TwoGo is a cloud-based service for companies that want to get their employees sharing cars to and from work. Nokia’s Here platform provides the location component, helping to match people with likely carpooling companions. Read more »
The iOS app blends location services, calendaring, reminders and push notifications to mimic the work an actual personal assistant that keeps your schedule for you can do. Read more »
Foursquare said Thursday it has raised $41 million to expand its location-based service, but the financing is convertible debt rather than equity, which increases the pressure on the company to prove it has a real business. Read more »
Ever wanted a single app that check you into any airline or an app that could aggregate healthcare data from multiple doctors and insurance companies? Apigee’s new API Exchange aims to make those apps possible. Read more »
Looking for the latest trend in location-based startups? Companies are increasingly looking to the intersection of location and community with the neighborhood, an ideal place to target people for providing information and news, but also a possible target for specific advertising. Read more »
In the online local listings and reviews segment, US big boy Yelp is giving a five-star review to Hamburg-based peer Qype – and buying it to expand the breadth of its business overseas. Read more at paidContent »
Dennis Crowely of Foursquare has a big goal of creating an ambient-aware location service that will recommend people, places and events happening nearby, but the hardware isn’t quite up to snuff yet. In the meantime, he’s using location data to take on Yelp and Google. Read more »
Location data provider Skyhook has an update to its mobile SDK for Android that will provide persistant background location tracking with no or negligible impact on battery life. That could be a big help for location-based apps that have suffered because of battery constraints. Read more »
Need to share your location for a limited amount of time and with just a single person? Mapfia is an easy method on iOS and Android. You simply call someone and Mapfia shares the location of both people for the length of the call. Read more »
Hyperlocal mobile advertising is at a critical juncture: Leading analysts predict that mobile ad spending will increase by more than five times between 2011 and 2015. But what are the forces at play, and how effective are HyLoMo ads? Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Five key technology sectors are enabling the smart city: smart grids, smart transport, smart water and waste management, smart building systems, and the enabling ICT platforms for the smart city. Key players like IT companies, telcos and utilities must learn how to harness those technologies, and quickly. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Is there any way to stand out among the glut of social, local, mobile services? Everplaces and Circleme, two new European startups just coming out of private beta, certainly hope so — and both are attempting to put their own twist on the combination of people and places. Read more »
Mobile deals combine location-aware discounts with mobile marketing campaigns. What are the largest pitfalls in this promising space, though? Privacy and security issues must be addressed to assure consumers their purchases are secure and their location is being closely guarded. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
If you’re like many of us, you’re already thinking over some New Year’s resolutions that will make you a better “you” in 2012. But how are the tech industries’ thought leaders approaching the new year? We asked 12 of them for their resolutions. 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 »
Remote collaboration tools and connectivity promise to unleash us from the office, but despite these advantages most of us still spend the majority of our days in drab spaces. Perhaps the New Year is the perfect opportunity for knowledge workers to reconsider where they work. Read more »
HipGeo is an iPhone app that passively tracks your location and can easily turn your trips into travel diaries. On Thursday, the company will release its first public API and location widgets so that any application or website can mimic some of HipGeo’s geo-location features. Read more »
Intel (NSDQ: INTC) has made no secret of its interest to be a more central player in the mobile space and now it’s showing us the money, too… Read more at paidContent »
No one ever said turnarounds were easy, and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) — currently the world’s largest handset maker — is one big ship. Today the c… Read more at paidContent »
Location, location, location: it’s the time-honored mantra of real-estate agents and retailers, but could just as well be applied to Google… Read more at paidContent »
Foodspotting, the app for finding and rating restaurant dishes, is getting in on the daily deals action. It plans to announce Tuesday that it is hooking up with Atlanta-based local deals purveyor Scoutmob to offer 50 percent and 100 percent off coupons for nearby restaurants. Read more »
As location-based services grow up, we’re seeing that games are not the appealing part of location and increasingly it seems like start-ups are acknowledging that games are tough to build a business on. Gowalla seemed to acknowledge that by killing its virtual items feature today. Read more »
Shadow Cities sounds like a car crash of trendy ideas — an iPhone game that uses your location and network to draw a playing surface onto the real world. In fact the game, which has just added 13 territories in Europe, is great fun. Read more »
Rovio wants to take Angry Birds local by enhancing game play for users when they visit real-world locations. The feature builds off an NFC feature for certain Nokia phones, and unlocks new levels when users tap their phones together or tap in at a location. Read more »
Google has hit 200 million installs of Google Maps on mobile devices, said Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of maps and local today. The milestone highlights Google’s strength in location especially in regards to mobile devices, which is benefitting from the rise of Android devices. Read more »
Google said Friday it has added location-based news to its mobile version of Google News — not a huge development for the web giant, but another step towards offering news that is personally relevant to readers, something newspapers and other media outlets continue to struggle with. Read more »
Apple released iOS 4.3.3 (and iOS 4.2.8 for Verizon iPhones) Wednesday, changing the way location information is stored and backed up, as well as a number of other fixes and improvements. Apple promised this update after the location storage cache was widely publicized two weeks ago. Read more »
Hot on the heels of the furor over Apple’s location databases, personal navigation device giant TomTom is in trouble for selling speed data to police. But both companies have shown how technology firms are too quick to dismiss the worries of their customers. Read more »
Sen. Al Franken may be after answers from Steve Jobs, but last year, Congressmen Edward J. Markey and Joe Barton asked similar questions and got an answer from Apple SVP and General Counsel Bruce Sewell. That letter answers some of Franken’s questions regarding iOS location info. Read more »
The news that Apple devices keep a record of your movements has generated plenty of coverage. Now, however, one researcher says not only has the knowledge been public for some time, but it’s already being used by security researchers and law enforcement agents. Read more »
Google may have more distributed data than any other company but it still takes user input to create smarter machines. Google’s Voice Search speech recognition, for example, began to improve when the service started to train itself and improve accuracy through the use of end-user data Read more »
Skyhook’s deal to provide the location information for Priceline’s Hotel Negotiator Android app illustrates the recent work Skyhook has done to get around an impasse with Google that has limited the reach of its location technology on mobile apps. Read more »
Twitter is quietly improving its location feature, allowing developers to access an expanded database of locations for tweets associated with a place. The move will allow users to tweet from more locations and will allow developers to to more easily display tweets associated with one place. Read more »
The world of mobile content is perhaps one of the most vibrant in all of digital media, and if you are a part of this fast-growing market, you won’t want to miss a free, hour-long roundtable conversation with GigaOM Pro. Read more »
In the debate over apps versus the web on smartphones, apps are winning, says Gowalla CEO Josh Williams. There’s hope from companies like Opera and Google that the web will surge ahead as HTML 5 becomes more widespread, but Williams has his doubts. Read more »
Facebook’s entry in the location-based sweepstakes is coming soon, sources have told CNET. But while CNET says the new feature will integrate existing “check-in” information from other services, it’s likely that Facebook Places will be about far more than just adding location data to status updates. Read more »
Twitter and Facebook users have gotten used to to asking their social networks for tips on what are the hot restaurants, bars and other spots. Now Foursquare and the Independent Film Channel have teamed up to create an offbeat travel guide using the same kind of crowdsourcing philosophy. Read more »
Investor Fred Wilson says it was worth it for Foursquare to take its time to figure out whether to raise another round of financing or be acquired, and also suggests that Facebook will be partnering with the company rather than launching its own competing location features. Read more »
When Twitter announced in May that it planned to launch a new feature called Points of Interest based on a user’s location, some expected it to be a “Foursquare-killer.” Instead, both Foursquare and Gowalla are partners in the feature now known simply as Twitter Places. Read more »
Location is a nascent space with plenty of wrinkles to iron out, including thorny privacy concerns and less-than-pinpoint positioning technologies. But there are plenty of opportunity in location, and there will be for quite some ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
