Podcast: Any Game Changers in LBS Yet?

Many announcements related to location-based services came out of the CTIA show last week, including winners of the NAVTEQ LBS Challenge. Were any truly game changing? Our editors look at the current state of LBS and what may be ahead.


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Forbes Profiles Real-time Weather Technology Pioneer

The March 16 issue of Forbes profiles an entrepreneur whose company I have watched for some time and with whom I’ve become friends. Bob Baron, founder of Baron Services, has developed technology that was once only used by TV stations but is now looking to find its way into the hands of millions of consumers: real-time weather tracking. To me, weather may be the ultimate in dynamic data feeds.

Baron was one of our two guest speakers at the Rocket City Geospatial Conference this past November, and it’s no coincidence that Forbes elected to profile Bob. His success as a businessman and dynamism is only preceded by his booming voice, a gift that led him to a career as a TV weatherman on a local Huntsville, Alabama, NBC affiliate station.

Baron Services develops weather tracking software so that TV stations, particularly in regions of severe weather, can alert residents to impending danger. The company has developed similar solutions for aircraft pilots in conjuction with Sirius XM and Garmin, and is now negotiating with companies like Honda and Toyota to have real-time weather information available in high-end, luxury vehicles.

Baron demonstrates the future of weather reporting

Bob Baron, president and founder of Baron Services, gave a special presentation at the Rocket City Geospatial Conference on Thursday morning. He started by showing clips of himself and other weathermen from as early as the 1970’s, which were wonderfully amusing and sometimes downright silly. He was a TV weatherman during the "grease pen on a chart" days. This experience was the impetus behind the founding of Baron Services, he explained. "In 1984, an F4 tornado came through Huntsville; there was no warning. A police officer down near the golf coarse reported that his car was overturned and that was our first warning. We lost 23 neighbors that day. We had little timely and accurate data that day - we had nice weather graphics but no weather tools. I incorporated my company two months later, and we focused on how we could do better."

Baron took the audience through the history of technology his company has developed and provided to TV stations, ending up with the company’s newest product, OMNI. Baron explained OMNI: "We’re actually at the beginning of being able to show people the weather as they would actually see the weather." The company works with more than 200 TV stations around the country, so it’s likely that you will see the OMNI system in the next few months.

Traffic: The New Killer App?

While at the deCarta devCON event today, I heard it said twice by deCarta executives that traffic was the new killer app. I guess I thought that traffic has been around for long enough that it certainly wasn’t new and as far as a killer app, it is not a stand alone application and is merely now just included with most cellular nav services and will be soon with connected navigation devices (CNAVs). So, will traffic data, whether real-time or predictive, be a killer app?

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Stormpulse Tracks Gustav

In following the news coverage of Hurricane Gustav this morning, I found that Stormpulse has an exceptional mashup to do "live" tracking of the storm. Stormpulse’s interact maps will also show the viewer other active storms such as those currently in the Atlantic Ocean that are either tropical storms or named hurricanes. What I find unique about Stormpulse is the ability to turn on/off the predictive models for the possible storm tracks. Use the radio buttons in the upper right corner of the mashup to view them.