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February 23 2012
geoloqi-dev-banner
Geoloqi, a name you may know because of the mobile app that provides automatic Foursquare check-ins and geofenced reminders, is today launching its next-generation location platform as an SDK. Although previously available in API format for developers' use, the new iOS and Android SDK makes it even easier for developers to drop in location services into their apps, whether those are consumer-facing apps, apps for government, carriers, or the enterprise.
September 16 2011
mingle-intro
There's a new concept for social networking services taking root, and it's not about re-creating your offline social graph on the Web, like Facebook does today. It's about discovering the people who are nearby you now - the ones you probably would like to meet. This type of discovery mechanism is already being made possible by a number of services, including the checkin apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, the automated discovery of nearby folks via Sonar and Banjo, the group chatting in Yobongo, and the micro-networks that emerge through LoKast. All of these companies are playing with the idea of location-based networks, attempting to connect you to others around you through varying means. At this week's TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco, even more services emerged to compete in this space, too.
August 12 2011
banjo
Six-week old mobile application Banjo has been updated with a new feature that lets users virtually stalk locations, and the people there, in real-time. Banjo, for those unaware, is a new social discovery service which reveals the social network present at any given location at a particular time. To be clear, it's not another social network, it's a layer on top of social networks. With Banjo, you don't have to create a profile, add friends or collect followers, or perform any of the other typical social networking behaviors.
April 13 2011
TekTrak: Mobile Location App Helps Reunite A Family After The Japanese Earthquake
When disasters of scale happen, like the massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck Japan and sent tsunamis rippling across the globe last month, one of our first reactions is to immediately try to establish contact with those we care about who might have been affected. By phone or by email, by whatever means possible, we scramble to get in touch.
Of course, natural disasters often wreak havoc on our lines of communication and, with many people simultaneously attempting to reach loved ones, cellular networks quickly become overloaded. I, personally, will never forget the anxiety of struggling to find and reach relatives in Lower Manhattan immediately following the September 11th attacks.
Unfortunately, the disaster in Japan was no different. Phone lines were either down or those that were available quickly became overloaded with calls, and many people had to spend anxious hours waiting to find out if loved ones were alive and safe.
Yet, while technology sometimes has the tendency to abandon us in moments of need, it is also a tool that reunites us. We learned today that, TekTrak, a mobile tracking and security app, provided one Japanese family with this very ability following the March 11 quake. The family (who asked to remain anonymous) was unable to locate their daughter in the disorder, who was at school over an hour from where they lived — or to reach her on the phone.
But, because the app works in the background of a phone’s OS, using the 3 hardware components already built into most smartphones (cellular, GPS, and WiFi) to pinpoint its location, the girl’s parents were able to go onto TekTrak’s website to find their daughter’s location. And, once they saw the timestamps in the app’s location history feature, they knew she was okay, because they could see that she had been moving since the earthquake had struck.
The father said that it usually took his daughter an hour to return home by bus from school, but on March 11th, it took more than seven hours. Luckily, the worried parents were able to follow her progress home using the app’s web maps.
Originally he uploaded the app on his daughter’s phone, he said, to prevent against theft, as the $5 app both enables users to monitor the location of their device at all times and to secure sensitive or private information stored on the phone.
Sometimes it takes a disaster to show us the areas of true weakness within our infrastructures, be they communication, transportation, or electrical — and, on the flip side — they sometimes reveal applications or strengths we didn’t necessarily know we had. Obviously, apps that help us stay connected (and aid in search and location) in the event one method of communication disappears can be extremely valuable in emergency situations.
So, if your phone should turn off and you are unable to locate it directly, TekTrak allows you to see where the phone was last located (and check location history). The app also comes with a remote ringer feature that allows users to locate their device once they are within close proximity of the phone. Or, if you don’t think you can retrieve the device from that location, users will soon be able to send remote messages to the phone in the hope the person who may have the phone will respond, founders Arik Waldman and Luka Sklizovic said.
Albeit a single case, it is great to see an example of technology not only allowing people to reunite with their phones — but, more importantly — their loved ones. For more info on the story, or the app itself, you can check out TekTrak’s blog here.
December 22 2010
Where Is Awarded The “Mother Of All Geofencing Patents”
Just as geo mobile services are taking off, the U.S. Patent Office has awarded an extremely broad patent on “Location-based services” to Where. Patent No. 7,848,765 covers 31 claims ranging from sending an alert to offering a coupon when somebody crosses a geofence with a mobile device. Where CEO Walter Doyle calls it the “mother of all geofencing patents.”
A geofence is a predefined boundary on a map. For instance, it could be a two-block radius around a business. When somebody crosses into that area, they could be offered a geo-targeted ad or coupon. The patent also defines a geofence as possibly being “associated with a moving location that is associated with a portable electronic device.” In this case, the geofence is placed around individual users and moves with them. The patent seems to describe practically every mobile app with any kind of geo-trigger, from simple “location-based alerts” to “verifying transactions and tailoring information to the behavior of a user.” The full abstract reads:
Provided herein are methods and systems relating to location-based services such as social networking, providing demographic information, tracking mobile devices, providing business information, providing an adaptable user interface, remotely effecting a change on a portable electronic device, providing a geofence, outputting location-based information on a mobile device, varying transmissions to and from a mobile device, providing location-based alerts, verifying transactions and tailoring information to the behavior of a user.
Where applied for the patent five years ago in 2005, well before the current crop of hot geo startups even existed. It was finally awarded two weeks ago on December 7. At the very least, the patent should give Where some defensive armor against patent trolls and others trying to enforce their own intellectual property in this market.
Where builds mobile apps across every major mobile device platform—including Android, iPhone, and Blackberry—and boasts about 4 million active users a month. The apps show local listings for restaurants, bars, merchants, and events, and recently started to suggest places for you based on your location and past behavior. Doyle thinks the recommendations can act as a “Netflix for places.” The apps work on the principle of showing interesting places nearby, essentially by placing a geofence around the user.
Where is also using some of what the patent describes in its Where Ads, which allow advertisers to show their mobile ads only to people near their store, or perhaps near a competitor’s store (after the user opts in to see these types of ads). Another ad campaign that takes advantage of geofencing is one which tracks the flu index and maps areas where there is a high incidence. Where’s “Deal Alerts” also work on the same principle. Soon, Where will offer the ability to “follow” places and receive messages when you are nearby.
December 08 2010
Marissa Mayer’s Next Big Thing: “Contextual Discovery” — Google Results Without Search
Today at LeWeb ’10 in Paris, France, our own Michael Arrington took the stage to talk with Google’s Marissa Mayer. Mayer recently took a new job within Google. Technically, she’s now the head of consumer products for the company. So what’s she working on?
Well, as we’ve all heard, location is a big part of it. But she’s also thinking about a bigger picture item that Google is still working on. This is what Google is calling “contextual discovery”. This means being able to look at either a person’s browsing profile or their location profile and serving up interesting data to them without them searching for anything. Yes, it’s Google results without the search.
“The idea is to push information to people,” Mayer said. She noted that on mobile devices this is particularly interesting because location can provide context. One example she gave was a menu when you’re in a particular restaurant. It would be great to show up and see that on your device — maybe with a bit of social flavor based on what your friends like, she added.
Mayer said they’re still thinking about how the UI for all of this should look, but they have some ideas. It may be a panel in the browser. But on mobile devices it would be different. She said they they have a couple of things they’re currently experimenting with and that we should expect something to come from them in the next year or so.
“We’re trying to build a virtual mirror of the world at all times,” Mayer said.
Below, find my live notes of the entire discussion (paraphrased):
MA: So, you now have a new job
MM: We’re calling it consumer products broadly. Local Search, Maps, Earth, Latitude, and all the local products. But it’s also contextual discovery. Take a users location as a piece of context for finding what they want without them actually searching for anything. We have a couple of things we’re experimenting with, but it will be out in the next year.
MA: Why give up search and do something different?
MM: Well I had done it for about 11 years. We’re the number 1 site and number 1 search engine. It was time to try something new. Local is all very related to search, so my knowledge transfers. But now I have engineering on my team. I have 800 – 1000 people working under me. If you include all the various people around the world it’s more like 2,000. “We’re trying to build a virtual mirror of the world at all times.”
MA: Let’s talk more about contextual discovery.
MM: The idea is to push information to people. It’s location in context. Inside the browser and a toolbar, can we look at where people have been going on the web — then we deliver it. But it’s a big UI challenge. In the browser it might be a panel on the right or bottom that complements your browsing. On the mobile phone, it’s where you are in the physical world. We can figure out where the next most useful information is. In a restaurant maybe it’s a menu. Or maybe it’s a social menu. It’s about explicit and implicit location.
MA: Latitude is one of your products. Can we just agree that it’s pretty terrible?
MM: (Laughs) I use it.
MA: But you are an avid Foursquare user.
MM: I am. But Latitude is useful for a smaller group of people. Only a handful of people you’ll want to know where you are at all times. There will be new layers coming on top of it. It’s more useful when more people are on it. And implicit and explicit — yes, the check-in. Maybe that’s in Latitude or maybe it’s in Maps.
MA: You launched Latitude on the iPhone right? We saw it.
MM: It’s close. We’re interested in it. (Laughs)
MA: There are three big acquisitions that Google has been involved in in the past 12 months. Yelp, Twitter, and Groupon. You don’t have to confirm. But why has Google failed to get these companies? Is all the luster gone?
MM: I can’t comment on any instance. But every deal is different. The larger the company, the more complicated the deal is. Slide is an autonomous inside of Google, for example.
MA: What is HotPot — a Yelp killer?
MM: No, it’s a recommendation engine. It’s built into Maps for mobile and Places. You can go to restaurants and rate them quickly. And you make connections with friends or other users like you. We try to produce good recommendations for you. It’s collaborative filtering plus the social component.
MA: Do you remember Buzz? I didn’t mean it like that.
MM: I don’t think Buzz was really similar, this is the new way to rate things for Local.
MA: So Google Social, +1, can you confirm that?
MM: It’s clear that social is important to Google. We need to work on it.
MA: But if you mess up again… Do you just turn into Microsoft while you watch Facebook rise?
MM: It’s clear that it’s really important. We really want to get it right this time. That said, we’re really patient. There’s search, mobile, local, and social. We’ve gotten three right. We’re working on the fourth one.
MA: How does Twitter play into the ecosystem.
MM: It’s an amazing distribution mechanism. And a way to consume information. But it’s more about blasting it out. We use it for HotPot. Foursquare is great signal too — I just checked-in here. I just checked-in there. Twitter is a great product. I use it a lot.
MA: Will acquisitions happen in your group in the next 6 months?
MM: Absolutely. We’re on track for almost an acquisition a week. We do 1, 2, or 3 of those big ones a year. AdMob, ITA, those types of deals are always in the works.
—— Dave Burk, and engineering takes the stage Gingerbread in hand on the Nexus S. ——–
DB: We’ve been working on this device with Samsung for about 12 months. It’s a pure Google experience device. It’s the very best of Google and Android.
MM: One of the key parts is Google Maps for Mobile. Now it’s Google Maps for Mobile 5.0. We have 100 million using Maps for Mobile now.
DB: I can use a multi-touch gesture to get a 3D view.
MM: This is vector maps. So we can smoothly pan and zoom.
MA: What I like about it are the new wallpapers. You’re only selling this is U.S. or UK right? Anyway to get one elsewhere?
DB: It’s only on pre-order in a couple countries. We’ll see after Christmas.
MA: What is you ran Yahoo?
MM: I think Carol has done a lot of smart things. The Bing search deal was smart — we wish it was us. But they’re doing a lot of things to flatten things out and stay relevant.
MA: What about more Google investments? You did Zynga. What about Twitter.
MM: Well gaming makes sense. But other things we’ll have to see.
MA: You’re on the secret committee right?
MM: Yes, The OC. That’s what we call it — the operating committee. It’s about a dozen people who have done a lot with the company. We help operate the company. I’m really proud to be a part of that.
MA: You talk about killing products, investments, right?
MM: Yeah, it’s true. All that stuff.
MA: Anything else?
MM: We’ve had a really exciting week. Nexus S. Gingerbread. Chrome OS. 120 million active users of Google Chrome. And the Chrome Web Store.
MA: Isn’t that a fancy name for extensions?
MM: Sort of, but they’re hosted on the network vs. on the client side. And they’re all HTML5.
MA: What about Chrome OS vs. Android?
MM: I think we haven’t really decided. We see a lot of promise in Chrome OS. We’re looking at it to be on notebooks right now. It’s not even netbooks anymore. And Android is going to tablets right now. But the form factor for either could work for the other. Like Google TV is built on top of Android. And the developer community is helping on both.
MA: What about downloading Chrome OS to my MacBook?
MM: Hard to say. I can’t speculate. Possibly. The big thing is that Chrome OS is super-fast. You open the laptop and it’s ready. I have one waiting for me when I get back.
August 25 2010
TappLocal Is A Platform For Foursquare-Like Deals Beyond Foursquare
If you’ve used Foursquare, you’ve likely seen the little badge that appears in the corner of your mobile phone’s screen when a deal is nearby. It’s a good way to alert someone to a location-based offer, and it seems to be working well for the company. A new startup, TappLocal wants to take that idea and expand upon it to create a new location-based ad network.
The way this works is that TappLocal uses their backend to create a geofence around certain partner venues. When a user crosses that boundary and happens to be using one of the partner apps, a deal indicator will pop-up. A quick click on this area will open a larger area explaining exactly what the deal is. Simply click one more time to verify you wish to use the deal, show it to the store that it’s valid at, and you’re good to go.
Co-founder William Kasel fully understands that this is a hot space right now, and that’s why he and his team behind Jumpfox, a mobile app development company, wanted to pour resources into this new project. And thanks to their developer ties, Kasel says they’ve already signed up mobile apps that have a combined 1.5 million users to be a part of their beta test (though he won’t list any of them individually). ”We’ve already become the second largest mobile location network out there,” he notes.
And it’s not just these proximity deals that TappLocal is working on. Another good idea is their flash deals: a way for local merchants to move certain items quickly. Say some product is going to go bad, or it’s a slow time of the day in terms of foot traffic, a merchant could trigger this deal and have it distributed across TappLocal’s localized network.
Kasel is quick to note that they don’t want to spam users. But at the same time, they’ve seen the incredible usage rates that SMS deals can get. They hope to find a good middle ground — and they think they’ll have that thanks to their distributed network.
Currently, the TappLocal service can be integrated with iPhone and Android apps, but they’re working on other platforms as well. The real key for the team is to get localities up and running. Currently, they offer deals in San Francisco, but New York, LA, and Chicago are all coming soon. They’re in the process of building up sales staff in each of those areas.
When asked what’s to stop the big competitors like Google or Yelp from wiping them out, Kasel says that their system is easier to implement than anything Google is likely to do soon. “It’s all about getting momentum now,” he says. Yelp, meanwhile, “is like the mafia,” Kasel says indicating that they’re trying to fight the good fight for local merchants.
He notes that they will be very transparent with the costs for using TappLocal. There will be a one-time fee up-front, followed by smaller monthly fees and a cost-per-conversion rate.
The service is still in closed beta testing, but you can sign up on their site to find out more. They hope to fully launch sometime in the next few months.
January 08 2010
BlockChalk Is Location-Based Sidewalk Chalk For Your Mobile Device
With its new geolocation API, Twitter has the potential to delve into the realm of messages that are relevant based on location. But right now, most geotagged tweets are simply regular tweets that are being tagged with location, and really don’t have much specifically to do with it. Enter BlockChalk, a new service built around the idea of leaving simple messages directly tied to a specific location.
The service, created by Stephen Hood, the former product team lead for Delicious, and Dave Baggeroer of Stanford’s Institute of Design, works because they keep it simple. You load up the application on your mobile device, it locates you, and you leave a message. This can be whatever you want: A note about a good cafe, a tip of something in the neighborhood to watch out for, a request to borrow something that someone else may have in the neighborhood, etc. When other people also using the app come upon the area that you’ve pinned your “Chalk” (their word for message) to, they’ll see it on their screen in a stream of Chalks.
And you can do a bit more with these Chalks. With the service’s new iPhone app, if you use the syntax “[here],” BlockChalk will put in your exact location. You can also attach a link to a location on a map by inserting an actual address in those same brackets. If you don’t do either of these, BlockChalk will hide your exact location, and keep your message pinned to the general area instead.
Once you drill down to a specific Chalk, you can choose to “Chalkback” (respond publicly to a message), “Reply Privately” (respond just to the user who left the Chalk), “Bury,” or “Share,” the chalk.
While I noted the service’s new iPhone app (which you can find in the App Store here as a free download), it’s already available on a number of other platforms thanks to some more advanced web technology. For example, you can use it on Android phones (or the mobile web of the iPhone, for that matter) because the web-based version of BlockChalk uses HTML5 to access location through the browser, Hood tells us. Obviously, that’s a vital part of the app. There is also a webOS BlockChalk app already that will work on the Palm Pre or Pixi. Hood notes that they are currently working on native apps for Android and BlackBerry as we speak.
Thanks to this mobile web usage, BlockChalk is already available in some 93 countries, 6751 cities and 10910 neighborhoods. And while the obvious integration with Twitter’s new location feature is pretty loose right now, Hood tells us that in the next release, it will be much tighter.
The company is in the process of raising a seed round of funding. And while obviously they’ve declined to say how much they’re looking to raise, we hear Hood’s old Delicious counterpart Joshua Schachter is interested. That shouldn’t be surprising given his recent location-based investments.
Learn more in the video below:
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
December 17 2009
Rally Wants To Bring Location Back To Its Core, With Only Your Real Friends.
Apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks there is a social paradox in the location space. A new service, Rally, believes the power of location lies in less rather than more. That is to say, fewer social connections rather than more of them.
It’s an idea that you don’t hear a lot of social networks talking about these days as each tries to build a social graph that’s as sprawling as possible. But the team behind Rally is taking this different approach largely due to their past experience. Much of the team is the same one that built 12seconds, one of the video platforms that rose as Twitter began to become popular. And eventually, 12seconds started relying heavily on Twitter’s large social graph for its own service. But co-founder Sol Lipman isn’t convinced that’s the right way for services going forward.
So he pulled together a team with the idea of building a dead-simple location service from scratch. There is no option to pull in your friends from Twitter. No option to pull in your friends from Facebook. That’s ballsy, and risky, but it could pay off in the form of a location service that people use just with their actual friends. To put it another way, “friending becomes a virus that ruins your application,” Lipman says.
If you’ve used a location service such as Foursquare or Gowalla, Rally will feel familiar to you. Like those services, the core concept is to “check-in” at various venues around a city. But Rally does things a little differently. One thing is that they place an emphasis on tagging a check-in with a picture. You don’t have to do this, but Rally has a very nice stream UI that will highlight check-ins with pictures from those people you follow.
Another unique concept is the idea of checking in at “Home.” While plenty of users create venues on Foursquare and Gowalla for their homes, Lipman realizes that many people aren’t comfortable putting their addresses on these services. So the “home” location in Rally is a non-geotagged place that still allows you to check-in so that your real friends know that you are home. And since they are your actual friends, they will likely already know what that location is.
Rally also has a feature that allows you to make temporary locations. This is the perfect solution for creating a spot that is only going to last for a set amount of time, such as a conference or a party. These temporary spots automatically expire 12 hours after the last person checks-in there.
Leaving behind comments at venues, and the aforementioned picture functionality also gives the app an almost Yelp-like quality.
As with Foursquare, badges are also an important part of Rally. However, whereas Foursquare’s collection is pretty limited, Rally plans to gives users a ton of them for various activities (including a number of potentially racy ones).
Like Gowalla, much of the location data in Rally (such as venue names) will be crowd-sourced. They’re also working on some deals to get some pre-populated location information around the world. Until they do that, they are restricting the service to the Santa Cruz, CA area, where Lipman and his team mainly reside. Once they’re ready, likely in a few weeks, they plan to open it up to everyone.
So how does Rally make money? “With location-based services, you don’t have to rely on anyone else to make your money. Location is the Holy Grail of advertising,” Lipman notes. And he plans to use what they’ve learned from partnering with brands on 12seconds to inject a model into Rally.
An early build of Rally is actually available in the App Store right now as a free download. Eventually, the plan is to make a web version, and extend it to other mobile platforms. But for now the focus remains the iPhone, Lipman says.
A final differentiating factor to note between Rally and the other location services is that they’re decidedly not focusing on gaming elements. Lipman says they’ve talked to various groups of people who feel that these types of gaming elements are simply a gimmick. “Games have winners and loser, we just want to build a very clean service,” Lipman notes.
While Rally may not rely on Facebook or Twitter for its social graph, Lipman says that they may use Facebook Connect to help spread its data to your real friends on that network. He does not foresee them using Twitter, at all. In terms of how else they’ll spread the word about the service, Lipman says that have some other interesting ideas in the works, but declined to say what. The key will remain making sure that these are people you actually know and want to share your location information with, he says.
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