" (U.S. Patent No. 7,904,100)
• Location Sensitive Messaging" (U.S. Patent No. 7,899,468)

The first on the list above records location and time with events. The ability to "timestamp" an event is not new but the invention is focused on the ability of an application to alert a user within the bounds of location at a specific time. Think of coupons that could be sent to you ONLY during the time period the promotion is open and valid and ONLY when you are within proximity of the offer. Location-based alerts for retail loyality programs are nice but its nice to know that certain constraints may be placed on them.

For the second patent (if I'm reading the description correctly), the invention allows the use of a GUI to point on a map and send your location information to your friend or group of friends. Think of it as eliminating the list places you might see in Foursquare and just pointing to your location on a map, provided that the map can accurately geocode you in close proximity to where you really are. Certain privacy controls are also part of this patent.

Patent #3 above has to do with sending a text message to a 4-1-1 service that includes the user's location so that the information sent back to the user is location-relevant.

The fourth patent described above will send a text message to a friend or "buddy list" whenever the user "checks-in" to a certain location. While an application like Foursquare will list your name when you check in, your friends also have to be using Foursquare and "checked-in" to the same location. The invention also provides that the text message will be sent only if your buddy is within proximity to you. I'm not certian how those proximity settings are established such that you must determine your own geofence.

These are all interesting inventions by TCS and have the ability to close some of the gaps left by existing location-based social networking apps, loyalty programs or apps like Groupon. By offering these kinds of location-based features to wireless providers and app developers, you can begin to see the progression of technology and increasing sophistication of applications. Eventually, we'll see these features brought to market and see which ones are of most benefit to users.

Some of my analysis was supported by an overview in SatNews.com.

[Disclosure: The author owns stock in TCS]