Podcast: Do We Need Maps in our Location-based Apps?

A reader posed the question that we articulate this way: “Why are data taken for granted in LBS hype? What happens when you remove the map?” Our editors think that is a great question and explore it in the context of navigation apps, weather and traffic apps, social apps and augmented reality.

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Podcast: What Will Apple do in Geo?

This week as the world is abuzz about Apple’s latest device, the iPad, we look at a potential apple area of interest: mapping. There are hints that apple is assembling policies and ingredients for a mapping play, but what else does it need to fully implement its solution? And what would make an Apple incursion into mapping uniquely compelling? And when might it arrive?

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My Black Friday Shopping Map

Yesterday, I took a look at the Walmart maps being offered to shoppers for Black Friday by the Massachusetts store cited in our APB post today. Looking like every other Walmart floor plan that the retailer stamps into the landscape around the country, I got to thinking about how I’d want my "shopping map" to look like. If I were to be lured to the 4:00 a.m. low, low prices, obsequious to the will of the mega-retailers on that fateful day after Thanksgiving, this is how I would want to start my hunt for the ultimate door-busting bargains.

First, I’d want my car navigation system (let’s go with a Garmin…I’m partial to their PNDs) equipped with the locations of every retailer and their hours of operation on BF (yes, Black Friday).

Next, I’d map out the route to each store allowing just enough time to scarf-up the best sale items at each.

However, this is predicated by having a map of each floor plan for each retailer loaded onto my Blackberry (sorry, I’m a business guy…don’t do iPhone schtick). Perhaps we could get the good folks at uLocate to work on this for the Where application.

Next, the retailers would have to allow the floor plans to be tagged with the location of the best sale items. This might be similar to what the rather crude Walmart map provides, but please, we are a bit more sophisticated in our geospatial awareness these days, so let’s have better precision, right? I’m thinking that there should be some RFID device for each item and a shopping cart that synch’s via Bluetooth to my Blackberry to navigate around the store. Whenever the cart passes along the isle with the most sought-after gadgets, my Blackberry provides the alert and I’m directed appropriately.

Having snagged the item from the shelf, I’m then provided with a traffic map of the store floor, whisking my buggy to route around the bulging crowds to the nearest cash register with the fewest in line. This is micro-geography at its finest.

My items are scanned as I zoom past the counter, swipe my credit card, and I’m out the door…on to the next BF adventure.

I’m headed to the parking lot where I’m met with a swarm of hungry, sleep-deprived shoppers, goodness knows where I parked my car. But in the perfect geospatial world, I am directly by voice commands by my PND to the location of my space and my car is automatically unlocked as I approach with a cart-load of gifts, recognizing of course that my bio sensor-equipped vehicle knows my proximal location.

Safely inside, I rev the engine and I’m off to the next store, real-time traffic and weather guiding my every move. And because I’ve integrated my PND with geo-located Twitter feeds, I’m getting updates on new bargains in the vicinity. I’m re-routed as necessary…my Christmas shopping list consulted and advised.

In a perfect world…Have a great Thanksgiving.

Podcast: Why not code the real world?

While much money is spent noting attributes of physical objects on paper maps or in electronic files, only for them to be of limited use in the field, why do we not simply code more real world object with key information? In Akron fire hydrants are coded with their water pressure by their colored domes. Even as we put all this information into databases, should we also think more about simply it putting it right where it’s needed?


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Telecoms.com on PND vs. Smartphone

Telecoms.com delves into the convergence of PNDs and cellphone nav offerings. There are some great quotes here including:

His [Orem Neilson of Telmap’s] enthusiasm is not shared by Steve Crammond, a partner at PA Consulting. Crammond believes that the PND suppliers, led by US firm Garmin and Dutch vendor TomTom, are not under threat from the mobile sector. “The PND manufacturers supply something that people need. It does something useful, it sells well, it’s got a good price and it doesn’t seek to replicate anybody else’s services or facilities. It’s not broken and it doesn’t need fixing. What is broken is the mobile sector’s ambition to create vast amounts of service revenue out of LBS on phones,” he says.

Perhaps, but there is another competitor - pre-installed in-dash solutions from the auto manufacturers. But, there is a lag on that…

Mark Gretton is TomTom’s engineering director: “We proved that there was a real market need, which was to get people from A to B when they didn’t know where B was. We’re beyond that point now and we’ve realised that the number of times you drive to B when you don’t know where B is, is actually not that often, unless you’re a professional driver.”

Right, thus PND providers must offer more - including a connected solution - with search, music etc. That leads to monthly fees, something most PND buyers are not yet fully ready to embrace, per the article.

TomTom’s Mark Gretton sums it up: “The only thing you can say today is that navigation is a real market; a service for which people are prepared to pay. All that other stuff, all those other applications, it’s just speculation. We don’t know whether or not it will prove valuable to people.”

That’s to say, navigation people will pay for - at least as a one off payment for a device. Now, can the same be said for LBS with the same amount of confidence?