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Posts Tagged ‘location’

Mobile Monday Silicon Valley rocked

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009
May 4, 2009
6:31 pm to 10:31 pm

Mobile Monday Silicon Valley was fantastic this evening. There was a huge turnout on an uncharacteristically rainy San Francisco evening for the Location-Aware app demo evening.

Skyhook Wireless kindly underwrote the bar and gave a pitch at the beginning of the series of presentations, outlining their rather excellent range of location services available to mobile developers. I managed to catch Skyhook’s Director of Marketing, Kate Imbach, on camera discussing the merits of their offering. Suffice to say if you’re a developer and you’d like to integrate location based services (e.g. Find Me) into your app, definitely, definitely talk to Skyhook.

Here are the companies who presented:

  • Crazymenu.com – Launched their iPhone (lunchtime) online restaurant discovery and ordering facility. I really liked their concept. I’m going to look for it in the iPhone app store.
  • Cristdrive – Their application, Voilà, will simply and elegantly tell any of your online services where you are, right now. $0.99 in the app store.
  • Retronyms – Couldn’t make it for some reason so Kate from Skyhook did her best with their presentation. They’ve got a rather interesting GPS game by the name of Seek ‘n Spell going live. Check their site.
  • Wertago – Showed off their app offering city nightlife in the palm of your hand. Nice!
  • Geoterrestrial – GPSToday, a comprehensive Windows Mobile application offering an array of GPS related services. If you’re into location services, definitely check out what they’ve created — amongst other features, it’ll sit in the background and continually tell folk where you are.
  • HearPlanet – Dale Larson’s audio city guides deliver location information that really speaks to you. You can, as the site puts it, ‘leave those bulky tour books behind and let HearPlanet (iPhone) show you the way. Get it on the App Store. It’s the #2 rated Travel app at the moment and they’ve had almost 500k downloads so far.
  • Life360 – Trades on fear. But in a good way. Their mobile (and desktop) services deliver you instant safety, security and peace of mind. I’m going to get this for my wife and I. Google Latitude helps show where we both are.. but I want more than that. I particularly like their ‘find your family in an emergency’ facilities.
  • Carrrmatey by Lionebra –> Brought the house down. So much so that I filmed their pitch. I think the audience were really taken with the pirate theme. It’s a really smart utility that records where you left your car, reminds you to return at appointed times (for meters) and guides you back to your car — rather useful if you keep on forgetting where you parked.

I managed to get some good video interviews tonight — I was going to hold them back until we’ve launched with the nice new look and feel, but it’s al about content, right? I’m going to aim to get the first lot of videos up tomorrow morning.

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Originally published on Mobile Developer TV and automatically republished here on Mobile Industry Review. View the original post.

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Posted in Events, Feature, Google, Mobile, MobileDeveloperTV, Rant, Twitter, iPhone | Comments

Got 60 friends? Spell out a message with Google Latitude

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

I came across this rather nifty proof-of-concept video from the Google Latitude team.

Latitude, if you’re not familiar with it, is an add-on to Google Maps that (amongst other features) overlays an avatar of your friends on Google Maps. So if you’re out-and-about you can see their location. Or if you’re on your desktop you can see a large Google Map of your friends.

Typically innovative, Google decided to take things to the next level. Wouldn’t it be neat that, if you had sufficient friends each with a T-Mobile G1 (for example), you could position them on the map to spell out a message.

Granted, you’d need to have quite a bit of spare time. But it’s doable, right?

Right.

The Google Latitude team stuck their money where their mouth is and had a bit of fun, thus:

That there is a screenshot of a Google Maps screen spelling out ‘Hi Mom’ across central San Francisco. Each little square you see is an avatar representing a physical Google team member with a phone standing in the corresponding physical location in San Francisco.

The enterprising chaps also made a video documenting the process of setting this up:

There is, I suspect, limited value in spelling out messages using your friends on Google Maps / Latitude. But it’s a super proof-of-concept for the technology.

And a reminder to get on Latitude.

Latitude, of course, isn’t yet available for the iPhone so that’s most of San Francisco ruled out. But for everyone back in Europe sporting your common-or-garden N-Series Nokia device, perhaps it’s time you and your friends spent this Saturday spelling out ‘Hello Your Majesty’ across a map of London.

(You’ll need about 10-12 friends per character.)

Originally published on Ewan.net and automatically republished here on Mobile Industry Review. View the original post.

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Posted in Feature, Google, Hot, Mobile, Rant, T-Mobile, ewan, iPhone, nokia | Comments

Preview: Lastminute Labs ‘Nru’ Andoid App

Wednesday, December 17th, 2008

News just in from the clever-types at Lastminute Labs (the team behind FoneFood, which we rather like) – they’ve also been trying out development on the Android platform and have released this video preview of their forthcoming application ‘Nru’ (pronounced ‘near you’).

Building on the search feature of FoneFood this application takes advantage of the magnetometer (compass to you and me) and GPS built into the G1 to locate entertainment venues, restaurants, landmarks and other stuff on a radar-like interface.  At last!  A way to find the nearest Pizza Express wherever you are without relying on Ewan’s legendary instinct.

We’re going to try it out as soon as we can.

Check it out:

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Posted in Ben Smith, Mobile Applications | Comments

The secret location: Nokia’s Test Lab in Farnborough

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

For all those wondering where I was this morning, the answer is Nokia.

Alas there was no smoke and daggers and X-Files Cancerman-style shenanigans as per my post this morning. I got a little bit carried away.

I actually got a phone call from Ray Haddow, one of the chaps in Nokia’s Social Media/Communications team. Ray asked if I’d like to see round one of the company’s handset test labs (they’ve got 11 in total around the planet).

“Yes,” I said, “With bells on.”

And so I arrived shrouded in secrecy, joined by Steve Litchfield (All About Symbian) and the dudes from Pocket Lint. No one’s ever got to see round this lab before — and whilst Ray specifically pointed out that there wouldn’t be any new handsets or announcements — the opportunity to see what lengths Nokia goes in order to test their handsets.

They don’t just drop a few and stick them together with sellotape and try again to check out the designs. Oh no. They do a considerable amount of testing.

And I got to see more or less all of their major tests — and film it. The footage is ripping off the camera at the moment and I’ll have some stuff up shortly. If you’re anywhere near describing yourself as a Nokia fan, you will want to see this…

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Posted in Devices | Comments

EXCLUSIVE: I’m off to a secret location tomorrow

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

The other week, I headed to a deserted car park at 11pm in the evening in North London. There was one other car — a long wheelbase Mercedes with darkened windows — parked waiting for my arrival on the 5th floor of the multistorey, engine still running, headlights off.

A chap in an overcoat was standing by the car’s open door and as I pulled up, he walked over to me and passed an unmarked padded envelope in through my opened window.

“Your instructions for the visit,” he said, before turning smartly away.

Within seconds the car was gone and I was alone.

I ripped open the envelope as my pulse rate quickened. Inside there was a single A4 sheet.

From the like of my N95, I saw the page was completely blank except for this:

0870 521 3232. 8am. 19-11-08. 112345-998407.

So, I’m going to phone that number tomorrow (Wednesday) at precisely 8am to get my next set of instructions.

If there’s phone signal, I’ll try and update you via Ping.fm, provided they don’t take my Blackberry off me when I arrive.

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Posted in Feature | Comments

Google Maps with even smaller magical blue circles

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

Over at the Google Mobile blog, Adel and Arunesh have just updated us with some great info about a new feature added to Google Maps upcoming version. According to the entry, finding your location is going to be even more precise with the addition of the ‘My Location with Wi-Fi’ feature. 

This addition comes right after the location team released new optimizations that enhanced the abilities of Google Maps to calculate your location even more accurately. 

My Location with Wi-Fi works pretty much similar to how your location is calculated based on Cell tower information. In this, information transmitted by Wi-Fi access points is used to calculate your location. Theoretically, since the range of the routers are very small compared to that of a cell tower, the location info calculated is more accurate.

However, they go onto mention that even though WiFi based location is available in many of the major cities in the world, the coverage and accuracy may vary. 

Is this what Ewan needed?

Do you see this as a feature that’ll change how you use Google Maps?

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Posted in Google, Mobile Applications | Comments

Wanted: Your suggestions for a MIR Show location

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

Where do you think we should film the MIR Show next?

We were going to go to the Mobyko party tomorrow night and film from there — but alas, it’s been moved.

So we’re locationless at the moment. Do you have any ideas for a nice bar, or funky office in the West End/Central London?

Maybe a nice funky mobile operator / PR / Developer / Mobile marketing office? What d’ya think?

If so: Shoot me an email.

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Posted in Podcast | Comments

Nokia buys location social networker Plazes

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Nokia has once again found its way to its wallet for the latest in a recent run of acquisitions: this time, it’s snapped up German social networking firm Plazes. Nokia describes it as “a context-aware social-activity service that people can use to plan, record, and share their social activities: why they are at a given location at a given time, whether in the past, present or future”. It’s a privately owned company and Nokia hasn’t divulged how much it’s spent.

It looks like Nokia’s planning to cannibalise some of the features from Plazes, with the company saying its going to extend its own context-based services with the social presence and time-based activity planning features Plazes has.

Given Nokia has spent a lot of cash mapping and/or navigation companies – think Gate5 and Navteq – it’s little wonder that it’s now looking for new services to offer on top of the maps and new ways to monetise them. Social networking though is mostly an ads fuelled business – I wonder if Nokia will be sticking with that model, or experimenting with charging users a subscription for the geographic services.

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Posted in Mobile Presence | Comments

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