A small startup trying to gain traction in the Windy City, Evzdrop has designed geo-social network that doesn’t connect you to your friends but to strangers wherever you happen to be. Read more »
Facebook is set to launch a location-sharing service similar to Apple’s Find My Friends and Google’s Latitude, according to a report from Bloomberg. Read more »
Qualcomm is building indoor positioning into its IZAT platform in hopes of making indoor location-based services just as common as outdoor services. The upgrades are going into its current generation of smartphone chipsets, but Qualcomm is working with Cisco on a network-based platform as well. Read more »
Standalone GPS navigation makers continue to face the battle against smartphones and location based service apps. At least one of them is embracing the change: TomTom first added support for Facebook Places and now it includes Foursquare, making it easier to get directions and check-in. Read more »
Global positioning systems provide better location accuracy over solutions that use Wi-Fi networks, but just how much better is GPS? Yelp sifted through its check-in data to see and not only found out the accuracy variance, but also an interesting location tidbit on iPhones vs Androids. Read more »
Google updated Maps for Android in a way that adds value to brick-and-mortar shoppers. Maps now includes indoor walking directions for stores, malls and such, plus users can find nearby Google Offers and 360-degree panoramic views of buildings and shops as well. Read more »
Kindle Fire owners wanting to include locations in their tweets can do so with the updated version of TweetCaster. Nearby tweets are available too, even though Amazon’s tablet doesn’t include a GPS radio. Instead the slate uses a Wi-Fi location solution from Boston-based Skyhook Wireless. Read more »
This year’s CES was the biggest in the show’s 44-year history. It boasted 15 miles of exhibit hall aisles, 3,100 booths and 153,000 attendees. It is easy to be jaded by the endlessly repetitive products, but the thousands of innovations point toward a future of connectivity. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Dennis Crowley, the CEO of FourSquare, explains how as a company grows, the chain of communication changes and it’s a difficult balance to make sure the company can be as transparent with 100 people as it is with 20 people. Read more »
In a matter of hours, Facebook is going to host f8, its annual developer conference. By now we have all heard everything that is coming at the event. Sources say Facebook will make some sort of announcement around NFC technologies at the event as well. Read more »
As we increasingly become more mobile, not all of our to-dos are based on due-dates or times. Location is key to really getting things done. Location Aware, a free app, is a simple but effective tool for creating location-based task reminders on Google Android smartphones. Read more »
Google today updated Maps for Android devices to version 5.3, adding a location dashboard and graphs showing the amount of time spent at work, home and out. Again, iOS users are left in the cold; it’s likely Apple will soon tell Google Maps to get lost. Read more »
The free FLYsmart app arrives on Android devices today, offering air travelers flight tracking, gate information and airport maps with support for indoor location. Software that helps navigate inside facilities isn’t new, but as FLYsmart demonstrates, location plus other contextual services will trump navigation-only mobile apps. Read more »
Location-based shopping services (LBS) have made many headlines recently, and studies have shown that users actually like receiving ads and offers well-targeted to their interests. Couple that with an influx of Tier 1 venture capital and the show-stopping Facebook Places, with which several startups have already joined forces, and it’s no wonder LBS is suddenly such a hot topic in the mobile sector. That doesn’t necessarily mean LBS shopping apps will be easy to implement. A number of challenges — privacy concerns, scaling issues and check-in integrity among them — provide a potential barrier to widespread adoption. This note examines both the drivers and inhibitors for making location-based shopping services a mainstream phenomenon, and includes focused profiles of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Loopt, Foursquare, BrightKite, Whrrl, Gowalla, Plancast, Groupon, AisleBuyer, Bizness Apps, Offeretti, ShopAlerts, Shopkick, Bakodo, Stickybits, Yelp!, Geodelic Sherpa, WHERE, MyTown, InCrowd, SCVNGR, Waze and Layar. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Google, Nokia, Microsoft and others are all fighting for outdoor navigation prominence, but what about indoors? Aren’t there opportunities for consumers who want locations and indoor directories? One company thinks so and it provides navigation in malls and airports, with more venues to follow soon. Read more »
Microsoft wants to make it clear it is serious about protecting its intellectual property, and is duly concerned about infringements of it inherent in the Android platform. We received a statement from Horacio Guiterrez, the primary executive in charge of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft. Read more »
The investment into the next generation of location and augmented reality applications is as big as the buzz around them. Novel and clever applications are appearing that connect the applications environment into the vast pool of content on the web. While we see amazing apps and ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A patent filed by Qualcomm suggests that location could be tied to a module that you could use with whatever device you want. That means location on your phone, iPod or netbook whenever you bother to insert the module. But apps makers are skeptical. Read more »
From Loopt to FourSquare, it seems like every mobile-focused startup these days wants to hop on board the location-based application train. Aloqa launched an iPhone version of its free Android and BlackBerry application last week (the startup’s CEO, Sanjeev Agrawal, spoke during a panel at our […] Read more »
[qi:gigaom_icon_geolocation] Apple purchased digital mapmaker Placebase in July for an undisclosed sum, according to Seth Weintraub at Computerworld. Placebase, which we wrote about last year, is a Google Maps competitor that focuses on adding layers of public and private data to existing maps with an easy-to-use […] Read more »
