We are attending the 2008 Location Intelligence Conference April 28-30 in San Francisco…

A conference whose focus is on how the industry can utilize data/information derived from location based services. This could be from both a business perspective but also equally important from a NPO/NGO perspective.

This conference will add great value to our thesis writing and we promise to blog directly from the conference to everyone interested. We hope to see some of you there.. and if anyone would like to donate some finances for this trip.. well, its very much appreciated

Here is how the conference describes themselves:

“The world is sold on geospatial technologies and this conference is a welcoming place where you can hear about them in action – solving real-world problems and improving operations that energize the location intelligent enterprise. The common thread is that attendees at the LI conference are passionate about the practical challenges of implementing and integrating cutting-edge technologies along with mainstream information technology , and love to compare notes about what they do!

We see location technology being used everywhere: Managing telecommunications, mitigating terrorist threats, and locating retail stores as well as finding the most efficient routes for supply chain management, dynamic weather analysis for storm modeling and reacting to the consumer demand to locally search for goods and services. Mapping technology is ubiquitous: in cars, on your mobile phone and on the web.

What’s next? Enhancing core GIS and geospatial implementations with enabling technologies to take them further into the organization to manage business processes more effectively. The result: better revenue, better service, better business.

Location Technology 2008 will focus exclusively on enabling technologies: Those hardware, software and data technologies that support and enhance the development, application and diffusion of core geospatial implementations to significantly improve performance and productivity.”

There is a problem when viewing the website in Internet Explorer. In particular the banner image displays an error message as we are using a transparent png file for this. We apologize for this inconvenience and are trying to fix the problem. We have customized the MANDINGO template for WordPress and it’s not always easy to see where to change code

Sabina and I have started working on some mobile development for our masters thesis. We are planning to build a xhtml-mp site where users can upload pictures and add them to a map. Also we will develop a j2me application that connects to the internal gps on a device and transmits the signal to our web-service. This signal will then be displayed on a map. Depending on the success rate and time we will implement more features, such as photo’s with embedded geo exif tags, view map in the application, where am i, where are my contacts etc., and eventually create a similar service/combo as mgmaps / gmap-track.

Initially, it has taken some time installing the various tools for the j2me development. Eclipse on Linux has given a lot of trouble and in particular the emulators - We are running on this combo package for our j2me development Eclipse/EclipseME/WTK/J2ME Polish, considering J4ME. For our xhtml-mp site we use notepad, php, apache and mysql.

We have looked at using NetBeans, but for some reason we ended up with the Eclipse combo. Not really sure why If anyone has any recommendations, feel free to comment.

Just another thought on positioning systems. During Steve Job’s 2008 keynote, new features for iPhone maps was showcased and subsequently released. The main aspects of the release were the ability to locate or position yourself without the use of GPS (The iPhones doesn’t support GPS, yet!).

The new feature uses the principles of triangulation to coordinate the user’s approximate location similar to My Location (See video) on Google Earth. The systems looks identical and could very well both be developed by Skyhook Wireless - a company focusing on providing positioning systems - whether it being WIFI, Cell Tower or GPS. We at least know that Apple uses Skyhook. Anyone have any thoughts on what Google uses? Their own?

Skyhook Wireless have some interesting services to offer and the are most definitely going to be / is already a vital force in the LBS industry.

1. WPS (WiFi Positioning System) Skyhook have over the past years pinpointed 802.11 (Wi-Fi) access points in various countries thus creating a starmap like referencing system that almost accurately locates a user at any given time. In short, the system uses WiFI triangulation to coordinate location. All of a sudden the business model of FON makes perfect sense
2. XPS (Hybrid Positioning System) This system alternately uses various positioning technologies (GPS, WiFI, WiMax, CellTowerID, IP Address) to locate a user’s position depending on source availability, reliability, accessibility and favors the method with the highest degree of positioning potential at that particular moment e.g. Indoor = WiFi, Outdoor = GPS, Urban = WiMax. Pretty cool. But what about BPS (Bluetooth Positioning System)?
3. Loki is the consumer or small business roll out from Skyhook. It’s basically the WPS but commercialized and takes various shapes e.g. API access or Firefox plugins and are therefore used by some location based services online (Socialight).

Skyhook are truly reaching new heights with their technology and strategic alliances. Where is NaviZon heading?

We’ve been doing a bit of reading on e-business models for LBS and social networks, and the following is presenting a couple of interesting findings.

Bharat Rao and Louis Minakakis stated in Evolution of Mobile Location-based Services (2003) that there has not been a ongoing effort in developing sustainable e-business models for LBS and social networks, that sufficiently enhance and address the customer experience while being profitable.

Robert Young is talking along the same lines in his blog-entry Of Social Nets & Business Models, where he points out that social networks should realize that they can benefit from individually or narrow segmented targeted ads e.g. using micro-celebrities (people within the network that are well-known to that specific micro-community) instead of the “old fashioned” banner-commercials, giving the user a sense of “ad relevance”.

Another finding is, that while user location can play a key role in determining their individual information, product and service needs, user location is also a valuable information to the service provider (SP). On one side, the SP can use user location to offer customized offers and ads. On the other side, the SP can combine user location, both historic and current, to negotiate specialized deals with third parties. Deals that could be tailord to the individual user.

This points in the direction, that a e-business model for social networks and LBS’ should consider taking advantage (in a non offensive way, of course) of the network knowledge - this being both demographical, behavioural and positional knowledge of its users.

Hi interested readers,

So.. Today we are launching LBSblog.net which we will be our knowledge sharing/gathering blog with information on location based services and other things in that genre. We blog because for us its a vital process withing knowledge understand. We are currently writing our masters thesis on location based services, and go through tons of information on a daily basis. Therefore by blogging, YOU can make us reflect on things and hopefully everyone will benefit.

We are always looking forward to receiving inputs, corrections and opinions from curious readers.

Looking forward to the adventure,

Sabina and Lars