Google's Sneaky Launch of Latitude's Location-Sharing API

Brady Forrest theorizes that we will see some of the following features added for a formal release of the API:

• User Control & OAuth
• iPhone Client
• Location History
• Data Control
• Additional Inputs
• Accuracy Control
• Reminders

See also:
Where 2.0 on Twitter and Where 2.0 Conference

In Om Malik's post Why Facebook’s Future Is Mobile, I found the following:

With the rise of superphones such as Apple’s iPhone, the BlackBerry Bold and Nokia’s E71 and N96 devices, we are at the cusp of a new era in which the mobile and the wired web converge. This convergence, when married to location-based services, would create a new real-time and highly contextual Internet experience.

I recently pointed out that “as we transition to an increasingly mobile world, the location beacon takes the role of the TCP, and most mobile services (and applications) find their context from this location beacon.” In this brave new world, the browser-centric method of “search, find and consume” is quaint at best. These superphones, driven by location beacon and live Internet connections, need to be able to display relevant data with a lot of serendipity.

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Written at #kaywazh

Image: MIR


Google Latitude arrived today. Mobile Industry Review and some others think this makes the space more interesting and more dangerous as well. I agree, but still think we are in the very early days with LBS. Still, Google accomplishes where Telcos talk.

See also:
Google's official post
Twitter Search: Google Latitude

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Location-Based Mobile Social Networking

Via Socialmedian

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Tele Atlas expands LBS contest to Europe

Tele Atlas last week announced it will expand to Europe, Middle East and Africa its LBS start-up contest, Tele Atlas LBS Innovator Series. The Dutch company has now opened the call for entries in the first event to be held in EMEA: the “LBS – Out the Box” contest, which winners will be showcased at Mobile World Congress 2009 in Barcelona.

[...] Entries in the “LBS – Out the Box” contest will be judged based on commercial viability and innovative use of maps in the application in two categories. In the first one, “Market Ready”, entrants will submit a compelling LBS solution that is developed to offer consumers a commercially ready, end-to-end solution. In the second one, “Disruptive Innovation”, entrants will submit an innovative location-enhanced solution designed to push the boundaries in the LBS market.

LBS - Out the Box EMEA Developer Competition


Related: Locations on mobile phone (chinese)

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Location-Based Mobile Social Networking: Hype or Reality? by ABI research

Up to now, the whole industry has been puzzled about why LBS services have seen very little success. People-tracking and friend-finder services have been met with high skepticism. Others have been desperately looking for other LBS killer applications – without success. But they do not need to search any longer: location-based mobile social networking will be the main consumer driver for LBS.

Enkin

"Enkin" introduces a new handheld navigation concept. It displays location-based content in a unique way that bridges the gap between reality and classic map-like representations. It combines GPS, orientation sensors, 3D graphics, live video, several web services and a novel user interface into an intuitive and light navigation system for mobile devices.

Update:
Local news is going the wrong way

Yet information aggregation still only dances around the real issue. People want to know what and who are around them right now.

The first service that really nails how we identify and surface the things that matter to us when and where we want to know about them is going to break ground in a way we’ve never seen before on the Internet.

We’re getting closer and closer to being able to connect the 4 W’s: Who, What, Where and When. But those things aren’t yet connecting to expose value to people.

I think a lot of people are still too focused on how to aggregate and present data to people. They expect people to do the work of knowing what they’re looking for, diving into a web page to find it and then consuming what they’ve worked to find.

There’s a better way. When services start mixing and syndicating useful data from the 4 W vectors then we’ll start seeing information come to people instead.

And there’s no doubt that big money will flow with it.

Dave Winer intuitively noted, “Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information. And that’s good!”

I like that vision, but there’s more to it.

When someone connects the way information surfaces for people and the transactions that become possible as a result, a big new world is going to emerge.

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Special report on mobility from the Economist:

Location, location, location

This is a huge advance, says Stephen Johnson, one of Nokia's strategists, because it adds the third element (“where”) required to understand a person's context, the other two being who and when. Most obviously, this means that “the idea of being lost will be unheard of”, he says. More interestingly, it allows people to become “more immersed in the real world around them”.

A world of witnesses

The second area where mobile technology is beginning to have a big impact is health care, especially in poor countries. In South Africa people can text their location to a number and get an instant reply with the nearest clinic testing for HIV.

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Younghee Jung: location based information kit

many location-based mobile services are subjected to play around the similar threshold of adoption, from service discovery to engagement to actual usage. often it is also about how to transform the linearity to an encompassing, opportunistic space: the physical sign board which broadcasts information at a set node vs. an information broadcast available in a larger area such as a park.

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We discussed this since the post QR Codes combined with Maps (Novasys, Google and Endoxon are you listening?) from 15 August 2006.

But I never made it to bring this idea to Bernard Seefeld, map.search.ch guru and now working at Google.

Anyway now Wubbahed did the Yelpmap, a mashup of Yelp and Google Maps with QR Codes.

Just great!

TRY OUT THE YELPMAP. The QR Codes change when you move the pointer.



NOTE: One thing though, I would make the Quiet Zone around the QR Code a bit larger (whereas the QR Codes can be a bit smaller). The spec says: QR Code requires a four module wide quiet zone around the symbol.

Buddy Stalker Vs. Dodgeball

There is also Plazes and AreYouHere and Jaiku
Do you know of other similar services?

Related:
Fabien Girardin: Mobile LBS Market and Nicolas Nova's: Location-based applications, failures and a second wave of applications to be expected.
In this regard it's interesting that Google also thinks that Google Maps failed (see here).

Have you heard about the Nokia 95. It's the first time I see a normal consumer camera phone which comes with integrated A-GPS. Looks a bit like Jon Udell's dream came through.

PS: Interestingly in Seth Godin's speech at Google, the whole mapping stuff is not that much of a purple cow - on the contrary.