Category: LBS

The challenge to deliver Location based services

Post author By Ed Parsons
Post date January 16, 2007
2 Comments on The challenge to deliver Location based services

Last week I spent a couple of days with Reuters, as part of their excellent Innovation Programme looking at the potential for new products and services in the next 5-10 years. It is vital for information businesses such as Reuters to do this, as it is for any knowledge business, as the barriers to entry in the web 2.0 world are low for future potential competitors.

Within the geospatial industry many of us are excited by the prospect of ambient geospatial information and the ability of future devices to really deliver services using the location of the user to provide the much needed context.

The interest of Reuters in this is just one example of the increased awareness of the importance of “where” in delivering future consumer focused services, as with many things maybe it will take at least three or four attempts for “location based services” to reach the mainstream.

There are still many challenges to deliver LBS operationally, data availability, privacy concerns, standards, etc and of course the business model – however maybe awareness and the interest to innovate in this space is no longer a problem

If you don’t believe me just type iPhone and GPS into Google and see what you get !

Written and submitted from Starbucks, Fleet Street, using the BTOpenzone 802.11 network.

Apple Google Maps LBS Thoughts

What the iPhone might mean for LBS ?

Post author By Ed Parsons
Post date December 9, 2006
2 Comments on What the iPhone might mean for LBS ?

According to almost everybody on the internet, at 10am PST on the 9th January next year, at the Moscone Center Steve Jobs will introduce the iPhone, perhaps one of the most anticipated products ever from Apple.

There is much speculation as to what the phone will look like and its functionality, and this tends to focus of the “ipodness” of the phone – to me what is interesting are two things is particular, the potential that the iPhone will be should SIM free and that it might contain as well as a camera a GPS.

Actually I think the fact that the iPhone is likely to be sold SIM free and not tied to a network contract is the most important part of the whole iPhone story, – If this does turn out to be the case it will a direct attack on the already crumbling “Walled Garden” model of the operators – a major deterrent in the development of LBS so far.
iphone
In the walled garden, you buy a phone at a subsided price from the network operator in return for a service contract, and less obviously a set of applications and services selected and controlled by the operator. So if you want to make use of a music download service, you must use the operators one, likewise want to use LBS then you the one the operator provides.

Of course it is possible to buy phones today SIM free, but the marketing behind Apple and the buzz the iphone will create will I believe shift the market more towards an “open” model, where greater innovation in LBS applications can take place. There is clear precedent for this, just think what the online market might look like if we where all still accessing the net through CompuServe or AOL’s or even Apples eWorld (Anybody else remember that ?) environments.

A couple of months ago there was much excitement when hackers noted the latest version of iPhoto suggested support for co-ordinate metadata to be attached to photos – now what if the source for the photo was the camera in a “smart” iPhone and the metadata came from an onboard GPS chip-set – again this could lead to a future potential market of tens of millions of LBS capable devices.

Well it has me excited !!

Written and submitted from the BA lounge at Heathrow airport, using the BT Openzone wifi broadband internet connection.

LBS Thoughts

Nokia – Trimble IP swap..

Earlier this week Nokia and Trimle announced an arrangement where their respective technolgoies would be licesned to each other for use in the development of future LBS platforms, following on from Nokia’s aquistion of Gate 5 last month cleary Nokia are leading the second wave of LBS – maybe this time then..

Of equal interest is the nature of the deal, no inflated sums of money changing hands, just two companies who are mature and know their business strengths and those of the other – refreshing in the slightly mad world of web 2.0