Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• CES 2012: a recap and analysis
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution

Tracking vehicles and assets is a big and growing segment in the machine-to-machine (M2M) communications industry, but tracking people is becoming just as important, according to Berg. Companies are using location services to keep tabs on their mobile workforces. Doctors and hospitals are tracking patients with conditions such as autism and epilepsy using special monitoring devices. The trend has spread to encompass the elderly living at home or in assisted living facilities.

The advent of cheap family tracking apps on the smartphone, however, means that these kind of social alarm services can expand beyond a specialized sector into the mainstream. All of the major mobile operators now sell some form of family tracking and monitoring service, often linked to a family plan, but a growing number of apps such as Life360, Family Locator + and Family Tracker are appearing in smartphone app stores, undercutting the operators’ services in price.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Opportunities and challenges for mobile deals
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution

With Flock, users download the app and let it run in the background after connecting it to their Facebook accounts. If a group of friends with iPhones take photos while in the same geographic area, the app will prompt users to share those photos with the friends who were present. (The friend suggestions come from Facebook, so you won’t get prompted to share photos with random people who were near you.) The shared photos are uploaded to a private album in Flock, which users can then view, download, email or upload to Facebook.

Assuming that everyone likes seeing more photos of themselves, it’s a cool idea, and very similar to the Google+ Party Mode feature. But unlike Party Mode, Flock doesn’t require you to designate a specific event for your photos — it uses the metadata from your photos to figure it out. (Only downside to this: You need to have location services enabled in your camera app for it to work. I didn’t, so Flock only recognized my Instagram photos. Bummer, but something I could change going forward.)

Another cool aspect of Flock is that it can take photos already on your phone and create new albums as soon as you download the app and connect with friends. So as soon as some friends and I launched the app, we could start seeing photos of each other right away.  Right now, the app won’t let you add friends to an album who weren’t physically present and taking photos, but the founders said that’s a feature they hope to add soon.

The founders of Flock started out with Bump, the app probably best known for letting two users literally bump phones and exchange contact information. Bump has been downloaded nearly 100 million times, according to the company. GigaOM’s Kevin Tofel recently wrote about Bump’s other feature, which lets you bump your phone on the keyboard and wirelessly transmit photos from the phone to the computer. The founders said the launch of Flock does not in any way indicate less of a commitment to Bump — they will continue working on both products.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Survey: How apps can solve photo management
• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Startup growth and the new recruiting ecosystem

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Opportunities and challenges for mobile deals
• Mobile payments: forecasts, technologies and opportunities
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro

Geoloqi launched its location platform today, offering developers and business customers a complete stack of geolocation tools, including geo-fencing, messaging, security and analytics. The start-up created by Amber Case and Aaron Perecki is designed to help developers enable persistent background location tracking that can incorporate location information from cellular networks, GPS and Wi-Fi. And it does it in a way that’s very battery efficient, attacking one of the key shortcomings of other location tools.

Geoloqi offers a cross platform SDK for iOS and Android that can be ported to Windows and other devices and can work on any carrier network. Developers can enable geofencing, automatic check-ins and location-based messaging, which is one of the most promising opportunities for marketers to target consumers. There’s also rich analytics for tracking users, dwell time, visitors and geofencing.

Geoloqi and competitors like Walkbase, which I wrote about last month, show how location-based services may be poised to turn a corner. If developers can start reliably adding location features that are light on the battery, secure and private, we might see the dawn of what’s been called the age of persistant location. Companies like Urban Airship, with its purchase of SimpleGeo, Placecast, Xtify and others have been helping push this reality forward, but now we’re seeing even more tools to help bring location-based services to life.

Case told me Geoloqi is trying to bridge the first and second generations of location based services and enable a lot more developers and customers to add location services. ”I don’t think an off-the-shelf developer has the ability to do this; they have a limited time frame,” said Case. “What we found is everyone who contacted us, they want these features, they just don’t want to build it.”

Case said one of the biggest selling points is the way Geoloqi handles background location tracking. For example, instead of pinging servers constantly, Geoloqi understands when a person is nowhere near a geofence and can ramp down GPS to conserve battery life.

Geoloqi got some earlier attention with its mobile app of the same name that originally enabled automatic check-ins, location sharing and location-based reminders. But the app was meant as more of a showcase to the real work Geoloqi was doing behind the scenes. It quickly got noticed by companies and government agencies, who were anxious to add some of Geoloqi’s features. Case said thousands have already signed up for the SDK with the biggest customers enterprise and government developers with other mobile developers making up 20-30 percent.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Confused about the wireless markets? Here’s a breakdown
• Siri: Say hello to the coming “invisible interface”
• NewNet Winners and Losers of 2009

Safely has proven to be a popular people-locator solution, so T-Mobile isn’t partnering with an unproven startup. Coinciding with the T-Mobile news, Location Labs announced its Safely service has now returned one billion premium “locates” on top-tier U.S. carriers. And by premium, it means paying subscribers: T-Mobile customers can use Safely free for 30 days, but after that, it’s $9.99 per month for up to 10 devices on an account.

Clearly, a billion location requests is a huge milestone; location services are becoming more important as a growing number of people, including kids, are making smartphones central to their lives. And without an iPhone, T-Mobile has no free “Find My Friends” iOS app. I do wonder, however, how many paying FamilyWhere subscribers T-Mobile will pickup when Life360 offers the same type of service for free and has been growing like gangbusters.

Regardless of sign-ups, this is another example of carriers trying to add value services: a growing trend as they hope to avoid becoming fast, dumb pipes.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• A look back at mobile in Q1
• Mobile 2011: Data Consumption Will Explode
• Defining the mobile wallet: what it is, why it matters

With the advent of smartphone and Facebook ubiquity and pervasive GPS services, Highlight CEO Paul Davison says that we now have more information about the people around us than ever before. However, there are few services that bring that data together and combine all the social and location data available to show us when our friends and friends of friends are nearby.

There is Facebook, which lets us connect with friends and share information about our occupations, interests and loved ones. And there is Foursquare, of course, which allows its users to self-select when they share locations with those whom they have marked as their friends. But there are few tools with the ability to seamlessly provide real-time updates whenever a social connection — or a possible social connection — is nearby.

Highlight hopes to create synchronicity in meeting people, to reduce the friction of introductions and getting to know one another if its users already know they have things in common. “I started with the idea that if you can just take two people and connect them, you can make the world a better place,” Davison told me last week.

After downloading and installing the app, users connect their accounts with Facebook, add a few minor personal details . . . and then they sit around and wait. Or move around and wait. Either way, eventually users will be pinged when they get within a reasonable distance of someone they might know or someone their friends know on Facebook.

That might seem creepy, especially when the app pings you to say someone you have never met before is nearby. But Davison maintains that there are some interesting use cases. Imagine, for instance, that you met someone at a party or through a mutual friend and see them a few days later in a completely unrelated situation. If you were both Highlight users, the app would not only notify you that this potential contact was nearby but would also give you important information to help you strike up a conversation — the person’s name, for instance, which can be especially useful if, like me, you tend to forget names but remember faces. It would also let you know what that person’s occupation is and which friends you might have in common.

The app seems perfectly suited for the San Francisco tech scene, where everyone seemingly knows everyone else, or should. And that is where it is focusing its beta efforts, trying to refine the proximity of how and when people receive notifications before expanding to other parts of the country. Davison notes that in San Francisco, letting you know that one of your friends is a couple of miles away probably isn’t very useful, but in smaller cities in the Midwest, where everyone drives everywhere, that kind of data could be useful (especially if you are both in town from other places).

Of course, for Highlight to really become useful, it will need users to actually download the app and opt in, creating a sort of critical mass of connections. I was part of a closed alpha trial and received pings when a handful of people nearby. None of them were close enough to actually say hello, but a few had strong enough personal connections for me to have introduced myself if I were.

It also needs a little tweaking when it comes to recognizing in which situations it should ping users. I found most Highlight activity occurred while I was on a bus or on my bike rather than when I was quietly seated at a cafe, where I might have had a chance to say hello to someone. As the app collects more data, it should be able to refine the experience.

Finally, the persistent location tracking can be a battery drain, which was both my experience as well as that of colleagues that I had test it out with me. Constantly pinging location services in the background made my iPhone’s battery run down much more quickly than usual, causing me to need to recharge by the end of the day. Davison says that is something else that Highlight is hoping to optimize, for instance by recognizing when users have changed location and when they are sitting tight.

If Highlight can tweak those things as it moves beyond its current hundred or so users to potentially thousands and tens of thousands, it could become a useful app for creating seamless real-life connections among people. Given how open users have become about the information they share, it seems like only a matter of time before Highlight — or something like it — manages to become the connective tissue between the social-local-mobile worlds.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• Survey: How apps can solve photo management
• Opportunities and challenges for mobile deals

As mentioned, Oink is all about rating items, and for now, that seems to be mostly about picking out favorite dishes on the menu at local restaurants. But people are already experimenting with a wide variety of items to rate, including the Walter Isaacson Steve Jobs biography and Oink’s own UI. You can see how it could have very broad uses down the road.

Trust issues

The first thing Oink asked me was whether I wanted to become a “Builder.” I did indeed, because I guessed (correctly) that there’d be precious little content in my neck of the woods here in Toronto. But you can’t just start creating content in Oink; you apply to become a “Builder,” and will be notified by email when your application is accepted (and/or denied?).

While I’m disappointed I can’t get posting things immediately, I think the idea of somehow gatekeeping who gets to do so is actually a good idea. In the long run, it’ll make for more meaningful content and item ratings, so that people can actually feel confident in following its recommendations, by keeping bots out of the system until there are safeguards against such potential abuses in place.

Many ways to Discover

Leaving aside ratings and content creation for the moment, the app is actually really beautifully designed, and even with limited, spectator style interaction, it stands out thanks to good development. Finding things through the Discover tab is a perfect example of why.

You can browse for stuff that’s popular, popular and near you, or look for things by their proximity to your location. You can also keep track of incoming ratings in real-time as they go up with the “Live” monitor. This displays a visually pleasing stream of photos from recently approved and disapproved of objects. These are global for now, and there doesn’t appear to be a way to narrow the focus of the real-time stream to a more specific geographic location, but it’s a fun way of doing some minor globe-trotting without going anywhere.

Lots more inside for builders

Once you achieve coveted builder status, you can add friends from Oink, as well as gain “Cred” through ratings, reviews and photos to help establish yourself as an Oink expert in your chosen field. You can also create a profile where all your Oinked info is stored. Unfortunately, as mentioned, you have to wait until Oink starts expanding its Builder pool before you can do any of this.

So Oink looks great, and the UI is full of smooth animations (like the loading ball near the top of the screen) and transitions that avoid the pitfall of being annoying. It already has a lot of active users in highly populated areas, and people lucky enough to be early Builders seem to be having fun. My advice? Do like me and pick up this free app and apply for Builder status now, because Oink provides a useful service in a slick, smart package, so I expect membership requests to start flooding in quickly.

Disclosure: Milk, which created Oink, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How to compete with Facebook in 2013
• Social-TV apps and consumer behavior
• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room

Zombies, Run! is a game in that you have virtual goals to accomplish, which will help you further the cause of your virtual persona. But it’s a training app in that to accomplish those goals, you have to get out and run; doing so will let you collect items like supplies, medicine and ammo, which you can then put to use back home at your “base.” The app is designed for all levels of fitness, so you should be able to play whether you’re just getting started with an exercise routine or gearing up for a marathon.

The app provides you with “missions,” which take around 20 to 30 minutes to complete, and which feature radio messages and pre-recorded voice communications that provide feedback on what you’re doing as you run. Don’t worry if you prefer running to music, either; your own custom playlists integrate just fine with the mission audio. In Season 1 (the first content pack), you’ll have 30 unique missions to accomplish, and more seasons (with additional mission packs) are planned as future updates.

Zombies, Run! looks simply but smartly designed, without overly elaborate graphics (you won’t be looking at your screen while you’re playing, after all) and a flexible mission system that works with routes and paces determined by runners, not by the game. It also doesn’t need any special equipment, just an iPhone, and works equally well on the treadmill or on the park path. The app keeps track of your distance, time and calories burned, and you can hear notification of those stats throughout your workout.

This is a clever spin on a category of apps that already pretty much represent a perfect match for the iPhone’s capability set, and adds in a gamification element. Location doesn’t seem to play as integral a role as in something like Shadow Cities or Please Stay Calm, but it could play a more significant role in the final shipping product. The concept of home bases that you can stock with things collected on your run is a good idea for extending the app’s appeal beyond just an exercise session, too.

Having already blown away its funding goal of $12,500 with a week left to go, Zombies, Run! has expanded planned availability to Android for later in 2012, and says it will go after top-tier voice talent for in-game mission recordings. Can’t wait to check this one out when it arrives next February, but for now the video trailer will have to do:

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Defining the mobile wallet: what it is, why it matters
• Forecast: the future of near field communication
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues

Grey Area is the company behind Shadow Cities, an iPhone game that broke new ground in mobile location-based massively multiplayer online gaming. Vesterinen called ShadowCities “the first of a new category of games,” where the game world and the real world are merged. Shadow Cities pulls not only other players in your area into the experience, but also the surroundings themselves. The real world tie-in allows for “the most exciting game board you can have,” says Vesterinen.

Location-based gaming, according to Vesterinen, needed technology to catch up to gamer expectations before it could succeed. Gamers who play MMOs are looking for “immersive experience,” and that’s what Shadow Cities can provide, thanks to the improved graphical capabilities of current generation mobile platforms.

Finding the sweet spot where location-based games succeed is a process of experimentation; Vesterinen says Grey Area expected a mobile game like Shadow Cities to be more popular while users were in transit, with short, casual sessions. In reality, most users tend to game in places where they are most often, like at home, and stay for longer periods. In this way, mobile gaming is much more in direct competition with traditional console gaming.

That also means location-based gaming need not necessarily orient itself towards casual players. Hours long sessions are common, and it stands to reason that some in-game experiences can cater to that group of gamers.

Another interesting point that Vesterinen made is that there is lots more opportunity to bring the real world into games; location is just one data set, things like real estate prices, weather, traffic could all contribute to the future of mobile gaming by filling in the virtual world with data users can easily relate to. That’s an interesting future to consider when video gaming’s past seems to have been built up around an idea of escapism, where game worlds often didn’t resemble a user’s environment at all.

Vesterinen said they plan to extend Shadow Cities to more countries, but also has more, similar games in development, though he wouldn’t go into much detail about specific plans for Grey Area’s future releases.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Survey: How apps can solve photo management
• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution