TomTom’s New Global Geocoder Targets Power Users

I spoke to Dan Adams, TomTom's vice president of the company's  Location and Live Service group about today's announcement for their new global geocoder. He told me that the new web service had been talked about since the company was known as Geographic Data Technology (GDT). Today, however, with improved bandwidth and  a better understanding why geocoding is so important for businesses, the service is a much more viable than it might have been in the past.

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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

Navigating the Microgeography of Grocery Stores - The tablet is back on shopping carts

Several years ago, retailers tried putting small tablet devices on shopping carts to help (persuade?) shoppers navigate product choices and drive purchases at grocery stores. I can't remember the name of the device but it was truly ahead of its time and I believe it was using RFID technology. As carts passed by RFID sensors certain information would be displayed on the table screen.

Now comes word that SK Telecom is piloting a project in Shanghai, China with shopping cart-mounted tablets that uses Wi-Fi technology. According to an article in GottaBeMobile, "This way, consumers can get true location-based discounts and coupons as they walk past aisles of snacks and food." Dvice Magazine further explains that shoppers need to download a "grocery list" app to their smartphone that later syncs with the shopping cart. Once synched, the tablet can send the shopper location-based discounts depending on where you are within the store. Also within the article, it offered this, "For example, if you were in the dairy aisle, the tablet might use augmented reality to let you know that Ben & Jerry's ice-cream is on sale or that there's a new kind of organic apple juice in the juice aisle with a sampling booth near it."

So, we're beginning to see the confluence of indoor positioning, couponing, location-based advertising, augmented reality and microgeography. It's all a bit much to take in at one fell swoop, but you had to see this coming. Somebody is putting together the next killer app for the consumer that will revolutionize grocery shopping and as the articles suggest make the shopping experience a little less mundane. The pilot will be shifting to South Korea next but don't expect it in North America any time soon. We're all still trying to figure out foursquare.

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Apple and “big data” Geospatial Warehouses

Apparantly, Steve Jobs can spell "geospatial" just fine. In a report by Robin Harris, ZDNet's blogger for "Storage Bits," Jobs discussed Apple's iCloud initiative by touting his large Teradata-powered data centers. Harris pointed out that one function of the Teradata servers was "Geospatial services" that in his analysis:

Very handy for the location aware services that iCloud provides. And valuable for retailers and manufacturers who want deep insight into their customer’s buying habits and geographical spread.

I think what Harris just implied was that Apple has now jumped into the expedition to seek the "holy grail" of location-based advertising. Not a surprise; almost expected. But Apple isn't toying with the latest iPhone "check-in" LBS toy. They went straight for the business intelligence play that Teradata can serve up should it need to analyze massive amounts of location-based "big data." How much is "big data." Harris says that Teradata's "Extreme Data Appliance" is expandable to 4,000 nodes and 180,000 terabytes of data.

Teradata flirts with geospatial data support. They haven't jumped into the fray to the degree that Netezza or Oracle has. Will that change? I guess if they are supporting Apple's iCloud and their LBS services, I suspect we'll hear more about this soon.

Cybersecurity and Geospatial Technology

Osama bin Laden had to "sneaker-net" his messages to his al Qaida operatives for fear that his emails would be detected. Hacks to Sony caused a major stir. Identity theft is rampant. Infiltration by foreign operatives to our defense data centers is a daily occurance and yet we tend to think of all of these threats as only "virtual," "cyber." But all threats originate "somewhere." Location technology for locating IP addresses by city or ZIP Code has been used for fraud detection for sometime. But obviously more technology will be needed to piece together viable threats and the location thereof. I've established a new LinkedIn group to further discussion on this topic. We'll be pointing member to news and related issues. Feel free to join the discussion.