GyPSii and Telmap have partnered to develop and introduce advanced location-based social networking as part of Telmap’s Mobile Location Companion.

As part of the cooperation, Telmap will introduce social networking and user-generated content, to the Telmap5 Mobile Location Companion using GyPSii’s Open API, OpenExperience. Telmap5 will offer users access
to all their networks of friends across social networks including Facebook and Twitter. The integration with GyPSii’s Open API empowers Telmap5 mobile users to access and contribute location-aware content by sharing locations; reading and posting recommendations, videos, and pictures; finding friends, events, and places; and geo-blogging.

Telmap5 offers mobile operators an opportunity to introduce a richer location-enabled solution to their subscribers, as today’s end users are hungry for social technologies and are active on multiple social networks, Telmap said. GyPSii’s Open API, OpenExperience offers Telmap transparent
integration of its patented technologies in mobile user-generated content creation, friend-finding, and a robust suite of development toolkits that support rapid development, fast-track product enhancements, and easy app localization, Telmap said. OpenExperience also delivers a contextual advertising solution for ultra-targeted commercial messages including advertisements and coupons with a high value to the end user.

Forrester has published a report about the mobile strategy for travel firms.

Read more here.

The problem back then was that the only people who had access to your location was the mobile operators. With this, and I’m going by a rough machine translation here, people would opt in to access the service, so would the restaurants. This is how marketing should happen. The potential is there for this to rock, but will it take off? If the Japanese are only starting to play with location based coupons now, how long until their technology crosses the pond to Europe, and then crosses the pond again to reach America? Seriously, this stuff is taking a long, long, LONG time to happen.

To date, Twitter’s API (Application Programming Interface) has only allowed developers to roll out location based services based on the information in the ‘location’ field of a user’s account, which really could say anything.

Now the platform is gearing up to launch a feature that will add the user’s latitude and longitude to any tweet. This could allow twitter users to see content from people in their neighbourhood or city, without having to follow them first.

Naturally, the initiative raises privacy issues, and Twitter says the feature will need to be activated by participating users as it will be off by default. The company also said that it won’t store location data “for an extended period of time”.

Twitter did not say when the geolocation feature will be released, only that it would be releasing the feature to developers before it is added to the Twitter web and mobile sites.

Location is all the rage and is coming to be seen as an exclusive source of revenue for carriers. Telecoms.com recently spoke to Simon Buckingham, CEO of content specialist mobile streams and US-based location firm Zoombak, who said that access to location data is becoming essential in a mature industry on the way to commoditisation. “Operators can no longer rely on their old business models where voice, text and roaming were charged at a significant premium. Those business models are end of life now. Operators need to recognise that they have to embrace innovation. And the thing that they have that nobody else has, is control over access to location information. This is the time to make that information available; if they don’t do it now their relevance is going to diminish,” he said.

Source Telecoms.com

Integrated in websites, Cliptoo is a valuable service where online visitors quickly can find all relevant information about the region. It is an effective broadcast service for location based information on mobile devices and widgets. Cliptoo supports ‘point of interest’ owners to promote offerings & attract user-generated content such as reviews. Last but not least, Cliptoo supports you in connecting with visitors by offering services like direct reservations & bookings.

List of all services in catalog
This is basic service for every Locify user. It enables you to save your current location locally, synchronize your locations with our server and browse saved locations on our server.

Twitter for Locify
Updating your status on Twitter has never been simpler. This service allows you to send and receive Twitter status updates.

Wikipedia
Ever wanted to know everything about place you’re visiting? Now you can – find Wikipedia articles about nearest places.

FireEagle
This service allows you to show and update your location on FireEagle.

Nearest caches
Are you geocacher? This service is made for you! You can view nearest geocaches around you, view their terrain, difficulty etc.. Then you can save them locally or navigate to them! Geocaching was never easier!

Modre strani.si
Odkrite podjetja v vaši bližini. Restavracije, trgovine, bari, hoteli, storitve,… Na voljo le v Sloveniji.

OpenCaching
This service allows you to find nearest open caches on opencaching.cz and opencaching.pl servers. You can view description and decrypted hint of these caches, navigate to them or save them locally.

Panoramio
Show your favourite places. Now even on your mobile phone.

Eventful
Eventful service allows you to find nearest events and venues from eventful.com and show their description. Then you can navigate to them, if event or venue have GPS coordinates..

Upcoming
Upcoming service allows you to find nearest events and venues from Upcoming.
Zvents
Zvents – Discover Things To Do. With Locify you can find nearest events, show their details and navigate to venue.

AccuWeather
Explore current and future weather around your location with Accuweather.com!

GeoMail
Odešlete prátelům krátký email a k němu bude automaticky přidán odkaz, kde se právě nacházíte! Send a short email to your friends, links to your actual position will be automatically added!

GeoSMS
Share your location with your friends by SMS!

UK carrier O2 announced on Monday that it has struck a deal with mobile navigation specialist Telmap which will see that firm’s personal navigation and mapping service deployed on the majority of GPS-enabled handsets sold by the operator.

Telefonica-owned O2 will provide the first level customer and billing support for the service, which will be available to customers on a free two-week trial. The carrier said that subscription charges, which start at £3.50/month, will be integrated onto customer bills. The first new handsets with the functionality embedded will be available in the autumn of this year, and customers who already own compatible phones will be able to download the application.

Navigation has become the saviour of the previously directionless mobile location market, with handset-based solutions taking on established PND (personal navigation device) products from the likes of Garmin and TomTom. While the existing specialist players have a secure market position for in-car use, they concede that for pedestrian services, the mobile phone is the best solution. “The moment people get out of the car and still want guidance, the weight of average shifts in favour of having the application on the phone,” Mark Gretton, director of engineering at TomTom told Telecoms.com towards the end of 2008.

The Telmap/O2 deal will see features for both in-car and pedestrian usage, O2 said.

As the mobile industry pushes into the navigation space, the PND providers are increasingly looking to connected navigation as a future revenue stream. TomTom has said that it aims for connected devices (sold with a SIM) to account for half of all sales by the end of this year.

Either way, the carriers seem to be in a strong position. Speaking to Telecoms.com last year, Telmap CEO Oren Niisim said that operators “aren’t technically necessary” for the mobile navigation sales chain. But, he stressed that their presence was desirable. “We need to work with the people who know the users best and that’s the operators,” he said. “The operators give the sales pitch a level of quality.”

On Monday’s announcement, Nissim added: “This is a very important agreement for Telmap and… we believe this collaboration will allow us to deliver the best in class solution to O2 customers and for O2 to create a winning location strategy in the marketplace”. O2 said that the UK deal will serve as a stepping stone to deployment throughout the Telefonica footprint. The Spanish incumbent is the fourth largest mobile operator in the world, with 168.8 million customers across Europe and Latin America at the end of June, according to Informa Telecoms & Media’s World Cellualr Investors Service.

Sales of GPS-enabled phones are on the increase, with analyst firm ABI Research predicting sales of 240 million units for 2009, an increase of 6.4 per cent over 2008.

The iNap concept has received huge amounts of international press coverage, hitting magazines and websites like WIRED, Gizmodo, Technology Review (MIT), CNN, New York Times, all major mac & iphone blogs and many national newspapers. This has made Android users jealous, resulting in at least 1 mail a week asking us to port the app to their platform.
To award their patience & thank the early-adopters for their feedback, we will give away the app for free for a limited period of time.

Moop.Me
iNap: Arrival Alert for Android was developed by Menno Pruijssers (Moop.Me’s newest member) with the help of Melvin Mughal. The release of this Android app defines marks Moop.Me as a cross-platform developer. Expect more Android apps soon!

IBM has integrated local sports coverage and augmented virtual reality (AR) at this year’s Wimbledon, still the prestige tennis tournament on the calendar. The mobile reality app, Seer Android, is very much the shape of things to come, writes Christopher Backeberg…
Layar augmented virtual reality

Seer Android may be less immediately dramatic than some of the early upsets at Wimbledon, like the second-round ousting of Maria Sharapova and the tigerish victory by Lleyton Hewitt. It hasn’t attracted pranksters with decibel meters to measure which of the female players indulges in the loudest orgasmic screaming when they hit the ball. It is extremely localised since it works only at Wimbledon.

What it has done, however, is further demonstrate how much of the remarkable potential of mobiles can be unlocked when different types of app technology and interests meet in a symbiotic relationship. Location-based sports information is just one of numerous subjects that can gain from the AR treatment.

Seer Android shows who, what, where

The IBM app runs only on Android phones. Its usability is limited to the hallowed precincts of the Wimbledon grounds. It is within these constraints that it works its charm.

It employs the currently standard method of simultaneously scanning the environment with the smartphone’s camera and projecting LBS data onto the viewfinder. It correlates the user’s location with the viewed target’s location by doing fancy tricks with the phone’s built-in GPS and compass.

IBM geotagged Wimbledon for this year’s tournament. When you point the phone camera at any of the courts, up pops the fixtures schedule for that court. You can see who’s playing right now on any court. (The phone won’t tell you which of them is screaming. You need analogue technology – namely, your ears – to know that.)

Scanning around with the phone will also show pop-up information about other points of interest such as concession stands where you can buy strawberries and cream. Or a steak-and-kidney pie, perhaps, if you need real food.

It’s that simple. Correction: it’s comparatively that simple, bearing in mind that a smartphone and all its miniaturised hardware and state-of-the-art apps use vastly more computing power than the mainframes that put the first men on the moon and ran the entire North American Aerospace Defence Command, NORAD, during the Cold War.

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