Venture firm First Round Capital has led the Series A funding round for start-up SimpleGeo, a buzzed-about new company that has built a product for easy integration of "location" features into Web and mobile apps, according to multiple sources familiar with the deal.
Also contributing to the round, sources say, are Redpoint Ventures, Freestyle Capital, and many of the usual suspects from Silicon Valley's merry band of angel investors: among them are Ron Conway, Digg founder Kevin Rose, ex-Googler Chris Sacca, ubiquitous personality Gary Vaynerchuk, and Delicious founder Joshua Schachter. One detail we weren't able to nail down was exactly how much money was raised, but one source says it's a "small" amount, probably in the low seven figures.
SimpleGeo co-founder Matt Galligan declined to comment, but when we spoke to him earlier this month about SimpleGeo's official launch, he had said that the company was working on closing a round.
Some background on SimpleGeo: The company, based in Boulder, Colo., and co-founded by Galligan and former Digg engineer Joe Stump, originally planned to make location-aware augmented reality games. When they found out how difficult it was to make each game from scratch, they refocused the company on making a set of location-aware features for clients. They sell that in three versions ranging from free to $2,499/month.
Meanwhile, the location-aware market continues to heat up, with game-like services Foursquare and Gowalla poking into the mainstream, as well as the first appearance of Twitter's geolocation feature in the latest version of iPhone client Tweetie. Once Twitter members turn that on, their messages can be tagged with the exact location from which they were broadcast.
UPDATE (10:52 a.m. PT): The company has confirmed the round of funding via Twitter, and added the detail that it's a total of $1.5 million.
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?
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)
Loki, the location aware browser plug-in updated its service for use on Macs and mobile phones earlier this week. Previously, Loki users were relegated to Windows. The new Mac version of the Loki is in fact not a toolbar like its Windows counterpart. Instead, users get contextual menu support, and pop up notifications of third party sites that have been Loki-enabled using the developer API. Loki's creators insist that people who use these services enjoy having them available all the time, just not taking up their browsers real estate--which I agree with.
Users can skip having to enter their address using Loki's mobile app, saving some time and frustration using a tiny stylus or keypad.
(Credit: Skyhook Wireless Inc.)The mobile version works with any handset running Windows Mobile and doesn't require your phone to have GPS. In fact, Loki doesn't work like that. It uses your phone's built-in WiFi and several access points to triangulate where you are, similar to how the police track down bad guys using cell phones in movies and TV shows.
Services that have developed Loki integration using the API give users the chance to automatically send their location information and use on site services. One site that's done this is Socialight.com, which lets you create and explore sticky notes on maps.
One of the things I really enjoy about this service is that it's geared towards road warriors. I gave it a whirl earlier this week at the Where 2.0 conference, and it worked surprisingly well (better than Rafe's experience). Here at the office; not so much. For driving directions I'm still more comfortable feeding a service my exact address (which you can do with Loki), and if it were a life or death situation, I'd probably feel better with GPS. Still, for people with neither GPS or an exact street number, this is handy technology.
Previous Loki coverage:
Skyhook says: Who needs GPS?
Toronto or San Jose: where am I, anyway?
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