Category: LBS

Is around 5 years ??

Well I would estimate that is the case from the imminent closure of Plazes, one of the earliest Location Sharing applications developed back in 2004.

I used Plazes on and off for a few years starting on my first real smartphone the Nokia N95 and for a while it powered the Where Ed function on this blog. Plazes was acquired by Nokia in 2008 and it’s technology was rolled into the ovi platform, although Plazes.com continued as a stand-alone service.

This week Nokia announced the closure of the service, offering users the ability to download and export their location history. This is an important step and one which Nokia should be commended for, your location data is your data and in the spirit of data liberation you should be able to take it with you wherever you want to go..

So why is plazes closing, my personal view is that location sharing as a discrete service is just not that compelling, your location is a useful piece of contextual information whose real value comes from it’s integration with other personal data.

Knowing I’m currently in Calgary, Alberta is interesting..

Knowing I’m in Calgary, it’s 5pm, I’m flying out to San Francisco at 9pm, it’s raining and there is a Tim Hortons my favourite Coffee Shop on the quickest route based on the current traffic conditions is actually valuable.

Written and submitted from the GeoAlberta Conference (51.059N, 113.979W)

I am once again speaking at the LBS summit in Amsterdam this year.

The conference is the closest Europe gets to something like the Where conference, and is the must attend conference for the location and mobile marketing industry. There’ll be lots of in-depth discussion, interesting debate and great networking opportunities with over 150 senior execs from the LBS eco-system.

To get all the info on this event, get the brochure here –
http://www.thewherebusiness.com/locationsummit/conference-event-brochure.php

As a speaker I am entitled to invite 5 of my friends, clients or colleagues along at exclusive discounted rates!  So, just quote my name when booking and get the exclusive discount, saving you an extra €100 on the current listed rates when you register.

The code is only good for 5 people, so be quick if you want to make use of it.

To qualify for this saving, simply quote LBS12SPKR when registering at
https://secure.thewherebusiness.com/locationsummit/register.php