Webware

Location awareness is hot, from gamelike social services such as Foursquare and Gowalla to platforms such as Google Latitude. Now one start-up is hoping to make it as easy for any company to integrate into a Web or mobile service as it is for retailers to use PayPal. Meet SimpleGeo, which on Thursday is launching into a private beta.

Boulder, Colo.-based SimpleGeo, co-founded by former Digg engineer Joe Stump and Socialthing founder Matt Galligan (who sold the would-be FriendFeed competitor to AOL), started out as a company called Crash Corp. earlier this year. The goal was to make augmented-reality applications for mobile devices like the iPhone, but the founders said that building the location-aware infrastructure for their first game took a whopping three months.

So they changed their company name and angle: SimpleGeo's purpose is to build that infrastructure for other companies to eliminate the development hell, hoping to do for "geo" apps what PayPal did for sites requiring payment systems or Facebook did for sites requiring logins and social-networking features. The complete offering, which can also build in augmented-reality features, encompasses storage, analytics, and a software development kit (SDK).

Three versions are available: free, $399 per month, and $2,499 per month. A public version is slated to launch in the spring.

Nobody's really doing this yet, though apparently a few other start-ups are toying with similar business plans, and SimpleGeo is still new enough that it has not yet closed a round of venture funding. Because it's in private beta, we also haven't yet seen just how powerful it is (though Galligan has posted some test video to Flickr) so it's not yet possible to answer the big, glaring question: what if Google makes a big, developer-focused Latitude push that could snuff out smaller competition?

(Credit: Google)

Google has slowly been adding its location feature to Google's mobile applications. Last week, Windows Mobile phones were the latest to get the handy localization feature.

In Google's mobile maps apps, My Location appears as a blinking blue dot that shows either your approximate location, based on cell tower triangulation, or a more precise reading based on your phone's built-in GPS. The same principle now applies to search in the Google Mobile App. The blue dot will list your current location below the search box. Instead of specifying a city or zip code, you just type in your query, and Google will deliver the results closest to you.

The most recent version of Google Mobile App for Windows phones also weaves URL suggestions for Web pages into its search suggestions. By clicking one, you can bypass the search results page and go straight to the business' Web site. Furthermore, if you have Google Maps installed on your phone, the app can plot local search results on a map. Google signifies these locations in the search results with a red pin (pictured).

As a nod to those with privacy concerns, Google encrypts your location on its way to the server, and only stores the most recent location to make subsequent searching easier. Of course, not everyone wants to make their location known. You can disable the My Location feature in the settings under Advanced Options.

For those who use Google Mobile App to quickly find places nearby, this update does, indeed, make the app a more capable tool. It also steps into Yelp's mobile territory, delivering not only ratings as part of a search result, but also mapped locations. Combined with the map's directions feature, the mobile app could help drivers and passengers, especially, find their destinations faster.

Google Mobile App first became available for Windows Mobile phones in February 2009. To get the latest update, point the mobile browser to m.google.com.

(Credit: CNET/Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt)

Google on Wednesday rolled out the My Location feature for Google.com on the iPhone. Now, when you visit Google.com from the Safari browser of an iPhone sporting 3.0 software, you'll be greeted with a hyperlink urging you to enable My Location.

The My Location feature, which launched for Google Maps for Mobile in 2007, traditionally smacked a blue circle in the map, indicating your rough whereabouts. Since then, it's been integrated into Google Mobile App on iPhone. On Google's iPhone search page, it pulls down your location from the cloud and returns search results relevant to your physical context. Instead of typing in a city or ZIP code to narrow results, the My Location feature will take charge.

The My Location feature looks like it will remain fixed on the Google home page so you can easily update it as you move around. You can disable it at any time from the Preferences menu.

Search with My Location for Safari currently works for English speakers in the U.S. and U.K., with multilingual and multinational support coming soon.

Update: Here's a quick video on how it works:

Social networking is fun. You can communicate with friends. You can share experiences with them. And you can even plan get-togethers. But finding where they are isn't possible with most social networks. You'll need to keep sending messages back and forth to figure out where to meet up.

With the help of location-based social networks, you won't have that problem any longer. All of the following services will allow you to see where friends are at all times. The guessing game is over.

Location-based social networks

Brightkite Brightkite is a great location-based service. After you download the free app onto your mobile phone, you can start finding friends.

When you become friends with someone, you can see their location as they travel away from home. You can also find folks who are in close proximity to you to get to know them a little better. Brightkite even lets you take pictures. That picture will then be geo-tagged, so your friends can see where it was taken. Brightkite is a really nice location-based social network. And since it works on any mobile phone, the Web, and an app is available for free in the Apple App Store, it's definitely worth trying out.

Brightkite helps you locate your friends (and communicate with them).

(Credit: Brightkite)

Loopt Loopt is designed specifically for GPS-enabled mobile phones. When you sign up, you need to input your mobile phone number. From there, Loopt will determine your location. You can then share your location with those who request to see where you are. You can even take pictures with your mobile phone and geo-tag them.

If you don't want someone to know where you are, Loopt lets you block access to your location. It's a great privacy feature. Loopt works with practically any mobile phone. It also has an app available for the iPhone. Both versions are free.

Loopt has an iPhone app you'll want to check out.

(Credit: Loopt)

Flickr has made significant efforts at improving its mobile interface over the last year, and has just put out a useful update for iPhone and Android users which builds on that. Through the wonders of the latest iPhone firmware update, the built-in Safari browser can finally acquire the user's location information and pass it off to sites that request it. Google's Android platform has had this as well, but with both operating systems now supporting it, Flickr has gone ahead and added a pocket-sized version of its nearby photo viewer.

Now, whenever visiting the site you can view photos within a few blocks of where you are. Although unlike Flickr's main site, you can't see where each photo has been taken. Instead, it simply narrows you down into a general radius and shows thumbnails of the most recent ones.

I use this feature all the time on Flickr's main site which incidentally you can still use, and have it locate you from either phone's browser. However, I found this new version to do a far better job at narrowing down precisely where I was, as well as loading photos that were properly sized and optimized to stream in over the air.

I'm hoping future iterations of this will let you do some of the filtering and exploration you're able to do in the main site. I'd also like to see a pocket-sized version of Flickr's places pages which aggregate photos of landmarks and cities.

Flickr mobile is now location aware if you're an Android user, or an iPhone owner running the latest firmware.

(Credit: CNET)

The hottest hotspots in New York...for nerds.

(Credit: Sam Lessin)

Just how powerful can the data behind a location-based application be? Extremely.

Earlier this month, the second annual Internet Week New York took place, and Dropio founder and certifiable data nerd Sam Lessin crunched a bunch of numbers based on what his contacts on urban navigation and friend-finding service Foursquare were doing. Lessin was working with a group of fewer than 100 contacts, almost all of whom are involved in the tech and new-media industries (this is the scene that birthed Foursquare and its predecessor Dodgeball, after all), and yet it's a fascinating peek at just how much this kind of data can reveal. He's posted it on his personal file "drop" on Dropio.

Lessin trawled through the data to find what time people checked into coffee shops in the morning (and whether they were doing this earlier or later on a given day), how much people "lost steam" over the course of a party- and conference-filled week, and how much the most popular gatherings actually matched up to the Internet Week New York official schedule. As it turns out, the hottest parties were impromptu, unofficial gatherings at the Standard Hotel and, um, Sing Sing Karaoke.

Obviously, this isn't perfect. Foursquare updates are voluntary, which means that data can't say a thing about what people are doing when they aren't telling the app about it. The presence of an app like Foursquare, too, can also skew social activity: word about the massive impromptu party at the Standard Hotel bar, for example, spread when the Foursquare check-ins started snowballing.

But when you have enough people participating--which, as of yet, Foursquare does not--the critical mass starts to correct some of those issues. It's a fascinating sneak peek at what sort of value this data could have down the road.

What we can also look forward to: pretty infographics, Orwellian privacy concerns. Eek.

Google has two new applications that let users of its Latitude service share their location with people who are not using the service.

The first, for Google's Talk service, will update your chat status with your location (at a city level) every time you check in with Latitude. The other is a badge you can stick on your blog or social-networking profile that shows precisely where you are.

It looks like this:

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Just like embedding a Google Map, you can pick the terrain type and zoom level, and it pumps out some simple code for you, including a link back to Google Latitude.

Google is promising more Latitude applications. Yahoo has already beaten Google to the punch on one front, with its Friends on Fire application for Facebook, which lets users share their location with other Facebook buddies using Yahoo's competing Fire Eagle service.

Neat, but you need a toolbar and IE to try it.

(Credit: Google)

It will only work on Internet Explorer, and only in the U.S. right now, but if you're looking to extend the same timesaving search convenience of Google's mobile apps to your desktop, the new Google Toolbar (download) from Google Labs will do it.

The My Location feature found in Google Maps for Mobile--and recently integrated into Google Mobile App--uses cell tower triangulation or GPS to find your approximate or exact location. That localizes your search terms, so queries for "weather" or "coffee" pull up results close to you, and save you from typing those extra five digits every time you search for something nearby. Likewise, the My Location feature on the desktop uses information from nearby wireless hot spots to point you out.

I'm no fan of toolbars, believe me (well, maybe RoboForm) and I don't regularly use IE as my go-to browser, but for Google's My Location would the sacrifice be worth it? Truth be told, no, not for me at this point, but I might be tempted to try the souped-up toolbar were it to come out as a Firefox add-on down the road, or maybe switch to Chrome for a while if that were a built-in feature, not a toolbar.

How about you? Is having Google's search gods know where to route your queries a compelling enough feature to warrant downloading a toolbar--yes or no? And does privacy matter? Keep in mind that in using this Labs toolbar, you'll be sharing information with Google.

Google on Thursday introduced Toolbar Labs, a mechanism to let users of the browser add-on try experimental new features--including the first two, a locator service and support for simplified Chinese.

Google is offering an experimental Simplified Chinese toolbar.

(Credit: Google)

The move is the newest demonstration--and the second in a week after the relaunch of Google Labs--of the company's beta-testing philosophy. The company uses labs experiments to launch products rapidly even if they're still half-baked, to get early feedback on products it needs to steer in the right direction, and to draw attention to its technology.

"A few things to keep in mind as you check out Toolbar Labs: It's a forum to test out new ideas, so some of these ideas will make it into the standard Toolbar, but others may not. Also, labs versions are not as well-tested as beta versions, so they may be slightly more unstable," toolbar team members Aseem Sood and Susan Taing said in a blog post Thursday.

The new toolbars must be downloaded and installed, and currently only work with Internet Explorer. Although toolbars take up valuable screen real estate, they're important as a way for companies such as Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google to drive traffic to their search engines and encourage use of other online services.

It's too bad for experimentalists that the labs version of the Google toolbars aren't some option available through existing instances of the Google Toolbar, which would make it easier to test new technology. Gmail Labs, introduced in 2008, has the virtue of this easy testing.

The first experiment, Toolbar with My Location (download), determines your location based on wireless network signals and can feed that information into Google Maps, for example.

The second, the Google Simplified Chinese Toolbar, is tailored to use the small slice of real estate more effectively for the language and has built-in translation features.