Semi-Volunteered Geographic Information Via Game Mechanics

This makes perfect sense to me. Say you want to capture images (or I guess any sort of sensed data about a place) but for whatever reason, poeple just don't go there. What if you could "guide them there" with the lure of more points or prizes or the like? It's my understanding that Waze already does that as it tries to complete its maps of road networks in the United States. And, a new mobile phone based running game tries to entice you to run faster (from the Zombies!).

A paper from Northwestern Univeristy suggests that the mechanics work just as well for having individuals on foot take and share phots at places of interest. If they need to shoot the ghost, and it happens to at the location where data is needed, the player will oblige. The researchers make it clear that players are told exactly how the data they capture will be used and how/if their personal information will be attached. Thus, this is not really "coerced geographic information."

- VentureBeat

NeuAer: Another Radio Wave “Location” Solution

Says CEO Dave Mathews of NeuAer in Venture Beat about apps like Highlight that launched at SXSW this year:

The problem at hand with LBS apps is that they require the GPS radio to run nearly full-time, have a clear view of the sky to get a signal, and report back to a server their location.

They eat your batteries leaving you alone with no tweets or Facebook or anything. But of course he has a solution: using a bunch of radio waves as a signature for not locating per se, but prompting your device to "do something."

Sadly, the NeuAer website does not have a "how it works" page or video. But I found this digging into the blog:

This marks the first time that our ToothTag engine for proximity plumbing is available for developers to create their own web services that can be executed based upon your smartphone seeing another wireless radio.

And, Rafe at C|net did the due diligence:

Mathews' technology, ToothTag (can we talk about that?), uses all the radio signals that come into a phone--Wi-Fi, GPS, near-field, and most importantly Bluetooth--to fingerprint a location or a person with high accuracy. Most of the real-world locations and things you care about, he says, emit a complex radio-frequency signature based on more than one transmitter. Mobile-phone location services don't use enough of these signals, he says. When it comes to mobile assets like Bluetooth headsets, you don't even have to connect to the other device or "pair" with it. In other words, once you collect the Bluetooth signature from someone you know, you could, with ToothTag technology, get an alert on your mobile device whenever that person came within Bluetooth range of you.

So, you capture a signature of the place/object of interest, then identify what you want to happen when that place/object is in range again. As Rafe notes, there are all sorts of privacy implications here. The first: must you ask permission to capture someone's electronic signature? The app and developer tools are available for Android, with iPhone coming later.

I'm not expecting to see this solution hit it big.

New Geo APIs - 3/21/12

Shutl API: The UK service aggregates offerings from courier services and other shipping carriers to provide quotes for shipping and arrange delivery via the selected provider. It enables expedited delivery or scheduling of delivery within a 1-hour time window. A GPS-enabled tracking service maps shipment progress toward the destination.

API methods support retrieval of quotes from shipping carriers based on specified origin and destination points, carrier delivery terms, and related parameters. Methods also support contracting with the carrier to deliver the shipment. The API also allows access to specific delivery vehicle information.

Weather Decision Technologies API: Weather Decision Technologies is a provider of weather content including science weather detection, nowcasting, and forecasting. WDT's clients include most of the United States' leading weather services and interactive media outlets, as well as governmental, industrial and military weather customers from all over the world. WDT's iMap weather maps are the leading web and mobile solutions for local media. WDT supplies many raw meteorological data products to customers all over the World. These feeds are transmitted using a variety of methods, including proprietary satellite uplinks and the Internet. Documentation is not publicly available.

Autoaddress API: The service provides address capture and validation, with format clean-up and geocoding, for locations in Ireland. Autocomplete functions suggest valid choices during user data entry and apply address intelligence routines to capture and correct accurate, valid addresses. The system can be adapted to an application's address format preferences.

API methods support validation and autocorrection when a user completes data entry, returning status messages, geocoding information, and related application data. Reformat methods modify submitted addresses to match specified configuration options.

Dark Sky API: Dark Sky is an app that predicts the weather using location to figure out when it’s going to precipitate in the immediate future. It is meant to forecast the weather for a given location up to an hour in advance.

The Dark Sky API allows users to query for short-term precipitation forecast data at geographical points inside the United States. It can provide an hourly forecast, forecasts for a collection of points and a list of interesting storms currently happening. The API uses RESTful calls and responses are formatted in JSON.

Onuma WFS API: The Onuma Web Feature Service (WFS) provides access to Onuma's geospatial data resources. This includes the locations and features of buildings, along with other Building Information Modeling (BIM) data. Users can query a specific geographic area determined either by input coordinates or by a drawn area that forms a bounding box. This service also allows users to make Onuma data available to other web services and applications.

Onuma WFS is based on open standards established by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and operates over GET and POST protocols.

- Programmable Web

And a bonus via @howardbutler: A font you can use in your web apps when you want tiny state shapes as a design element. It's called StateFace and is free to use, from ProPublica.      

Nokia Beefs Up Mapping Apps for Lumia Windows Phones

Nokia Drive, now at version 2.0 and now supports offline directions. You can save data directly to the device and navigate without a connection. Data includes posted speed limits and an option to warn you if you are exceeding them.

Continue reading...

London 2012 Torch Relay Map and Other LBS News

The map of the 70 days it will take for the Olympic Flame to travel from Lands End to London is now detailed in a map (Microsoft). Eight thousand people will carry it and it will travel within 10 miles of 95% of residents of the UK. It will also travel by other means.

- London2012 Torch Relay

You might have heard the chuckling around Valentine's Day, which is also close to National Condom Week on the calendar about a new effort to have couples check in when having safe relations. The coveage I saw didn't highlight the main message of the backers, Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest: safe relations. The map is out and show 8,000 checkins. Some 60,000 QR coded condoms were distributed to entice visitors to the site to checkin, but anyone visiting the website can checkin.

Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest has combined the use of new social media technology with their National Condom Week campaign to promote safe sex practices, specifically among young adults and college students. PPGNW launched WhereDidYouWearIt.com and released 60,000 QR-coded condoms in Idaho, Alaska and Washington that send smartphone users to the site.

- The Ithican

Poynt Corporation, in partnership with GasBuddy, has launched its gas search feature on the Poynt mobile local search and advertising platform for users in Canada.

- TechFinance.ca