Skyhook Wireless announced Monday that it is integrating GPS into its geolocation service to get an even more accurate fix for location-based services.
Up until now, Skyhook's geolocation service, which is used on Apple's iPhone, among other services and devices, has used Wi-Fi hot spots to get a fix on location. The service works very well in densely populated areas where there are a lot of Wi-Fi radios transmitting signals. And it's great for locating places indoors or in cities with a lot of tall buildings, all places where satellite-based GPS, or Global Positioning System, technology has difficulty getting a location fix.
But for all of the benefits of Wi-Fi, it doesn't work in rural areas where hot spots are few and far between. This is where the GPS technology comes in.
"Our technology works great in populated areas," said Ted Morgan, co-founder and CEO of Skyhook. "But on the open road it's more difficult. Now with GPS integrated, iPhone users, for example, can get turn-by-turn navigation anywhere they go."
The way the Skyhook service originally worked is that it would triangulate and get a fix on location-based data on known Wi-Fi hot spots. The company has a database of where Wi-Fi hot spots all over the country are located. Specifically, it uses the Mac address, a unique identifier that every piece of hardware on the Internet must have, to identify the router, and it matches that identifier with the location. Using multiple signals in the same geographic location, the Skyhook technology is able to pinpoint a location.
Now Skyhook has integrated GPS into its technology, which it is putting in chipsets that go into mobile phones and other devices that also have GPS recievers. GPS will allow Skyhook to cover more ground with its geolocation technology. The Wi-Fi/GPS technology should also help services that used GPS only to get information about location more quickly. Because GPS uses three or four low-orbiting satellites to pinpoint a location, it can take a few seconds before it's able to calculate a location. Skyhook's Wi-Fi technology can get location information much faster.
So where might we see this new technology? The original Wi-Fi-based Skyhook technology is already on the iPhone. Morgan couldn't say for sure that the new "hybrid" Wi-Fi/GPS technology will be used on the iPhone 3G that comes out next week. But one of the upgrades in the new iPhone 3G is the addition of a GPS chip, so it would make sense that the Skyhook technology would be used on it. Morgan did say that Apple has access to all of its technology.
Updated at 2:30 p.m. PDT to include more details about how location information is displayed and gathered in JuiceCaster, and more specific information about the feature's launch.
First came mobile social networks, then came geotagging. Since location-based features take advantage of your ever-portable mobile phone to pin your activities to a place, we weren't surprised to learn that on Wednesday JuiceCaster (reviewed) added automatic geo-anchors to its multimedia sharing service.
Soon JuiceCaster photos and videos that are auto-posted to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger, YouTube, and other sites will share the individual's street name and city. Friends who keep a close eye on geotags can use that to gain contextual understanding of the scene or use it to "bump into" friends nearby. In an important distinction, JuiceCaster's location feature is designed to be optional and visible only to confirmed friends.
The city and state appear on the player shown on CEO Nick Desai's JuiceCaster page.
(Credit: Nick Desai)A final tidbit called "Who was here?" attaches further meaning to a place. Selecting it from the menu will call together a list of photos and videos for that most-wanted location. You'll be able to browse through the content or add your own. You'll also be able to seek out geotagged photos and videos by location, which may muscle up JuiceCaster's searching accuracy.
JuiceCaster's new location-based functionality will become available "shortly" for GPS-enabled cell phones running on the BREW platform before rolling out to other carriers' GPS phones.
The deal was accepted by the EU without conditions after a six-month antitrust probe. The deal is worth $4.5 billion and is expected to be finalized in June, according to a statement from TomTom. Both companies are based in the Netherlands.
For TomTom and Tele Atlas, this was "the best possible outcome allowing the new combination to go ahead with the full execution of its strategy," the companies said in a joint announcement.
The decision came a week ahead of a May 21 deadline, suggesting that even bigger deal under scrutiny by the EU will go through. Nokia, the Finnish mobile handset manufacturer, wants to buy the world's largest company in digital mapping technology, Chicago-based Navteq for $8.1 billion. The deadline for that review is August 8.
Both deals were accepted by the U.S. antitrust regulators last year without further investigation and the fact that the EU took a closer look surprised many industry experts. But as the potential for location-based services is growing, the commission wanted to make sure that these two deals--creating a virtual duopoly in digital mapping--would not hinder competition.
"I am now satisfied that the innovation and competition we have seen in satellite-navigation devices until now will continue after this merger," Neelie Kroes, EU Commissioner for Competition in Brussels, said in a statement Wednesday.
Navteq and Tele Atlas produce digital maps and software for navigation systems in cars and portable navigation devices such as Garmin or mobile phones. They also provide the data for Internet maps on sites like Google Maps.
Nokia argues concerns of the regulators that its acquisition will restrict the access for others to digital maps as unfounded.
"Why would Nokia pay the amount of money we are paying for having a very good base of customers and then try to aggrieve those customers?", Michael Halbherr, vice president of Context Based Services at Nokia said in an interview earlier this week with CNET News.com.
Nokia executives believe the Navteq-deal is related to the decision on Tele Atlas. Both companies have refused to accept demands from the regulators that they should guarantee that digital maps will be available for everyone. "I think that the Tele Atlas deal is not being reviewed in isolation. The European Commission has had enough time with both deals to basically form a complete thinking about the industry," said Michael Halbherr.
For Nokia, location based services is very much a promise of the future. The company expects to ship 35 million GPS-enabled phones this year.
From a European industry point of view, these deals consolidate world dominance of location based services in the home base. Navteq is the world's largest maker of maps used for car navigation, while Tele Atlas is No. 2.
In the U.S. the development is seen as positive. At ESRI, a company that sells software for geographic information systems, founder and Chief Executive Jack Dangermond welcomes more concerted efforts.
"The world needs utility companies that create and manage geospatial data," he said. "And these are companies that have fought their way to the top and they're very good: they serve their data and sell their data to our users in the private domain."
One company that has teamed up with ESRI is Google Maps, which now use digital maps from both Navteq and Tele Atlas. John Hanke, head of Google Maps and Google Earth, said that there is a vast amount of geodata locked up in different government agencies that should be made publicly available.
"I don't think it will happen anywhere in the near future. It's hard to share that data, to export it, but they should open up their servers as its public information," Hanke said during a break at the Where 2.0 conference in Burlingame, Calif.
Dangermond agrees. There will be no shortage of data despite concentration in a few hands.
"There are others, like Openstreetmap, emerging startups that I think also will participate in a smaller scale and then also individual agencies like cities. They all create and maintain their own data. It will remain an open and competitive environment I think."
He said he doesn't see a duopoly problem.
"There will be open competition and both of them are sincerely interested in the geo market. By having two competitors they're fighting against each other and keeping the prices low. If there was only one, then I might have a different opinion, but I think with two it's a healthy market. And it doesn't prohibit other people from getting in."
"They are doing the world a great service by taking on the responsibility of building these infrastructure layers."
He also said he feels the companies should be compensated.
"Well, free, they have to pay for all their investments. I suppose they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year just to create and maintain these infrastructures. So this kind of investment needs to be capitalized and get returns. But they both are good citizens in the GIS world at this point."
Friend-finding cell phone service Loopt is now available on some Verizon Wireless phones.
(Credit:
Loopt)
Loopt is a service that uses GPS (Global Positioning System) chips in phones to pinpoint a subscriber's location; then users can broadcast that location information to friends or family, who can track them on a tiny map. Subscribers can sign up for alerts to find out when other Loopt friends are near. They're also able to tag photos and send them to friends with location information attached.
The company has been offering the service on some Sprint and Boost Mobile phones for more than a year. The service on Sprint costs $2.99 a month.
Starting in April, Verizon will offer the Loopt service for $3.99 a month. Verizon is offering the service on 20 popular data-enabled phones including the Chocolate by LG, the MotoRizr Z6tv, and the G'zOne Type-S. Customers will be able to get the application through Verizon's Get It Now virtual store.
Location-based services are expected to generate a lot of money for carriers in the future. Already, most major mobile operators are offering some kind of location-based service, such as GPS-enabled navigation or tracking. Helio, a mobile virtual-network operator, offers a tracking service that's similar to the one offered by Loopt. Other carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and Alltel, offer tracking services for parents who want to keep tabs on their kids.
But location services are also expected to be a big component of mobile social networking. In February, Yahoo announced that people could sign up for "proximity alerts" on its OneConnect service to let them know when friends using the service come within a certain distance of one another. And Loopt has been working with Facebook and MySpace.com to integrate its technology into those mobile Web sites.
So far, friend-finding services have had modest success. There are a couple of reasons for this. For one, the service needs to be offered on more phones and on more carrier networks. SMS (Short Message Service) text messaging was a novelty when people could only send messages to people who subscribed to the same carrier. But once they were able to text people on other carrier networks, the service exploded. The same could be true for friend-finding. The deal between Loopt and Verizon, the second-largest operator in the U.S., is a step in that direction. Loopt customers on Sprint's network will be able to track and be tracked by friends on Verizon's network and vice versa.
That said, Loopt and other friend-finding services still must overcome privacy concerns. A lot of people simply aren't comfortable with the idea of their location being broadcast to others.
Loopt says it has the privacy issues licked. Only people who have given permission to have their location broadcast will be tracked. And these users only share location information with their known friends via a private network. The company also says that the location-sharing feature can be turned on and off at any time on a friend-by-friend basis or for all friends.
In a separate announcement from Verizon Wireless, the company said Friday that it has integrated MySpace into its menu on the Mobile Web 2.0 home screen.
This will allow subscribers to click directly into the MySpace Mobile Web site from the menu, eliminating the need for customers to type in a URL in order to access the site. Verizon subscribers will also be able to edit MySpace profiles, view and add friends, post comments and blogs, and send and receive MySpace messages from their mobile phones.
Loopt, which offers a mobile friend-finding service, has extended the reach of its application with a new feature that allows users to notify not just other Loopt users, but any friend, of their whereabouts via text or IM.
Starting Thursday, the Loopt service is integrated with subscribers' mobile address books and AIM buddy lists so they can share their real-time location via a text message or instant message.
(Credit:
Loopt)
The way it works is that when Loopt users text or IM their friends they can choose to have their location automatically attached. So a message that says, "Want to meet for a drink?" will also include a message that says "@ 28th Street and Park Avenue." Then it will link to a map that shows the exact location.
Loopt's service, which costs $2.99 a month, is available on some Sprint Nextel and Boost Mobile handsets. The service uses GPS chips in phones to pinpoint a subscriber's location; then users can broadcast that location information to friends or family, who can track them on a tiny map. Subscribers can also sign up for alerts to find out when other Loopt friends are near. They're also able to tag photos and send them to friends with location information attached.
Location-based services are expected to generate lots of money for carriers in the future. Already, most major mobile operators are offering some kind of location-based service, such as GPS-enabled navigation or tracking. Helio, a mobile virtual-network operator, also offers a tracking service that's similar to the one offered by Loopt. Other carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and now Alltel, offer tracking services for parents who want to keep tabs on their kids.
Now Loopt has taken the tracking service one step further by directly integrating into the mobile address book and IM buddy list. Previously, the Loopt friend-finding service only worked with other Loopt users, which inherently limited the usability of the service.
Even with the new IM and text feature, the Loopt service is still limited in scope. For the application to truly hit the mainstream, it will have to be offered by more carriers.
Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of Loopt, says more deals are on the way. The company is already in talks with another major mobile operator in the U.S., and it should announce another deal soon. But Loopt isn't just talking to carriers. The company is also working with Google and Facebook to add new features and functionality to its service. So stay tuned.
Sprint Nextel said Tuesday it will use Loopt's "friend finding" technology to let subscribers track their friends.
Loopt, which also offers its location-based service on Boost Mobile, a subsidiary of Sprint, uses Global Positioning System chips in phones to allow subscribers to see where their friends are located.
To address privacy concerns, Loopt subscribers must give other Loopt users permission to track them. Subscribers also can hide from anyone in their "buddy" list at any time.
Loopt has been available on Boost Mobile since last year. And earlier this year the company said it had signed up 100,000 users. Sam Altman, the company's CEO, wouldn't give any updated information about subscribers. The deal with Sprint is the first in which a major carrier has announced it will use the service. Altman said Loopt will offer the service on other carrier networks later this year.
Location-based services are becoming popular. Most major mobile operators already offer a GPS-enabled navigation service that allows people to get real-time driving directions. Sprint uses a mobile-navigation application from TeleNav. The company bundled the TeleNav service for free with data packages that cost more than $20 per month.
Helio, a mobile virtual network operator, also offers a tracking service that is similar to the one offered by Loopt. Other providers, such as Disney Mobile and Verizon Wireless, offer tracking services for parents who want to keep tabs on their kids. Sprint also offers a kid-tracking service.
Location services also can be used to enhance other applications, like search and weather updates. And mobile operators see great revenue potential for leveraging the technology, which originally was put into phones to comply with a Federal Communications Commission requirement to provide enhanced 911 services that automatically provide the location of people who have called 911.
Yahoo Research Berkeley has released prototype mobile phone software called Zurfer that gives people a look at Flickr that's tailored to their particular location.
Zurfer lets mobile phone users interact with Flickr.
(Credit: Yahoo Research Berkeley)The software, which requires a "beefy smart phone," shows photos taken recently in a mobile phone user's vicinity, an example of a so-called location-aware service. The software uses Yahoo's ZoneTag technology to infer location from the cell phone tower to which a user's phone is connected.
Zurfer also lets members perform more traditional Flickr tasks, including seeing contacts' new photos, searching for Flickr photos and accessing a Flickr account. All pictures that are part of a user's Flickr photo stream, called "Photo Wallet," are automatically shown in Zurfer.
Because Zurfer sends lots of photos over the phone's Internet connection, "We recommend that you use an unlimited data plan," Yahoo said. Also: "Beware of roaming costs."
Zurfer is one application based on the nascent "geotagging" concept in which digital photos are labeled with location information such as latitude and longitude.
Hewlett-Packard is giving the public a chance to try out one of the experimental technologies it's cooking up. HP Labs is expected to announce Wednesday the open beta of Mscapes, a suite of software applications that let anyone create interactive location-based games or tours.
The Mscapes online authoring wizard can be used to design digital overlays on a map using photos, videos, graphics, text, or audio. Anyone with a GPS-enabled mobile device running Windows Mobile can use the Mscapes client to play any of the created games as they move through the physical world.
For example, HP Labs partnered with the National Park Service to create a guided tour of Yosemite National Park.
"Fundamentally, all of our mobility announcements are about helping people connect with each other around information that's important to them," said Debra Brackeen, HP Labs' director of strategic initiatives. "All of that connection is happening with richer and richer media experiences." And though Mscapes is not yet a finished product, HP is "putting it out there for the enjoyment of customers and developers."
So far a number of gaming applications have been created--mostly for kids--as have some educational guides and tours. "Part of what we're excited to learn about is to discover the things we haven't thought about," said Brackeen.
HP will publish the spec for Mscapes player client so it can be exported to other mobile platforms in the near future.
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