Billion Dollar Market for On-Device Portals
London, January 25, 2006 -- The industry is witnessing the adoption of On-Device Portals (ODPs), a new generation of products which deliver content on the mobile phone through the use of a software client application. Orange Downloads, Vodafone Live Cast, DoCoMo i-Channel, Sprint Nextel On-Demand and O2's planned deployment of Qualcomm uiOne, are some notable cases of on-device portal deployments which have already taken place worldwide. According to a recently published report from wireless research and consulting firm, ARCchart, the ODP market is now poised for aggressive growth and is forecast to reach a value of $1.4 billion by 2009. Mobile operators will initially lead ODP deployments but eventually media companies will dominate.
On-device portals are an evolution of WAP, as they leverage the handset's capabilities to deliver a more compelling user experience, increase service awareness and streamline content purchasing. ARCchart classifies these products into three categories: offline portals, on-device store-fronts and home-screen replacement products.
ODPs have emerged to address the poor take-up of mobile data services. Operators have spent billions of dollars on next generation networks and on sourcing content from media brands. However, non-messaging data revenue is still low: for a successful operator like Vodafone UK, the increase in pure data revenue generated between 2004 and 2005 is estimated at just $88 million.
“Clearly, the answer is not in bigger pipes or more content - content may be King, but the user experience is Queen,” says Andreas Constantinou, the report’s lead analyst. While operators have made substantial investments in their content strategies, the user experience has been neglected, leading to the ‘abandoned shopping cart’ syndrome that was prevalent in the early days of the web.
On-device portals have the potential to drive data ARPU uplift and service usability by delivering content to the device in an easily discoverable, instantly accessible and personalised manner, and by providing the ‘wow’ factor through the use of rich graphics and smarter content. For content providers, ODPs are able to deliver an immersive user experience beyond the traditional off-portal channels.
This report analyses 14 vendors in the on-device portal space, namely Abaxia, Action Engine, Cibenix, Handmark (Pocket Express), Macromedia (FlashCast), MSX, Nellymoser, Onskreen, Openwave, Opera Platform, Qualcomm (uiOne), RefreshMobile, Silk and SurfKitchen. An in-depth review is provided for each vendor, followed by overviews and case studies on T-Mobile NewsExpress, Handango InHand, Access, Obigo, Macromedia Flash Lite, Ikivo, July Systems and Zi Qix. A case study for an unnamed emerging ODP player is also included. The report identifies 10 trends unfolding within the ODP market from 2006 onwards, from application environments as the route to market, to customised design manufacturers.
ARCchart estimates that the on-device portal market in 2005 stood at $30 million, but will grow aggressively over time to reach $1.4 billion by 2009, corresponding to 1.1 billion ODP licenses sold for that period. According to Matt Lewis, Research Director at ARCchart, “We see the tier-1 and tier-2 mobile operators initially leading the way in ODP client deployments but, by 2009, we forecast that media companies will be responsible for the lion’s share of client deployments.”
Following the technology trigger in 2001 and the first wave of ODP vendors arriving in 2002, on-device portals have gained traction in 2005. There are now more than one RFP for ODP products being announced each month globally, and the report profiles the movements of the major operators within the ODP space. Efforts by device manufacturers to incorporate ODP features into their handsets, such as Motorola’s Screen3 and Nokia’s Active Idle and Preminet client, are also examined. In 2006, a second wave of heavyweight vendors are expected to enter the market, while in 2007 ARCchart predicts the wide acceptance of on-device services by the key industry players. Ultimately, however, the core technology of current ODP solutions will commoditise and ODP producers will have to innovate their way into new technology areas in order to continue delivering value.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Mobiles covet Google success - Newspaper Edition - Times Online: "Network operators want a lucrative slice of the pay-per-click advertising pie, but are they too impatient? By Paul Durman
AT the Caf�Royal hotel in London this month, pioneers of a fledgling industry gathered to discuss building a prosperous future.
The first Mobile Search & Discovery conference brought together mobile-phone and technology companies eager to repeat Google’s success. It is not hard to see the potential goldmine. Google has built a fast-growing and enormously valuable business by connecting internet users to advertisers. One of the many attractions of pay-per-click advertising, or paid search, is its measurabilit"
But Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s MSN are pitching their ads to an audience of “only” 1 billion personal-computer users. There are already more than 2 billion mobile-phone users in the world, and over the next few years far more will go online via the mobile internet rather than the PC.
Mobile-phone companies, therefore, see an opportunity to create a hugely profitable new medium for advertising and e-commerce. The mobile firms have some advantages over Google and Yahoo in choosing which ads to serve up. They know where their customers are; what they spend; and have a billing relationship with them.
Hutchison Whampoa, the Hong Kong conglomerate that owns 3, is one of those hoping to sprinkle some Google-style magic dust over the valuations of its mobile- phone businesses. It hopes that advertising-revenue prospects will pump up the price for a 3 Italia flotation.
Unsurprisingly, Google was the star turn at the conference. Listening to the debate, there is clearly a philosophical divide between Google and mobile firms that seek to ape its success.
Google already has a mobile search engine that is accessible by more modern and higher-end handsets. However, it is not yet running the sponsored links that generate the money for its fixed-line website. David Thevenon, Google’s head of European wireless partnerships, said: “Let’s throw the product out there and see what works for users. It’s a little bit early to look for links on a mobile phone. We want to be sure what the user wants first. We want to be sure we have a great product, and then find a way to monetise.”
This is at odds with the hard-nosed commercial attitude of many in the mobile industry, perhaps best typified by Dan Olschwang, chief executive of JumpTap, offering an unbranded mobile search engine to mobile operators.
Olschwang’s approach could be described as “monetise it and they will come”. He believes the network operators need to focus now on making money from search, rather than leaving it to the fixed-line world of Google and Yahoo.
With stock-market valuations depressed, said Olschwang, “the mobile industry is at a crossroads”.
“The opportunity that the mobile industry faces today is to embrace search and monetise it to create an upside (future growth). If we don’t do it, we will end up as a ‘bit pipe’.” In other words, merely as a transport mechanism for bits of data.
He is sceptical of Google’s apparent selflessness. Google was after a bigger slice of an advertising pie worth billions — a pie that fixed- line telecoms companies had already surrendered. “They have no incentive to operate with the carriers. I don’t see Google sharing revenues with BT or Deutsche Telekom”.
The objection to this is the relative success of Google and the mobile industry in generating demand for new products and services over the past five years. While Google has scored a runaway success, mobile firms have struggled to make meaningful revenue from picture- messaging, location-based services and song downloads.
AT the Caf�Royal hotel in London this month, pioneers of a fledgling industry gathered to discuss building a prosperous future.
The first Mobile Search & Discovery conference brought together mobile-phone and technology companies eager to repeat Google’s success. It is not hard to see the potential goldmine. Google has built a fast-growing and enormously valuable business by connecting internet users to advertisers. One of the many attractions of pay-per-click advertising, or paid search, is its measurabilit"
But Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s MSN are pitching their ads to an audience of “only” 1 billion personal-computer users. There are already more than 2 billion mobile-phone users in the world, and over the next few years far more will go online via the mobile internet rather than the PC.
Mobile-phone companies, therefore, see an opportunity to create a hugely profitable new medium for advertising and e-commerce. The mobile firms have some advantages over Google and Yahoo in choosing which ads to serve up. They know where their customers are; what they spend; and have a billing relationship with them.
Hutchison Whampoa, the Hong Kong conglomerate that owns 3, is one of those hoping to sprinkle some Google-style magic dust over the valuations of its mobile- phone businesses. It hopes that advertising-revenue prospects will pump up the price for a 3 Italia flotation.
Unsurprisingly, Google was the star turn at the conference. Listening to the debate, there is clearly a philosophical divide between Google and mobile firms that seek to ape its success.
Google already has a mobile search engine that is accessible by more modern and higher-end handsets. However, it is not yet running the sponsored links that generate the money for its fixed-line website. David Thevenon, Google’s head of European wireless partnerships, said: “Let’s throw the product out there and see what works for users. It’s a little bit early to look for links on a mobile phone. We want to be sure what the user wants first. We want to be sure we have a great product, and then find a way to monetise.”
This is at odds with the hard-nosed commercial attitude of many in the mobile industry, perhaps best typified by Dan Olschwang, chief executive of JumpTap, offering an unbranded mobile search engine to mobile operators.
Olschwang’s approach could be described as “monetise it and they will come”. He believes the network operators need to focus now on making money from search, rather than leaving it to the fixed-line world of Google and Yahoo.
With stock-market valuations depressed, said Olschwang, “the mobile industry is at a crossroads”.
“The opportunity that the mobile industry faces today is to embrace search and monetise it to create an upside (future growth). If we don’t do it, we will end up as a ‘bit pipe’.” In other words, merely as a transport mechanism for bits of data.
He is sceptical of Google’s apparent selflessness. Google was after a bigger slice of an advertising pie worth billions — a pie that fixed- line telecoms companies had already surrendered. “They have no incentive to operate with the carriers. I don’t see Google sharing revenues with BT or Deutsche Telekom”.
The objection to this is the relative success of Google and the mobile industry in generating demand for new products and services over the past five years. While Google has scored a runaway success, mobile firms have struggled to make meaningful revenue from picture- messaging, location-based services and song downloads.
TeleAtlas to offer 3D Maps of Major Cities | GPS Lodge.com
Map supplier TeleAtlas plans on shipping 3D map data of large European and American cities by the end of 2006 - this is a pretty interesting innovation and it follows some of the Google Earth type applications that allow you to see a very real life view of a city as you are moving through it. So, by the end of this year, TeleAtlas is planning on shipping these new maps to major GPS companies like TomTom and Cobra. The question is, who is planning on bringing this innovation to the market first. I would assume that you are starting to talk about even bigger hard drives to handle the information. The other question is will the thing be useful and easy to understand whil you are driving the confusing streets of an unknown city.
The folks over at My TomTom GO are reporting this information.
"At the Independent Blackberry User summit held at the Hilton in Amsterdam last Thursday, Leon van de Pas, TeleAtlas' salesmanager Europe, claimed that the conversion from 2D to 3D maps is the most important development in 2006. "We use six camera's on all our map-data-collecting mobilhomes, and we also measure the height of the buildings with a gyroscope. Before the end of the year, we'll add 3D environments of large European cities to our maps." In this 3D mode, images are projected on the buildings in the cities, so the mapping experience become extremely realistic. Hundreds of employees in India are currently busy inputting the images into databases. The technology that is used for this project is called "mobile mapping", and was developed by Polish based GeoInvent, a company that was bought by TeleAtlas last year."
ReadMore at My TomTom GO
Read More in: Automotive GPS | GPS News
Related Articles:
Map supplier TeleAtlas plans on shipping 3D map data of large European and American cities by the end of 2006 - this is a pretty interesting innovation and it follows some of the Google Earth type applications that allow you to see a very real life view of a city as you are moving through it. So, by the end of this year, TeleAtlas is planning on shipping these new maps to major GPS companies like TomTom and Cobra. The question is, who is planning on bringing this innovation to the market first. I would assume that you are starting to talk about even bigger hard drives to handle the information. The other question is will the thing be useful and easy to understand whil you are driving the confusing streets of an unknown city.
The folks over at My TomTom GO are reporting this information.
"At the Independent Blackberry User summit held at the Hilton in Amsterdam last Thursday, Leon van de Pas, TeleAtlas' salesmanager Europe, claimed that the conversion from 2D to 3D maps is the most important development in 2006. "We use six camera's on all our map-data-collecting mobilhomes, and we also measure the height of the buildings with a gyroscope. Before the end of the year, we'll add 3D environments of large European cities to our maps." In this 3D mode, images are projected on the buildings in the cities, so the mapping experience become extremely realistic. Hundreds of employees in India are currently busy inputting the images into databases. The technology that is used for this project is called "mobile mapping", and was developed by Polish based GeoInvent, a company that was bought by TeleAtlas last year."
ReadMore at My TomTom GO
Read More in: Automotive GPS | GPS News
Related Articles:
jeepx: GPS Discoveries: Cold Start and Aided GPS
Imagine that you wake up in a dark place without any known reference to help you figure out where you are or when. You will need to start getting your bearings by listening carefully to any sound, looking for clues.
That is pretty much how a GPS receiver "wakes up" after being moved hundreds of miles from its previous location, days or weeks after being used. It doesn't have a clue about its whereabouts.
So how does it figure out where it is so it can tell you?
Remember that a receiver determines its position by calculating the time a signal sent by a GPS satellite takes to reach it. But for that the receiver needs to know first where that satellite is located, precisely.
As you know already the faster a receiver can lock its current location, less time you will have to wait to start using its data. That's usually called Time To First Fix (TTFF).
Almanac & Ephemeris
Each satellite generates and broadcasts its own 1023-bit Pseudo Random Noise (PRN) codes, these are pseudo random sequences that a receiver knows about and tries to match by generating that same signal in order to identify a particular satellite. They also encode the time a signal is being transmitted. The receiver will need to find this signal in time (the signal is transmited at 1023 Mbits/sec) and frequency (added doppler effect from the satellite movement).
Each satellite is sending its PRC (Pseudo Random Code), position and current time 50 times per second. After locking up a signal the receiver will obtain this data and calculate the time difference from when the signal was sent to the Time of Arrival (TOA). The signal from a 4th satellite is used to calibrate the time in the receiver.
Included among the data received at this time are the almanac and ephemeris.
Almanac data is not very precise but valid for several months. A Factory Reset would require the download of a full almanac which might take up to 12.5 minutes. All GPS satelites broadcast almanac data from each other.
But each satellite broadcasts only its own ephemeris data which includes very precise orbital and clock correction data. The ephemeris data is used to calculate the satellite position for any time within the period of its orbit described by those ephemeris.
On a "cold start" the receiver knows "where to look" in the sky based on the almanac data available and will try to obtain ephemeris data from each visible satellite. That ephemeris data will be valid up to 4 hours. Every 30 seconds each satellite broadcasts its ephemeris. If your receiver is blocked while trying to obtain the data, it will have to start over in the next cycle.
On a "warm start" some ephemeris is already available and the receiver can almost "guess" its position and in a "hot start" the receiver has almost all of it readily available. This whole process can translate in minutes or seconds of wait depending in the kind and quality of data available for a receiver to obtain a fix.
Aided GPS
In an effort to drop the TTFF in general and particularly in poor visibility conditions, companies like Sirf and the privately owned Global Locate introduced mechanisms to help receivers in obtaining ephemeris data without the need for the usual wait associated with it.
Notice that there is a difference between Assisted and Aided GPS (both called AGPS to complicate things a bit). Aided GPS is "generally understood to be either ephemeris or almanac aiding". While Assisted GPS uses data from a wireless network infrastructure, sometimes down to location information itself based on the Cell ID from a mobile phone.
There is also a difference regarding where changes are made to provide this aid: at the control plane by modifying TCP/IP format within the actual wireless network infrastructure or at the user plane where no major upgrades are necessary and the distribution is made thru messages like SMS for example.
Global Locate uses Trimble survey grade reference receivers to build its own private reference network to "collect, format and redistribute live ephemeris". This data is then used to provide Long-Term Orbit (LTO) data based in orbit models that according to this PDF will provide very precise satellite ephemeris good for up to 10 days.
The HP 6500 PDA includes "Quick GPS Connection" software that makes use of Global Locate LTO data which can be obtained thru a cradle sync or downloaded from the Net. GpsPassion tested it against a SirfStarIII equiped receiver.
Motorola phones equipped with GPS receivers already make use of Sirf's SirfLoc servers through its iDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) to obtain aided information for fast fixes.
Sirf just announced InstantFixII, a mechanism similar to that provided by Global Locate where users will be able to download ephemeris good for up to 7 days for use with their receivers. In the same week that Sirf announced this service, GlobalLocate announced two patents just obtained covering the generation and distribution of LTO data. Let's hope they figure out a way to work together.
One of the selling points from LTO vendors is that knowing "where to look" for a signal a GPS receiver can use a lot less power to keep track of its location, from very weak signals and even under very poor visibility conditions, including indoors.
GpsPassion has a comparison of the Cold Start and Hot Start times for several GPS receivers for PocketPC's. For more info on Global Locate check this article from GPSWorld.
If you want more details about the operation of the GPS satellites check here, here and here (PowerPoint slides).
posted by gpsguy at 7:47 PM
0 Comments:
Imagine that you wake up in a dark place without any known reference to help you figure out where you are or when. You will need to start getting your bearings by listening carefully to any sound, looking for clues.
That is pretty much how a GPS receiver "wakes up" after being moved hundreds of miles from its previous location, days or weeks after being used. It doesn't have a clue about its whereabouts.
So how does it figure out where it is so it can tell you?
Remember that a receiver determines its position by calculating the time a signal sent by a GPS satellite takes to reach it. But for that the receiver needs to know first where that satellite is located, precisely.
As you know already the faster a receiver can lock its current location, less time you will have to wait to start using its data. That's usually called Time To First Fix (TTFF).
Almanac & Ephemeris
Each satellite generates and broadcasts its own 1023-bit Pseudo Random Noise (PRN) codes, these are pseudo random sequences that a receiver knows about and tries to match by generating that same signal in order to identify a particular satellite. They also encode the time a signal is being transmitted. The receiver will need to find this signal in time (the signal is transmited at 1023 Mbits/sec) and frequency (added doppler effect from the satellite movement).
Each satellite is sending its PRC (Pseudo Random Code), position and current time 50 times per second. After locking up a signal the receiver will obtain this data and calculate the time difference from when the signal was sent to the Time of Arrival (TOA). The signal from a 4th satellite is used to calibrate the time in the receiver.
Included among the data received at this time are the almanac and ephemeris.
Almanac data is not very precise but valid for several months. A Factory Reset would require the download of a full almanac which might take up to 12.5 minutes. All GPS satelites broadcast almanac data from each other.
But each satellite broadcasts only its own ephemeris data which includes very precise orbital and clock correction data. The ephemeris data is used to calculate the satellite position for any time within the period of its orbit described by those ephemeris.
On a "cold start" the receiver knows "where to look" in the sky based on the almanac data available and will try to obtain ephemeris data from each visible satellite. That ephemeris data will be valid up to 4 hours. Every 30 seconds each satellite broadcasts its ephemeris. If your receiver is blocked while trying to obtain the data, it will have to start over in the next cycle.
On a "warm start" some ephemeris is already available and the receiver can almost "guess" its position and in a "hot start" the receiver has almost all of it readily available. This whole process can translate in minutes or seconds of wait depending in the kind and quality of data available for a receiver to obtain a fix.
Aided GPS
In an effort to drop the TTFF in general and particularly in poor visibility conditions, companies like Sirf and the privately owned Global Locate introduced mechanisms to help receivers in obtaining ephemeris data without the need for the usual wait associated with it.
Notice that there is a difference between Assisted and Aided GPS (both called AGPS to complicate things a bit). Aided GPS is "generally understood to be either ephemeris or almanac aiding". While Assisted GPS uses data from a wireless network infrastructure, sometimes down to location information itself based on the Cell ID from a mobile phone.
There is also a difference regarding where changes are made to provide this aid: at the control plane by modifying TCP/IP format within the actual wireless network infrastructure or at the user plane where no major upgrades are necessary and the distribution is made thru messages like SMS for example.
Global Locate uses Trimble survey grade reference receivers to build its own private reference network to "collect, format and redistribute live ephemeris". This data is then used to provide Long-Term Orbit (LTO) data based in orbit models that according to this PDF will provide very precise satellite ephemeris good for up to 10 days.
The HP 6500 PDA includes "Quick GPS Connection" software that makes use of Global Locate LTO data which can be obtained thru a cradle sync or downloaded from the Net. GpsPassion tested it against a SirfStarIII equiped receiver.
Motorola phones equipped with GPS receivers already make use of Sirf's SirfLoc servers through its iDEN (Integrated Digital Enhanced Network) to obtain aided information for fast fixes.
Sirf just announced InstantFixII, a mechanism similar to that provided by Global Locate where users will be able to download ephemeris good for up to 7 days for use with their receivers. In the same week that Sirf announced this service, GlobalLocate announced two patents just obtained covering the generation and distribution of LTO data. Let's hope they figure out a way to work together.
One of the selling points from LTO vendors is that knowing "where to look" for a signal a GPS receiver can use a lot less power to keep track of its location, from very weak signals and even under very poor visibility conditions, including indoors.
GpsPassion has a comparison of the Cold Start and Hot Start times for several GPS receivers for PocketPC's. For more info on Global Locate check this article from GPSWorld.
If you want more details about the operation of the GPS satellites check here, here and here (PowerPoint slides).
posted by gpsguy at 7:47 PM
0 Comments:
jeepx: GPS Discoveries: A Map for your Blog
FeedMap lets you create a little map image based on the location you provide in a blog. I thought it would use the GeoTags that can be added to the META Tags of a webpage, but while submiting a blog feed it asks for either an address or latitude/longitude coordinates.
Click on Submit Blog under Options on the right navigation bar. In the same page you first provide the URL for your blog's feed. Enter a blog XML feed address, for example in my case the URL I get from FeedBurner's RSS 1.0 feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/JeepxGpsDiscoveries.rss.xml
Provide an address or latitude and longitude and your will be provided with a little code snippet that can be added to your page. Check the bottom right on this post to see it. You can check which blogs are around and events. It makes use of the MapPoint API provided by Microsoft.
posted by gpsguy at 6:34 PM
FeedMap lets you create a little map image based on the location you provide in a blog. I thought it would use the GeoTags that can be added to the META Tags of a webpage, but while submiting a blog feed it asks for either an address or latitude/longitude coordinates.
Click on Submit Blog under Options on the right navigation bar. In the same page you first provide the URL for your blog's feed. Enter a blog XML feed address, for example in my case the URL I get from FeedBurner's RSS 1.0 feed:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/JeepxGpsDiscoveries.rss.xml
Provide an address or latitude and longitude and your will be provided with a little code snippet that can be added to your page. Check the bottom right on this post to see it. You can check which blogs are around and events. It makes use of the MapPoint API provided by Microsoft.
posted by gpsguy at 6:34 PM
WCDMA/EDGE devices number 31
Dozens of manufacturers globally are launching new 3G/WCDMA devices to market in record numbers according to a new survey by GSA - the Global mobile Suppliers Association.
The GSA survey says that 272 WCDMA user devices (handsets, PC datacards, etc.) have launched in the market to January 6, 2006. This compares with 108 products one year ago, i.e. growth of over 150 percent. A total of 93 devices have been launched since mid-2005, confirming over 50 percent growth in the last 6 months.
The number of suppliers who have launched WCDMA products has almost doubled in 12 months, from 20 to 37.
80 percent of WCDMA devices in the market today are targeted for the global 3G market, compared to 73 percent six months ago, the remainder being focused on the FOMA market in Japan. The survey identifies several FOMA devices that are also compatible with WCDMA/GSM/GPRS networks worldwide to support international roaming.
This latest figure of 272 WCDMA devices includes 14 products, which support HSDPA for high-speed wireless broadband applications. WCDMA/HSDPA operators also emphasise the importance of GSM/EDGE for service continuity, and the number of devices that support WCDMA and GSM/EDGE has climbed to 31.
The pace of 3G commercialization globally is fuelled by WCDMA. GSA reported last month that 100 3G/WCDMA networks had launched commercial services in 42 countries.
The number of WCDMA subscribers passed 40 million in November 2005, an increase of 140 percent since end 2004, and is shortly expected to pass the 50 million milestone.
Related News
31 commercial WCDMA-EDGE networks in operation
WCDMA has 32 million users
One million subscribes to GSM service every day
116 EDGE networks go commercial
SK Telecom selects LGE, Nortel UMTS/HSDPA
33 networks offering Push to Talk over cellular
Dozens of manufacturers globally are launching new 3G/WCDMA devices to market in record numbers according to a new survey by GSA - the Global mobile Suppliers Association.
The GSA survey says that 272 WCDMA user devices (handsets, PC datacards, etc.) have launched in the market to January 6, 2006. This compares with 108 products one year ago, i.e. growth of over 150 percent. A total of 93 devices have been launched since mid-2005, confirming over 50 percent growth in the last 6 months.
The number of suppliers who have launched WCDMA products has almost doubled in 12 months, from 20 to 37.
80 percent of WCDMA devices in the market today are targeted for the global 3G market, compared to 73 percent six months ago, the remainder being focused on the FOMA market in Japan. The survey identifies several FOMA devices that are also compatible with WCDMA/GSM/GPRS networks worldwide to support international roaming.
This latest figure of 272 WCDMA devices includes 14 products, which support HSDPA for high-speed wireless broadband applications. WCDMA/HSDPA operators also emphasise the importance of GSM/EDGE for service continuity, and the number of devices that support WCDMA and GSM/EDGE has climbed to 31.
The pace of 3G commercialization globally is fuelled by WCDMA. GSA reported last month that 100 3G/WCDMA networks had launched commercial services in 42 countries.
The number of WCDMA subscribers passed 40 million in November 2005, an increase of 140 percent since end 2004, and is shortly expected to pass the 50 million milestone.
Related News
31 commercial WCDMA-EDGE networks in operation
WCDMA has 32 million users
One million subscribes to GSM service every day
116 EDGE networks go commercial
SK Telecom selects LGE, Nortel UMTS/HSDPA
33 networks offering Push to Talk over cellular
InformationWeek | Cell-Phone Services | 'Point And Search' Technology For Cell Phones Hits Japan | January 30, 2006: "Users can point their cell phones at 700,000 buildings, retailers, restaurants, banks, and historical sites throughout Japan to retrieve information.
By W. David Gardner
TechWeb News
Jan 30, 2006 05:44 PM
GeoVector Corp. said Monday that it has teamed up with Japan's Mapion to offer Mapion's cell phone searching technology for mobile phones in Japan. Mapion Local Search enables consumers to use their cell phones as point and search devices to call up information.
San Francisco-based GeoVector said users can simply point their cell phones at 700,000 buildings, retailers, restaurants, banks or historical sites throughout Japan to retrieve information.
'Soon, users will point their mobile phones at restaurants to get reviews, point at billboards to shop at the advertiser's website, point at a movie poster to buy tickets, or play a game by pointing at their friends,' said GeoVector president John Ellenby, in a statement.
The service was initially developed for the KDDI network in Japan and is available for use with CDMA-equipped phones with GPS and integrated compass capability, according to GeoVector.
Owned by CyberMap Japan, Mapion developed mapping technology for several firms including Yahoo, AOL Japan, and Excite Japan, GeoVector said. GeoVector provides its pointing-based and spatial search engine technology for the application.
E-Mail This Article | Print This Article | Discuss Thi"
By W. David Gardner
TechWeb News
Jan 30, 2006 05:44 PM
GeoVector Corp. said Monday that it has teamed up with Japan's Mapion to offer Mapion's cell phone searching technology for mobile phones in Japan. Mapion Local Search enables consumers to use their cell phones as point and search devices to call up information.
San Francisco-based GeoVector said users can simply point their cell phones at 700,000 buildings, retailers, restaurants, banks or historical sites throughout Japan to retrieve information.
'Soon, users will point their mobile phones at restaurants to get reviews, point at billboards to shop at the advertiser's website, point at a movie poster to buy tickets, or play a game by pointing at their friends,' said GeoVector president John Ellenby, in a statement.
The service was initially developed for the KDDI network in Japan and is available for use with CDMA-equipped phones with GPS and integrated compass capability, according to GeoVector.
Owned by CyberMap Japan, Mapion developed mapping technology for several firms including Yahoo, AOL Japan, and Excite Japan, GeoVector said. GeoVector provides its pointing-based and spatial search engine technology for the application.
E-Mail This Article | Print This Article | Discuss Thi"
thinkd2c
" Verizon Wireless Introduces VZ Navigator, Providing Location-Based Service For Consumers"
From the press release:
"VZ NavigatorTM (is) a new tool for customers that gives them access to a wide array of Location Based Services (LBS) options, including mapping, audible turn-by-turn navigation and the ability to find over 14 million points of interest.
Initially available on the new Motorola V325, VZ Navigator is perfect for road warriors who are constantly on-the-go, allowing them to see a map of their current location or an address in the U.S., locate places such as restaurants, gas stations, banks and other points-of-interest relative to their location, plus hear turn-by-turn navigation with audible voice directions to an address in the U.S. VZ Navigator will help Verizon Wireless customers get to where they are going, easily and efficiently.
With VZ Navigator, customers get all the features of an advanced navigation system on their mobile phone at a fraction of the price of other GPS devices and systems. VZ Navigator is available in the getGOING shopping aisle of the Get It Now virtual store beginning today for $9.99 for unlimited monthly access, or $2.99 for 24-hour use. Customers can download the application directly to their Motorola V325."
posted by daniel davenport at 9:47 AM
0 Comments:
" Verizon Wireless Introduces VZ Navigator, Providing Location-Based Service For Consumers"
From the press release:
"VZ NavigatorTM (is) a new tool for customers that gives them access to a wide array of Location Based Services (LBS) options, including mapping, audible turn-by-turn navigation and the ability to find over 14 million points of interest.
Initially available on the new Motorola V325, VZ Navigator is perfect for road warriors who are constantly on-the-go, allowing them to see a map of their current location or an address in the U.S., locate places such as restaurants, gas stations, banks and other points-of-interest relative to their location, plus hear turn-by-turn navigation with audible voice directions to an address in the U.S. VZ Navigator will help Verizon Wireless customers get to where they are going, easily and efficiently.
With VZ Navigator, customers get all the features of an advanced navigation system on their mobile phone at a fraction of the price of other GPS devices and systems. VZ Navigator is available in the getGOING shopping aisle of the Get It Now virtual store beginning today for $9.99 for unlimited monthly access, or $2.99 for 24-hour use. Customers can download the application directly to their Motorola V325."
posted by daniel davenport at 9:47 AM
0 Comments:
Mobile Monday - Location Based Services
The February meeting of Silicon Valley Mobile Monday is going to be focused on Location Based Services:
What: February 2006 Mobile Monday (Location Based Services)
When: February 6th, 2006 7:00pm
Where: Dogpatch Studios, 991 Tennessee Street, San Francisco, CA
Who: Anyone interested in mobility
Cost: Nothing!
I’ve been running into a lot of companies either with location based services already out or looking to add some kind of location based component to their offerings. Normally the first question is “what method of getting location information should I be looking at?” In some systems the device itself has a GPS unit built in and is capable of determining it’s own location, in others it relies on the network to deliver information about the location of the unit.
Part of the reason we’re seeing such a surge of location based activity in the US right now is because the targeted date for phase 2 of the enhanced 911 service for wireless was the end of 2005. The second phase required “far more precise location information, within 50 to 300 meters in most cases.” However, for the carriers that’s only half of the equation. Even if they have the ability to deliver location information to emergency services, they want to put some kind of billing around the service in order to provide it to subscribers.
There’s still a lot of uncertainty with respect to what that business model looks like. Is it a charge per use model where the user pays for each and every request their handset makes for location information? Is it an add-on service the user adds for a flat fee independent of the usage patterns? Is it something that gets charged on an application by application basis? The questions there are mostly undecided even on a carrier by carrier basis, forget about the industry as a whole.
So even though the deadline has passed already for the E911 technology being in place, it hasn’t delivered anywhere near the nationwide standard location service that I think some people were hoping for. What should developers count on then when developing location based applications? That’s one of the questions I hope to get answered by fantastic lineup of presenters Greg Isetta from AutoDesk pulled together for the event.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 at 11:30 am and is filed under Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One Response to “February Mobile Monday - Location Based Services”
C. Enrique Ortiz Says:
January 31st, 2006 at 2:40 pm
Good topic.
Location is actually one of the upcoming topics for MoMo Austin…
About why location seems to be picking up, yes, the answer is related to the e911 mandate, but the reason is finally picking up is because finally, the local APIs are getting exposed to product developers — they have been there for a while but access to them very difficult. And this is important, as “local” method is more cost effective (and accurate) than existing carrier-based MPS systems.
ceo
Leave a Reply
The February meeting of Silicon Valley Mobile Monday is going to be focused on Location Based Services:
What: February 2006 Mobile Monday (Location Based Services)
When: February 6th, 2006 7:00pm
Where: Dogpatch Studios, 991 Tennessee Street, San Francisco, CA
Who: Anyone interested in mobility
Cost: Nothing!
I’ve been running into a lot of companies either with location based services already out or looking to add some kind of location based component to their offerings. Normally the first question is “what method of getting location information should I be looking at?” In some systems the device itself has a GPS unit built in and is capable of determining it’s own location, in others it relies on the network to deliver information about the location of the unit.
Part of the reason we’re seeing such a surge of location based activity in the US right now is because the targeted date for phase 2 of the enhanced 911 service for wireless was the end of 2005. The second phase required “far more precise location information, within 50 to 300 meters in most cases.” However, for the carriers that’s only half of the equation. Even if they have the ability to deliver location information to emergency services, they want to put some kind of billing around the service in order to provide it to subscribers.
There’s still a lot of uncertainty with respect to what that business model looks like. Is it a charge per use model where the user pays for each and every request their handset makes for location information? Is it an add-on service the user adds for a flat fee independent of the usage patterns? Is it something that gets charged on an application by application basis? The questions there are mostly undecided even on a carrier by carrier basis, forget about the industry as a whole.
So even though the deadline has passed already for the E911 technology being in place, it hasn’t delivered anywhere near the nationwide standard location service that I think some people were hoping for. What should developers count on then when developing location based applications? That’s one of the questions I hope to get answered by fantastic lineup of presenters Greg Isetta from AutoDesk pulled together for the event.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 at 11:30 am and is filed under Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
One Response to “February Mobile Monday - Location Based Services”
C. Enrique Ortiz Says:
January 31st, 2006 at 2:40 pm
Good topic.
Location is actually one of the upcoming topics for MoMo Austin…
About why location seems to be picking up, yes, the answer is related to the e911 mandate, but the reason is finally picking up is because finally, the local APIs are getting exposed to product developers — they have been there for a while but access to them very difficult. And this is important, as “local” method is more cost effective (and accurate) than existing carrier-based MPS systems.
ceo
Leave a Reply
jeepx: GPS Discoveries: GeoVector: Point & Shop
GeoVector: Point & Shop
You point your phone/camera/gps to a restaurant in some part of town. Push some keys and is presented with a review about it that you read right there.
Afterwards, you are walking around town and find this nice building and want to know its history. Same thing. Point and read about it.
Ok, when? Where?
Now. In Japan.
GeoVector announced (with its partner Mapion) that KDDI mobile phone users in Japan can now point to a buiding and obtain information about it using "Mapion Local Search for Mobile Phones".
Based in San Francisco and with offices in New Zealand and Japan, GeoVector holds quite a few significant patents covering augmented reality, 3D search engines and virtual reality systems. In Japan, they were able to connect with companies that had the hardware necessary and customers willing to use its service.
Phones and PDA's with cameras, embedded GPS and integrated compass (like the Sony-Ericsson CDMA-based W21S) are all over the place in Japan and that was a natural fit for GeoVector's technology. The idea is to provide even more Location Based Services where someone can point and buy some product or service, like a movie ticket or parking space.
Ok, when do we get it here??
Answering my own question, I found a column written by Rafe Neddleman on Release 1.0 where Peter Ellenby, the founder of GeoVector answers that it "will not be soon".
Peter points Semacode.org for an example of a non-GPS based geo-reference technique.
[Based on report from Wireless IQ]
posted by gpsguy at 12:39 PM
0 Comments:
GeoVector: Point & Shop
You point your phone/camera/gps to a restaurant in some part of town. Push some keys and is presented with a review about it that you read right there.
Afterwards, you are walking around town and find this nice building and want to know its history. Same thing. Point and read about it.
Ok, when? Where?
Now. In Japan.
GeoVector announced (with its partner Mapion) that KDDI mobile phone users in Japan can now point to a buiding and obtain information about it using "Mapion Local Search for Mobile Phones".
Based in San Francisco and with offices in New Zealand and Japan, GeoVector holds quite a few significant patents covering augmented reality, 3D search engines and virtual reality systems. In Japan, they were able to connect with companies that had the hardware necessary and customers willing to use its service.
Phones and PDA's with cameras, embedded GPS and integrated compass (like the Sony-Ericsson CDMA-based W21S) are all over the place in Japan and that was a natural fit for GeoVector's technology. The idea is to provide even more Location Based Services where someone can point and buy some product or service, like a movie ticket or parking space.
Ok, when do we get it here??
Answering my own question, I found a column written by Rafe Neddleman on Release 1.0 where Peter Ellenby, the founder of GeoVector answers that it "will not be soon".
Peter points Semacode.org for an example of a non-GPS based geo-reference technique.
[Based on report from Wireless IQ]
posted by gpsguy at 12:39 PM
0 Comments:
My Personal Geekzone Blogroll
A few months back I've posted a Newsgator Enterprise Server review. One of the interesting features in that software is the locations and how you can extract information from each of these into different formats.
These formats include OPML, Headlines and Blogroll.
In OPML the server provides a link to each user's OPML file, a reading list containing a link to each RSS feed in the subscriber's account. Headlines provides a Javascript with just the healines for each RSS feed in the account, and Blogroll is Javascript that outputs a single list with all RSS feeds in the account.
The cool stuff is that since this is created from the Newsgator Enterprise Server database it is always up to date.
Below is my Blogroll (you need Javascript enabled in your browser to see it). Since the software runs on my personal server at home it should be up almost all the time. But if it fails to load, try a little later - yes, we do have some downtime in our home network for backup, defragmentation et all.
.Net Jonesie
1SRC News
3G News Today
ActiveWin.com Headlines
Adventures In SoftwareLand
Alexander Gorlach
AlwaysOn Network
Anti-Malware Engineering Team
Asa Dotzler - Firefox and more
Astraware
Avaya: IP Telephony
Avaya: Mobility
bargainPDA.com PDA News and Reviews
BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition
Between the Lines
Bink.nu
Bit-cycling
Blog Business Summit
Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Blog:: Craig Pringle
blogging help - pro bloggers Arieanna & Ianiv
Blueserker
BostonPocketPC.com
brainsluice
Brighthand
BT plc news headlines (English)
Burn This! - The FeedBurner Weblog
Business Opportunities Weblog
Business Wire 2006 International CES news
CanalPDA.com
CasdraBlog
Chitika Blog
Chris Johnson
Chris Pirillo
ChristianLindholm.com
CNET News.com
CNN.com
Community News
Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News
CoolSmartPhone.com News
Creating Passionate Users
Daily Gadget - 9,15,19,25,28,33,42
Daily News as it breaks from telecoms.com
Dan Gillmor's blog
Daniel Wissa's .NET Journey
Darla Mack
Darryl Burling
Darryl Burling @ Work
Daryll McDade - The High School Guy
Dave Massy's WebLog
Dave's PDA Place
David Stennett's Tech Blog
David's Tech/Business Blog
del.icio.us/tag/mobitopia
Depot
digg / technology / digg
digg search
Digital Media Thoughts
Dilbert
dottocomu
dsr-r3
DuaneFields.com
Dylan Greene dot com
eHome Fusion
Engadget
ePDABlog.com
eWEEK Technology News
exceptionz
Ezurio News
FeedBlitz News
Feeding Feedster with Scott Rafer
FeedMail
Feld Thoughts
flashenabled.com phillip m. torrone
Flatlander
FOXPOP | Articles
freitasm FeedBurner Personalized Feed
F-Secure Antivirus Research Weblog
Gear Live
Geek.com
Geekdom starts here
geekzone (31 Members)
Geekzone blog
Geekzone forums: Announcements
Geekzone forums: Bluetooth
Geekzone forums: CDMA (including CDMA 1xRTT, CDMA EV-DO)
Geekzone forums: Geekzone
Geekzone forums: GSM (including GPRS and WCDMA/UMTS/3GSM)
Geekzone forums: Home Theatre
Geekzone forums: Introductions
Geekzone forums: Laptops
Geekzone forums: Linux
Geekzone forums: Mac OS
Geekzone forums: MP3 players
Geekzone forums: Off topic
Geekzone forums: Palm OS devices
Geekzone forums: Palm OS Software
Geekzone forums: Personalisation
Geekzone forums: RIM Blackberry
Geekzone forums: Rocom Wireless
Geekzone forums: SMS and MMS
Geekzone forums: Symbian Smartphones
Geekzone forums: Telecom New Zealand
Geekzone forums: TelstraClear
Geekzone forums: Vodafone New Zealand
Geekzone forums: VoIP
Geekzone forums: Wi-Fi
Geekzone forums: Windows
Geekzone forums: Windows CE .Net
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Pocket PC
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Pocket PC Software
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Portable Media Center
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Ruggedised Pocket PC
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Smartphone
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Smartphone Software
Geekzone forums: Wireless New Zealand
Geekzone forums: Woosh
Geekzone forums: Zaurus
Geekzone New Software: Palm OS
Geekzone New Software: Windows Mobile Pocket PC
Geekzone New Software: Windows Mobile Smartphone
Geekzone New Software: Windows Tablet PC
geekzone -source:geekzone - Google News
geekzone.co.nz - Top 25 Flash Memory
geekzone.co.nz - Top 25 PDA Accessories
geekzone.co.nz - Top 25 PDAs
Geekzone: IT, mobility, wireless and handheld news
Gizmodo
Gnomedex
Google Press Releases
Greg Reinacker's Weblog
GSM Mobile NZ
GSM World Focus Online
Handy Entertainment News
Hewlett-Packard News
Home Office Voice - Home Business on the Web
HP Newsroom
I, Cringely @ PBS.org
IDC Press Releases
IEBlog
Ilium Software News
Indexed Forever
inessential.com
INFO Online - Plantão INFO
Information Manager Journal
infoSync World
Inside AdSense
Inside Google Desktop
Inside Google Sitemaps
Intel Press Room
it's getting better
J2ME Brings Joy to Me
James Clarke Blog
Jamie Jamison On Technology
Japan Corporate News
Japan Corporate News
Japan Corporate News
jasonspage.net
jb's Blog
JD's Weblog
Jedro Blogo
Jeff Sandquist - Microsoft Evangelist
JenSense - Making Sense of Contextual Advertising
jkOnTheRun
joereger.com
John Battelle's Searchblog
john goodall
John Martin's Blog
Joi Ito's Stuff
Julie and Seth
Keith Nicholas
Kevin Daly
KoKoRo
Lance Tracey -
Last 5 pages updated on the MVP Web site
Latest Corporate News from Sony New Zealand
Latest Product News from Sony New Zealand
Learning Photoshop
Let the Good Times Roll--by Guy Kawasaki
LonghornBlogs.com
Lukas Svoboda's Weblog
Magazines live feed
Marc's Voice
marusin.com ~ ala carte
Master of 500 Hats
Matthew Gifford
mattw.fn_blog()
mfoundry blog
Micro Persuasion
Microsoft PressPass - Press Releases
Microsoft Windows MED Community Goings-On
Mike Krisher's Blog
Mikehall's Embedded WebLog
Mindjet - What's New
Mindjet Insider Newsletters
Mini-Microsoft
mipcdebolsillo.com -
MIX.06 Blog
MixCast Live
Mobile Burn
Mobile Community Design
Mobile Gadget News
Mobile Magazine
Mobile Phone Fan
Mobile Technology Magazine
mobilePASSION
Mobileslash
MobileTracker
Mobility Today
Mobilog
Most Recent KBs for Microsoft Windows Mobile software for Pocket PCs
Most Recent KBs for Microsoft Windows Mobile software for Smartphone
Most Recent KBs for Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Most Recent KBs for Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
MrDee
MSDN Blogs
MSDN Subscriber Downloads
MSDN: Mobile Developer Center
msmobiles.com
MSN Search's WebLog
MTekk IT Services
Multi-Media Me
My So Called... (Research|Life)
MyWallop RSS feed for Mauricio Freitas
Nathan Mercer's blog
New Media Medicine
New Software: Linux
New Software: PSP
New Software: Windows CE .Net
NewLC
news
News@Cisco: News Releases
NewsFactor Network
Niall Kennedy's Weblog
Nick Bradbury
Nick Denton
Nigel Parker's Outside Line
nothing really important.
NTT DoCoMo
Official Google Blog
Onfolio.Blog
Opera Press Releases
Outsell I-TechNow
Owen Allen (MSFT PacWest)
Pages updated on the MVP Web site in last 10 days
Palm Boulevard
Palm OS User Groups
PalmFocus
PalmInfocenter.com
palmOSCentral.com - Welcome to palmOSCentral.com
palmsolo: Geeking for Jesus
PalmSource Developer Announcements
PalmSource Press Releases
Paul Andrew
Paul Golding's Weblog on Wireless
PDALIVE.com
PDAntic Blog
PDAStreet
PDAToday
PDC Bloggers
PDC05: Developer Powered
Peter Foot
Phil Cockfield - Thinking Aloud
Philips Corporate - Press Releases
Phone Scoop - Latest News
Pocket PC Addict
Pocket PC magazine
Pocket PC Thoughts
PocketGamer
pocketnow.com
PocketPCTools.com
Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women
PPCW.Net - Where Mobility meets Wireless
PR Leap - Computers News Releases
PR Leap - Consumer Electronics News Releases
PR Leap - Internet and New Media News Releases
PR Leap - Software News Releases
PR Leap - Technology News Releases
PR Leap - Telecom News Releases
Presentation Zen
Press Releases
PROneTworks Software News
PROneTworks Tech News
PRWeb: Technology Telecommunications
PubSub PubStats for geekzone.co.nz
PubSub: Geekzone
Random Thoughts
Reel Reviews Radio
Reiter's Camera Phone Report
Reiter's Wireless Data Web Log
Rick Cooper, The PDA Pro
Rocom Wireless
Rod Drury
RojoBlog
Royal Alert
Russell Beattie Notebook
Scott Beaudreau's Weblog
Scott Gatz's Blog
Scott McMullan: ehick
Scripting News
Sean McBreen's WebLog
SeanBohan.com
seattleduck
Share Skype
Sheila News
Silicon Valley, Technology, Media InfoTalk
Simeon's Bits
simplegeek
Slashdot
Smartphone France ...
Smartphone Thoughts
SnapStream Blog
SparkCasting.com
Start.com News
Sun Microsystems News
SymbianOne - The Wireless & Mobile Developer Portal for Symbian OS, series 60, and UIQ device users and developers
Syringe.Net.Nz
Tablet PC Buzz
TachyonXero
Tapland
Techbook
TechCrunch
Technology [PRNJ]
Technology Matters
Technology News (via PRIMEZONE)
Technovia
The Chicken Coop
The Coding Journal of a Cyberfox
The Common Sense of Sue
The Jason Calacanis Weblog
The Left Channel
The Louverture Project Blog
The Mindjet Blog
The Moving Picture
The Post Money Value
The Raw Feed Archives
The Register
The Tablet PC
The Tablet PCs Weblog
The Unofficial Bluetooth Weblog
This Is Mobile
Thom Foss - Weblog
Threads by The Channel 9 Team
Tim Haines
Tim Howell - Technology Thoughts in Words
tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog
TinyScreenfuls.com
Tips n' Tricks
Tom Conrad
TreoCentral
Treonauts | Dedicated to your Treo 700 & 650. The Perfect All-In-One Communications, Information & Entertainment Tool.
TrotterNet
Ubergizmo
Ulrich's SOAP Box
Unbound Spiral
VGAPocketPC.com
Virtual PC Guy's WebLog
weblogs.oreilly.com
WebTalk Radio
Wi-Fi Networking News
WinAjuda
Windows Connected
Windows Mobile 24/7
Windows Mobile Team Blog
WindowsForDevices.com
Wired News
Wireless Business Applications
Wireless NewsFactor
Wireless Technology Headlines
Wondiring
WorkHappy.net: killer resources for entrepreneurs
www.canalpda.com
www.howardchui.com
Xooglers
Yahoo! Search blog
A few months back I've posted a Newsgator Enterprise Server review. One of the interesting features in that software is the locations and how you can extract information from each of these into different formats.
These formats include OPML, Headlines and Blogroll.
In OPML the server provides a link to each user's OPML file, a reading list containing a link to each RSS feed in the subscriber's account. Headlines provides a Javascript with just the healines for each RSS feed in the account, and Blogroll is Javascript that outputs a single list with all RSS feeds in the account.
The cool stuff is that since this is created from the Newsgator Enterprise Server database it is always up to date.
Below is my Blogroll (you need Javascript enabled in your browser to see it). Since the software runs on my personal server at home it should be up almost all the time. But if it fails to load, try a little later - yes, we do have some downtime in our home network for backup, defragmentation et all.
.Net Jonesie
1SRC News
3G News Today
ActiveWin.com Headlines
Adventures In SoftwareLand
Alexander Gorlach
AlwaysOn Network
Anti-Malware Engineering Team
Asa Dotzler - Firefox and more
Astraware
Avaya: IP Telephony
Avaya: Mobility
bargainPDA.com PDA News and Reviews
BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition
Between the Lines
Bink.nu
Bit-cycling
Blog Business Summit
Blog Tips at ProBlogger
Blog:: Craig Pringle
blogging help - pro bloggers Arieanna & Ianiv
Blueserker
BostonPocketPC.com
brainsluice
Brighthand
BT plc news headlines (English)
Burn This! - The FeedBurner Weblog
Business Opportunities Weblog
Business Wire 2006 International CES news
CanalPDA.com
CasdraBlog
Chitika Blog
Chris Johnson
Chris Pirillo
ChristianLindholm.com
CNET News.com
CNN.com
Community News
Computerworld Mobile/Wireless News
CoolSmartPhone.com News
Creating Passionate Users
Daily Gadget - 9,15,19,25,28,33,42
Daily News as it breaks from telecoms.com
Dan Gillmor's blog
Daniel Wissa's .NET Journey
Darla Mack
Darryl Burling
Darryl Burling @ Work
Daryll McDade - The High School Guy
Dave Massy's WebLog
Dave's PDA Place
David Stennett's Tech Blog
David's Tech/Business Blog
del.icio.us/tag/mobitopia
Depot
digg / technology / digg
digg search
Digital Media Thoughts
Dilbert
dottocomu
dsr-r3
DuaneFields.com
Dylan Greene dot com
eHome Fusion
Engadget
ePDABlog.com
eWEEK Technology News
exceptionz
Ezurio News
FeedBlitz News
Feeding Feedster with Scott Rafer
FeedMail
Feld Thoughts
flashenabled.com phillip m. torrone
Flatlander
FOXPOP | Articles
freitasm FeedBurner Personalized Feed
F-Secure Antivirus Research Weblog
Gear Live
Geek.com
Geekdom starts here
geekzone (31 Members)
Geekzone blog
Geekzone forums: Announcements
Geekzone forums: Bluetooth
Geekzone forums: CDMA (including CDMA 1xRTT, CDMA EV-DO)
Geekzone forums: Geekzone
Geekzone forums: GSM (including GPRS and WCDMA/UMTS/3GSM)
Geekzone forums: Home Theatre
Geekzone forums: Introductions
Geekzone forums: Laptops
Geekzone forums: Linux
Geekzone forums: Mac OS
Geekzone forums: MP3 players
Geekzone forums: Off topic
Geekzone forums: Palm OS devices
Geekzone forums: Palm OS Software
Geekzone forums: Personalisation
Geekzone forums: RIM Blackberry
Geekzone forums: Rocom Wireless
Geekzone forums: SMS and MMS
Geekzone forums: Symbian Smartphones
Geekzone forums: Telecom New Zealand
Geekzone forums: TelstraClear
Geekzone forums: Vodafone New Zealand
Geekzone forums: VoIP
Geekzone forums: Wi-Fi
Geekzone forums: Windows
Geekzone forums: Windows CE .Net
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Pocket PC
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Pocket PC Software
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Portable Media Center
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Ruggedised Pocket PC
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Smartphone
Geekzone forums: Windows Mobile Smartphone Software
Geekzone forums: Wireless New Zealand
Geekzone forums: Woosh
Geekzone forums: Zaurus
Geekzone New Software: Palm OS
Geekzone New Software: Windows Mobile Pocket PC
Geekzone New Software: Windows Mobile Smartphone
Geekzone New Software: Windows Tablet PC
geekzone -source:geekzone - Google News
geekzone.co.nz - Top 25 Flash Memory
geekzone.co.nz - Top 25 PDA Accessories
geekzone.co.nz - Top 25 PDAs
Geekzone: IT, mobility, wireless and handheld news
Gizmodo
Gnomedex
Google Press Releases
Greg Reinacker's Weblog
GSM Mobile NZ
GSM World Focus Online
Handy Entertainment News
Hewlett-Packard News
Home Office Voice - Home Business on the Web
HP Newsroom
I, Cringely @ PBS.org
IDC Press Releases
IEBlog
Ilium Software News
Indexed Forever
inessential.com
INFO Online - Plantão INFO
Information Manager Journal
infoSync World
Inside AdSense
Inside Google Desktop
Inside Google Sitemaps
Intel Press Room
it's getting better
J2ME Brings Joy to Me
James Clarke Blog
Jamie Jamison On Technology
Japan Corporate News
Japan Corporate News
Japan Corporate News
jasonspage.net
jb's Blog
JD's Weblog
Jedro Blogo
Jeff Sandquist - Microsoft Evangelist
JenSense - Making Sense of Contextual Advertising
jkOnTheRun
joereger.com
John Battelle's Searchblog
john goodall
John Martin's Blog
Joi Ito's Stuff
Julie and Seth
Keith Nicholas
Kevin Daly
KoKoRo
Lance Tracey -
Last 5 pages updated on the MVP Web site
Latest Corporate News from Sony New Zealand
Latest Product News from Sony New Zealand
Learning Photoshop
Let the Good Times Roll--by Guy Kawasaki
LonghornBlogs.com
Lukas Svoboda's Weblog
Magazines live feed
Marc's Voice
marusin.com ~ ala carte
Master of 500 Hats
Matthew Gifford
mattw.fn_blog()
mfoundry blog
Micro Persuasion
Microsoft PressPass - Press Releases
Microsoft Windows MED Community Goings-On
Mike Krisher's Blog
Mikehall's Embedded WebLog
Mindjet - What's New
Mindjet Insider Newsletters
Mini-Microsoft
mipcdebolsillo.com -
MIX.06 Blog
MixCast Live
Mobile Burn
Mobile Community Design
Mobile Gadget News
Mobile Magazine
Mobile Phone Fan
Mobile Technology Magazine
mobilePASSION
Mobileslash
MobileTracker
Mobility Today
Mobilog
Most Recent KBs for Microsoft Windows Mobile software for Pocket PCs
Most Recent KBs for Microsoft Windows Mobile software for Smartphone
Most Recent KBs for Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Most Recent KBs for Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition
MrDee
MSDN Blogs
MSDN Subscriber Downloads
MSDN: Mobile Developer Center
msmobiles.com
MSN Search's WebLog
MTekk IT Services
Multi-Media Me
My So Called... (Research|Life)
MyWallop RSS feed for Mauricio Freitas
Nathan Mercer's blog
New Media Medicine
New Software: Linux
New Software: PSP
New Software: Windows CE .Net
NewLC
news
News@Cisco: News Releases
NewsFactor Network
Niall Kennedy's Weblog
Nick Bradbury
Nick Denton
Nigel Parker's Outside Line
nothing really important.
NTT DoCoMo
Official Google Blog
Onfolio.Blog
Opera Press Releases
Outsell I-TechNow
Owen Allen (MSFT PacWest)
Pages updated on the MVP Web site in last 10 days
Palm Boulevard
Palm OS User Groups
PalmFocus
PalmInfocenter.com
palmOSCentral.com - Welcome to palmOSCentral.com
palmsolo: Geeking for Jesus
PalmSource Developer Announcements
PalmSource Press Releases
Paul Andrew
Paul Golding's Weblog on Wireless
PDALIVE.com
PDAntic Blog
PDAStreet
PDAToday
PDC Bloggers
PDC05: Developer Powered
Peter Foot
Phil Cockfield - Thinking Aloud
Philips Corporate - Press Releases
Phone Scoop - Latest News
Pocket PC Addict
Pocket PC magazine
Pocket PC Thoughts
PocketGamer
pocketnow.com
PocketPCTools.com
Popgadget: Personal Tech for Women
PPCW.Net - Where Mobility meets Wireless
PR Leap - Computers News Releases
PR Leap - Consumer Electronics News Releases
PR Leap - Internet and New Media News Releases
PR Leap - Software News Releases
PR Leap - Technology News Releases
PR Leap - Telecom News Releases
Presentation Zen
Press Releases
PROneTworks Software News
PROneTworks Tech News
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GlobalSat BC-337 Compact Flash GPS Receiver Review
This is one of the latest releases from GlobalSat, and it certainly lives up to expectations. The results were very nice, and the unit outperforms the LeadTek CF 9534 unit I reviewed last year, mainly because of the use of the SiRFstar III chipset.
The SiRFstart III is the same chip used in the fabulous GlobalSat BT-338 I reviewed and compared around the same time as the LeadTek CF 9534. This chipset is well known for its fast "Time To Fix", with a cold start of 42 seconds, warm start of 38 seconds, hot start of 1 second and a reacquisition time of 0.1 seconds.
This unit has a single red LED which is solid when on and searching, and flashing when a fix has been obtained - valuable confirmation of the operational status of the hardware.
The unit I received for review came with a PCMCIA to CF adaptor card, for use with laptops, and a 5 metre long magnetic based external antenna which can plug into the right hand side of the receiver. These are listed as optional extras, so check when you purchase.
I didn't feel the need to use the antenna during any of my evaluation however as the unit performed well on its own, even inside my car. I did try it out, but the improvement was marginal. The antenna may be useful however in some situations with coated windscreens, in trucks, boats, etc..
Without using the external antenna, the Globalsat BC-337 was fast to pick up 3 or 4 satelintes from within my lounge within 45 seconds from a cold start. The initial fix was a bit variable, but it continued to pickup plenty of additional sattelites over the next few minutes, and the fix stabilised right on target at stayed that way, consistent with the BT-338.
Quickly tracking 4 sattelites from cold start - enough to to get a fix
Initial fix from a cold start varied a bit, but stabilised as more sattelites were aquired.
Tracking this many sattelites so quickly shows the sensitivity of the SiRFstarIII chip.
The manufacturer claims 5-10 meter accuracy, which seems consistent with my observations as the unit could track me from one side of our deck to the other. They also say the unit can do single satelite updates in reduced visibility, has superior urban canyon performance, and a foliage lock for weak signal tracking.
During one drive through the urban canyon of The Terrace here in Wellington, the unit tracked reasonably well. But whilst staying stationary for a while in the thick of the tall buildings, the reflected signals still managed to play havoc with the location engine, and my reported fix moved around a fair bit. Once I started moving again, the accuracy returned.
Excellent tracking between tall buildings whilst moving. Not so good standing in one place.
I took it on a similar road trip as have done with the BT-338 and the CF-9534. Overall I found it pretty much on a par with the BT-338 for accuracy, just tracking a fraction looser in some situations, but pretty good none the less.
The windy hills of Northland (left BC-337, right BT-338), about the same.
Along the waterfont buildings, the BC-337 (left) seems to overshoot.
A problem with plug-in GPS units in general is that the unit is switched off when the PDA is switched off. Not keeping the GPS unit powered doesn’t give the chipset a chance to refine, optimize, and track weaker sattelite signals, and means you have to wait for the unit to reacquire its fix each time you wish to simply check your location (say, when hiking). A rechargeable battery onboard would be an improvement, giving the ability to leave the GPS unit on and tracking even when your PDA device is switched off. The unit is stated to use about 90mA of power, so a pretty low drain on batteries, but still could reduce PDA operating times by up to 20% since the PDA itself needs to be on to power the card device.
Also, if you only have a single slot on your PDA, then you will have to rely on internal PDA memory for your actual maps, as no external card storage will be available. GlobalSat have brought out a SD slot GPS unit with onboard memory for maps, so I expect this will become more common over time. My iPAQ hx4700 has plenty of onboard memory, plus an SD slot, so this was not an issue for me (though the CF GPS unit prevented inserting/removing the SD card as they are side by side).
Overall, one of the nicer GPS receivers I have reviewed, comparable with the BT-338. Which model you choose to use will really depend on the device you want to use it with. The BT-338 will offer a bit more flexibility in this regard, but is more expensive and you need to keep it charged. This CF based unit is a no-fuss, reliable, and accurate solution, and since I have CF on my PDA, is my preferred carry-around unit currently.
After reading this review you might be interested in checking a comparison between the Globalsat BC-337 and Globalsat BT-338 models.
Pros
Small solid profile - portable, reliable.
Useful for older PDAs that only have CF, and laptops,
Highly sensitive chipset.
External antenna connector (not often required).
No need to keep charged – uses host power.
Supports WAAS corrections (North America).
Cons
No onboard memory.
No onboard battery.
Uses host power – reduce operational time.
Not powered when PDA switched off.
Compact Flash is not so common on PDAs these days.
This is one of the latest releases from GlobalSat, and it certainly lives up to expectations. The results were very nice, and the unit outperforms the LeadTek CF 9534 unit I reviewed last year, mainly because of the use of the SiRFstar III chipset.
The SiRFstart III is the same chip used in the fabulous GlobalSat BT-338 I reviewed and compared around the same time as the LeadTek CF 9534. This chipset is well known for its fast "Time To Fix", with a cold start of 42 seconds, warm start of 38 seconds, hot start of 1 second and a reacquisition time of 0.1 seconds.
This unit has a single red LED which is solid when on and searching, and flashing when a fix has been obtained - valuable confirmation of the operational status of the hardware.
The unit I received for review came with a PCMCIA to CF adaptor card, for use with laptops, and a 5 metre long magnetic based external antenna which can plug into the right hand side of the receiver. These are listed as optional extras, so check when you purchase.
I didn't feel the need to use the antenna during any of my evaluation however as the unit performed well on its own, even inside my car. I did try it out, but the improvement was marginal. The antenna may be useful however in some situations with coated windscreens, in trucks, boats, etc..
Without using the external antenna, the Globalsat BC-337 was fast to pick up 3 or 4 satelintes from within my lounge within 45 seconds from a cold start. The initial fix was a bit variable, but it continued to pickup plenty of additional sattelites over the next few minutes, and the fix stabilised right on target at stayed that way, consistent with the BT-338.
Quickly tracking 4 sattelites from cold start - enough to to get a fix
Initial fix from a cold start varied a bit, but stabilised as more sattelites were aquired.
Tracking this many sattelites so quickly shows the sensitivity of the SiRFstarIII chip.
The manufacturer claims 5-10 meter accuracy, which seems consistent with my observations as the unit could track me from one side of our deck to the other. They also say the unit can do single satelite updates in reduced visibility, has superior urban canyon performance, and a foliage lock for weak signal tracking.
During one drive through the urban canyon of The Terrace here in Wellington, the unit tracked reasonably well. But whilst staying stationary for a while in the thick of the tall buildings, the reflected signals still managed to play havoc with the location engine, and my reported fix moved around a fair bit. Once I started moving again, the accuracy returned.
Excellent tracking between tall buildings whilst moving. Not so good standing in one place.
I took it on a similar road trip as have done with the BT-338 and the CF-9534. Overall I found it pretty much on a par with the BT-338 for accuracy, just tracking a fraction looser in some situations, but pretty good none the less.
The windy hills of Northland (left BC-337, right BT-338), about the same.
Along the waterfont buildings, the BC-337 (left) seems to overshoot.
A problem with plug-in GPS units in general is that the unit is switched off when the PDA is switched off. Not keeping the GPS unit powered doesn’t give the chipset a chance to refine, optimize, and track weaker sattelite signals, and means you have to wait for the unit to reacquire its fix each time you wish to simply check your location (say, when hiking). A rechargeable battery onboard would be an improvement, giving the ability to leave the GPS unit on and tracking even when your PDA device is switched off. The unit is stated to use about 90mA of power, so a pretty low drain on batteries, but still could reduce PDA operating times by up to 20% since the PDA itself needs to be on to power the card device.
Also, if you only have a single slot on your PDA, then you will have to rely on internal PDA memory for your actual maps, as no external card storage will be available. GlobalSat have brought out a SD slot GPS unit with onboard memory for maps, so I expect this will become more common over time. My iPAQ hx4700 has plenty of onboard memory, plus an SD slot, so this was not an issue for me (though the CF GPS unit prevented inserting/removing the SD card as they are side by side).
Overall, one of the nicer GPS receivers I have reviewed, comparable with the BT-338. Which model you choose to use will really depend on the device you want to use it with. The BT-338 will offer a bit more flexibility in this regard, but is more expensive and you need to keep it charged. This CF based unit is a no-fuss, reliable, and accurate solution, and since I have CF on my PDA, is my preferred carry-around unit currently.
After reading this review you might be interested in checking a comparison between the Globalsat BC-337 and Globalsat BT-338 models.
Pros
Small solid profile - portable, reliable.
Useful for older PDAs that only have CF, and laptops,
Highly sensitive chipset.
External antenna connector (not often required).
No need to keep charged – uses host power.
Supports WAAS corrections (North America).
Cons
No onboard memory.
No onboard battery.
Uses host power – reduce operational time.
Not powered when PDA switched off.
Compact Flash is not so common on PDAs these days.
Road Test of the GlobalSat BC-337 and BT-338 SiRFstar III GPS Receivers
In this article I compare the GlobalSat BC-337 (Compact Flash) with the GlobalSat BT-338 (Bluetooth) connected to two Pocket PC during a short Sunday drive around Wellington (New Zealand).
The Globalsat BC-337 CF GPS unit was attached to my HP iPaq hx4700 Pocket PC, while the Globalsat BT-338 Bluetooth GPS was connected to my HP iPaq h3870 Pocket PC.
I also used the Leadtek 9534 (Compact Flash) for a brief comparison between CF adapters.
Join me on my journey... The Compact Flash BC-337 is in red, the Bluetooth BT-338 is the blue track:
A quick jaunt around my wonderful city
The windy hills of Northland. About the same.
The BC-337 (left) and BT-338 (right) both having a few problems going through the urban canyon, but the BT-338 just that little bit tighter.
Along the waterfont buildings, the BC-337 (red) seems to overshoot.
Both unit pick up my little detour through the Te Papa National Museum's drop off area.
Along the north facing oriental bay, both seem about equal.
And around the cliffs into Evans Bay...
... both still reporting pretty much the same tracking.
Both track a few times around the Basin Reserve cricket pitch without a hitch.
The red track here shows the BC-337, but also a section (circled) tracking with the CF-9534 for comparison - just a little way off all the way down Kent and Cambridge Terraces.
The BC-337 and the BT-338 holding their fix during a small traffic jam.
Conclusion
During side by side road testing, the BC-337 and the BT-338, both using the highly respected SiRFstar III chipset, performed well during the road test, and were almost identical. The BT-338 seemed to track just that bit tighter, but in reality, both are pretty good. The BC-337 also clearly outperformed the compact flash CF-9534, which uses the earlier SiRFstarII chipset.
In this article I compare the GlobalSat BC-337 (Compact Flash) with the GlobalSat BT-338 (Bluetooth) connected to two Pocket PC during a short Sunday drive around Wellington (New Zealand).
The Globalsat BC-337 CF GPS unit was attached to my HP iPaq hx4700 Pocket PC, while the Globalsat BT-338 Bluetooth GPS was connected to my HP iPaq h3870 Pocket PC.
I also used the Leadtek 9534 (Compact Flash) for a brief comparison between CF adapters.
Join me on my journey... The Compact Flash BC-337 is in red, the Bluetooth BT-338 is the blue track:
A quick jaunt around my wonderful city
The windy hills of Northland. About the same.
The BC-337 (left) and BT-338 (right) both having a few problems going through the urban canyon, but the BT-338 just that little bit tighter.
Along the waterfont buildings, the BC-337 (red) seems to overshoot.
Both unit pick up my little detour through the Te Papa National Museum's drop off area.
Along the north facing oriental bay, both seem about equal.
And around the cliffs into Evans Bay...
... both still reporting pretty much the same tracking.
Both track a few times around the Basin Reserve cricket pitch without a hitch.
The red track here shows the BC-337, but also a section (circled) tracking with the CF-9534 for comparison - just a little way off all the way down Kent and Cambridge Terraces.
The BC-337 and the BT-338 holding their fix during a small traffic jam.
Conclusion
During side by side road testing, the BC-337 and the BT-338, both using the highly respected SiRFstar III chipset, performed well during the road test, and were almost identical. The BT-338 seemed to track just that bit tighter, but in reality, both are pretty good. The BC-337 also clearly outperformed the compact flash CF-9534, which uses the earlier SiRFstarII chipset.
Verizon Launches the Motorola V325 With Location Based Services
Motorola, Inc. and Verizon Wireless are introducing the sleek and stylish Motorola V325. The newest member of the Motorola family, the V325 is a flip phone that places the latest in technology and style in the palm of your hand. Featuring a brushed metal and soft touch finish, the Motorola V325 boasts an integrated camera with self-portrait and color effects, high resolution color display and promises of outstanding call performance.
The phone also features 30 megabytes of onboard memory and is Get It Now-enabled so customers can check out and download hundreds of ring tones, games, productivity tools and more.
The Motorola V325 also offers Verizon Wireless’ new Get It Now location based services application, VZ Navigator. With VZ Navigator, Verizon Wireless customers can instantly view maps of their current location, get audible turn-by-turn driving directions to any destination in the continental U.S., find nearby restaurants with the ability to place a call and make a reservation with one touch of a button and more. VZ Navigator provides the latest advanced location based functionality with all the added conveniences of voice and data mobility at a fraction of the cost of alternative, expensive GPS devices.
Rounding out its feature set is an integrated speakerphone and advanced speech recognition. The Motorola V325 is available for US$79.99 after mail-in rebate and a two-year customer agreement.
VZ Navigator is available for US$9.99 for unlimited monthly access, or US$2.99 for 24-hour use. Customers can download the application directly to their Motorola v325.
Motorola, Inc. and Verizon Wireless are introducing the sleek and stylish Motorola V325. The newest member of the Motorola family, the V325 is a flip phone that places the latest in technology and style in the palm of your hand. Featuring a brushed metal and soft touch finish, the Motorola V325 boasts an integrated camera with self-portrait and color effects, high resolution color display and promises of outstanding call performance.
The phone also features 30 megabytes of onboard memory and is Get It Now-enabled so customers can check out and download hundreds of ring tones, games, productivity tools and more.
The Motorola V325 also offers Verizon Wireless’ new Get It Now location based services application, VZ Navigator. With VZ Navigator, Verizon Wireless customers can instantly view maps of their current location, get audible turn-by-turn driving directions to any destination in the continental U.S., find nearby restaurants with the ability to place a call and make a reservation with one touch of a button and more. VZ Navigator provides the latest advanced location based functionality with all the added conveniences of voice and data mobility at a fraction of the cost of alternative, expensive GPS devices.
Rounding out its feature set is an integrated speakerphone and advanced speech recognition. The Motorola V325 is available for US$79.99 after mail-in rebate and a two-year customer agreement.
VZ Navigator is available for US$9.99 for unlimited monthly access, or US$2.99 for 24-hour use. Customers can download the application directly to their Motorola v325.
European Geo-Portal
INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) is an initiative launched by the European Commission and developed in collaboration with Member States and accession countries. It aims at making available relevant, harmonised and quality geographic information to support formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Community policies with a territorial dimension or impact. INSPIRE intends to trigger the creation of a European spatial data infrastructure that delivers to the users integrated spatial information services linked by common standards and protocols.
The INSPIRE Geo-Portal is Europe's Internet access point for Spatial Data and Services. From here, you can search for spatial data, services, and organisations.
INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe) is an initiative launched by the European Commission and developed in collaboration with Member States and accession countries. It aims at making available relevant, harmonised and quality geographic information to support formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of Community policies with a territorial dimension or impact. INSPIRE intends to trigger the creation of a European spatial data infrastructure that delivers to the users integrated spatial information services linked by common standards and protocols.
The INSPIRE Geo-Portal is Europe's Internet access point for Spatial Data and Services. From here, you can search for spatial data, services, and organisations.
GeoURL (2.0)
GeoURL is a location-to-URL reverse directory. This will allow you to find URLs by their proximity to a given location. Find your neighbor's blog, perhaps, or the web page of the restaurants near you. GeoURL is listing 219,412 sites.
GeoURL is a location-to-URL reverse directory. This will allow you to find URLs by their proximity to a given location. Find your neighbor's blog, perhaps, or the web page of the restaurants near you. GeoURL is listing 219,412 sites.
Home - Confluence
Geotools is an open source Java GIS toolkit for developing standards compliant solutions. It provides an implementation of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications as they are developed.
Geotools maintains an open development process, with public collaboration on new ideas . Project communication is open to all , and we welcome new contributions .
If you are a first time user, the getting started page in the users guide is a good place to begin learning about Geotools. A general feature list and some screenshots of Geotools in action are also available. Current releases can be found on the downloads page
Geotools is an open source Java GIS toolkit for developing standards compliant solutions. It provides an implementation of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) specifications as they are developed.
Geotools maintains an open development process, with public collaboration on new ideas . Project communication is open to all , and we welcome new contributions .
If you are a first time user, the getting started page in the users guide is a good place to begin learning about Geotools. A general feature list and some screenshots of Geotools in action are also available. Current releases can be found on the downloads page
The JUMP Project
The foundation of The JUMP-Project is a suite of free, open-source applications that provide an extensible API and graphic user interface (GUI) for viewing and manipulating spatial data-sets. Currently, the major projects of the JUMP Project suite include:
The JUMP Unified Mapping Platform (JUMP) provides both the main UI and an API to a highly extensible framework for developing and running custom spatial data processing applications.
The JTS Topology Suite (JTS) provides an API of 2D spatial predicates and functions for fundamental geometric operations in an OGC-compliant spatial object model.
The JCS Conflation Suite (JSC) is an API and a set of interactive tools which perform conflation on spatial datasets.
JUMP Plug-Ins optimize the JUMP component tools and functions into enviroments specific to the needs of a given project or application. For example, the Government of British Columbia's (BC) Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management (MSRM) has developed and used various custom JUMP plug-ins for the preparation and integration of data into their Corporate Watershed Base (CWB) project.
The JUMP-Project is a collaborative effort between research and development teams in both the public and private sectors - Learn more about the Development Teams and Project Sponsors.
The foundation of The JUMP-Project is a suite of free, open-source applications that provide an extensible API and graphic user interface (GUI) for viewing and manipulating spatial data-sets. Currently, the major projects of the JUMP Project suite include:
The JUMP Unified Mapping Platform (JUMP) provides both the main UI and an API to a highly extensible framework for developing and running custom spatial data processing applications.
The JTS Topology Suite (JTS) provides an API of 2D spatial predicates and functions for fundamental geometric operations in an OGC-compliant spatial object model.
The JCS Conflation Suite (JSC) is an API and a set of interactive tools which perform conflation on spatial datasets.
JUMP Plug-Ins optimize the JUMP component tools and functions into enviroments specific to the needs of a given project or application. For example, the Government of British Columbia's (BC) Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management (MSRM) has developed and used various custom JUMP plug-ins for the preparation and integration of data into their Corporate Watershed Base (CWB) project.
The JUMP-Project is a collaborative effort between research and development teams in both the public and private sectors - Learn more about the Development Teams and Project Sponsors.
ArcWeb Explorer: Quick Review
A few sites report that the beta of ArcWeb explorer is available, so instead of reporting that, I actually tried it! Warning: when you visit the link above, on the ESRI website, you will see ads from companies providing data to ArcWeb Services. That took me by surprise, I confess. I guess it's just another perk of being an ESRI data provider.
Verdict: It's ok; I'd describe it as a sort of a Live Local/Google Local client wannabe.
It uses Flash 8, which seems to work fine. It's Java, so you need not download anything. For now it's a front end to some selected ArcWeb Services. In time, developers will have access to tools to customize it, as I understand.
It does, to quote the demo we gave for ArcView 1.0, about five things:
navigate - You move around the map via a strange iPod-looking wheel. I found panning slow and could see each tile redrawing. I fould it awkward to use. (It wants to be as fast and elegant as Google Local panning, but it's not.)
find - It geocodes quite well and will find location of computer by IP address (mine was spot on) and geocode lists of addresses in an Excel spreadsheet. (I didn't have such a spreadsheet to test, but I have to believe ESRI customers do.)
directions - It will route between up to 10 locations "dragged and dropped" form the find widget. (Live Locally to me.)
map styles - You can change map colors between default (pastelly), bright (yikes!) and gray scale.
share - you can capture (copy) or send the URL of a map via e-mail
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Posted by Adena Schutzberg in ESRI at 16:12 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)
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I agree that it's more awkward to use than competing products (Where is the drag to pan??). The 'GIS' box is a clear sign ESRI is still writing GIS software, not consumer oriented mapping software.
Still amazes me they aren't learning from what made their competitors so popular. Remember it is mostly just GIS and DTP (Desktop Publishing) software users that have any idea how to drag a box to zoom in to something.
Then again as a GIS user I am frustrated by the inability to draw a box with google and microsoft. Maybe a 'novice' and 'expert' navigation mode to suit both user types.
I found the speed on a par with google and microsoft when I tried - but I admit some days they seem fast and some they seem slow. Internet sites of any kind always suffer from unpredictable performance.
I don't see a way to route myself with 'stops' on the way in google or microsoft so this feature is unique.
The bulk geocoder is a good feature. Although microsoft and google don't have it - others have provided similar free services - one based on yahoo comes to mind.
To me it's really a 'me too' with some extra stuff - nothing likely to be perceived as earth shattering or forcing a paradigm shift as when google maps was launced and the online mapping war re-started.
#1 Casual Reader on 2006-01-28 12:57 (Reply)
The GUI design is amazing, easily the best of any browser-based mapping app, but a big disappointment for me is the lack of map dragging like in Google Local. Dragging is like tabs in browsers -- once you have it, your habits change so quickly that its sudden absence just jars.
Draggable maps in a browser has got to be the biggest innovation in that space for 2005, so why aren't all such maps draggable in 2006?
#2 Stefan Geens (Link) on 2006-01-28 17:13 (Reply)
The only way to have draggable maps is to pre-render everything at multiple scales. This imposes a fixed number of zoom levels. Not to mention that if you want to change the symbology of something you have to re-render everything again. Plus, disk space starts to become a problem. So that's one reason you don't see them outside of Google.
#2.1 Chris on 2006-01-30 09:27 (Reply)
A few sites report that the beta of ArcWeb explorer is available, so instead of reporting that, I actually tried it! Warning: when you visit the link above, on the ESRI website, you will see ads from companies providing data to ArcWeb Services. That took me by surprise, I confess. I guess it's just another perk of being an ESRI data provider.
Verdict: It's ok; I'd describe it as a sort of a Live Local/Google Local client wannabe.
It uses Flash 8, which seems to work fine. It's Java, so you need not download anything. For now it's a front end to some selected ArcWeb Services. In time, developers will have access to tools to customize it, as I understand.
It does, to quote the demo we gave for ArcView 1.0, about five things:
navigate - You move around the map via a strange iPod-looking wheel. I found panning slow and could see each tile redrawing. I fould it awkward to use. (It wants to be as fast and elegant as Google Local panning, but it's not.)
find - It geocodes quite well and will find location of computer by IP address (mine was spot on) and geocode lists of addresses in an Excel spreadsheet. (I didn't have such a spreadsheet to test, but I have to believe ESRI customers do.)
directions - It will route between up to 10 locations "dragged and dropped" form the find widget. (Live Locally to me.)
map styles - You can change map colors between default (pastelly), bright (yikes!) and gray scale.
share - you can capture (copy) or send the URL of a map via e-mail
Karma for this article: ++ | + | 0 | - | --
Posted by Adena Schutzberg in ESRI at 16:12 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)
Trackbacks
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Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)
I agree that it's more awkward to use than competing products (Where is the drag to pan??). The 'GIS' box is a clear sign ESRI is still writing GIS software, not consumer oriented mapping software.
Still amazes me they aren't learning from what made their competitors so popular. Remember it is mostly just GIS and DTP (Desktop Publishing) software users that have any idea how to drag a box to zoom in to something.
Then again as a GIS user I am frustrated by the inability to draw a box with google and microsoft. Maybe a 'novice' and 'expert' navigation mode to suit both user types.
I found the speed on a par with google and microsoft when I tried - but I admit some days they seem fast and some they seem slow. Internet sites of any kind always suffer from unpredictable performance.
I don't see a way to route myself with 'stops' on the way in google or microsoft so this feature is unique.
The bulk geocoder is a good feature. Although microsoft and google don't have it - others have provided similar free services - one based on yahoo comes to mind.
To me it's really a 'me too' with some extra stuff - nothing likely to be perceived as earth shattering or forcing a paradigm shift as when google maps was launced and the online mapping war re-started.
#1 Casual Reader on 2006-01-28 12:57 (Reply)
The GUI design is amazing, easily the best of any browser-based mapping app, but a big disappointment for me is the lack of map dragging like in Google Local. Dragging is like tabs in browsers -- once you have it, your habits change so quickly that its sudden absence just jars.
Draggable maps in a browser has got to be the biggest innovation in that space for 2005, so why aren't all such maps draggable in 2006?
#2 Stefan Geens (Link) on 2006-01-28 17:13 (Reply)
The only way to have draggable maps is to pre-render everything at multiple scales. This imposes a fixed number of zoom levels. Not to mention that if you want to change the symbology of something you have to re-render everything again. Plus, disk space starts to become a problem. So that's one reason you don't see them outside of Google.
#2.1 Chris on 2006-01-30 09:27 (Reply)
Portable tourist guides now in service
Your iPod might be your next tourist guide if you find yourself in Ireland, just one more example how countries are adapting with evolving technologies to intrigue a new generation of tourists.
Visitor Attractions AZ - www.ArsonD.comPlaces to go. Things to see. With phone numbers, web sites and maps.
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A small number of entrepreneurs have already latched onto this idea as national tourism is hitting the bandwagon too. Dublin Tourism is launching iWalks -- the first in a series of podcasts or audio guides available to tourists, as one way to help boost its tourism business. "In the past few months, podcasting has taken the Internet by storm and Dublin Tourism wanted to be at the cutting edge of the latest innovative technology available to tourists," said Frank Magee, chief executive of Dublin Tourism. "It's a response to changing tourist needs and interests. Dublin has achieved third position in Europe for urban tourism. We use ecommerce extensively in gaining and maintaining this position." Updated regularly, the series tells a story of Dublin within 12 themes and are narrated by Irish historian and artists Pat Liddy. Themes include the historic Northside, Viking and Mediaeval Dublin, and Castles and Cathedrals. The audio series, which also comes with a brochure and map in pdf form can be downloaded from the Web site, is free, financed by Dublin Tourism, a membership based organization. But Ireland isn't the only one who is using podcasts to attract a generation of tech-savvy tourists -- so has its neighbor Scotland. "VisitScotland are keen to experiment with new marcomms and podcasting provides an excellent opportunity to target the younger market who are currently using this technology, giving us another route to reach one of our key target markets and it is also the perfect fit with our city break portfolio," said Jillian Swankie, group product manager of Cities & Culture at VisitScotland. There have been as many as 15,000 views of the podcast cityguide page since the site was launched in November 2005, according to Swankie. VisitScotland along with others in their tourism industry hope this is one way that will help the country's goal of achieving a 50 percent growth in tourism revenues for Scotland by 2015. The free tour provides accounts of streets of Edinburgh from castles to local attractions and pubs, narrated by Edinburgh-born Vicky Liddelle. "Today's technology is vitally important as a tool for VisitScotland and the industry to communicate with our customers -- prospective and existing," Swankie said.
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But a number of online audio tour business already exist, such as iJourneys who is taking the audio headphone concept at museums to the next level of convenience, using the iPod. "It's a whole new way to travel ... now you don't have to follow the woman with the red umbrella with a herd behind her," said iJourneys' Elyse Weiner, an Emmy-award winning former network TV news producer. "You're traveling with your best friend." According to Weiner, audio tours allow tourists to base their schedule on their time and pace without the frustration and expense of in-person guides. Hers in particular provides interesting facts and history as well the best espresso in town, she says, for $14.95. Weiner's company, which provides audio tours in European countries including Paris, Rome, Florence among others, sold online since last spring using iTunes and Audible.com as well as her site, and has had thousands of downloads already, Weiner said. If travel sales on the Internet continues to escalate, as Merrill Lynch predicts by the end of 2007 that 39 percent of all travel sales will be online, then digital audio tours is logically the next step. "There has been evidence out there that the tourism sector often takes the lead in technology," says Professor Dan Erkkila from the University of Minnesota's Tourism Center. According to Erkkila, the tourism sector adapted to the Internet quickly, and this is no different, as it is logically adapting with consumers' interest in portable media devices and gadgets. Even though, he says podcasting may be attracting the younger generation, there is evidence that even the Baby Boomer generation -- who has the most disposable outcome -- likes their gadgets too. "It's a very natural and logical extension of what other people are doing already in life," he said. "It allows people to be free of all strapped to the location." Copyright 2006 by United Press International
Your iPod might be your next tourist guide if you find yourself in Ireland, just one more example how countries are adapting with evolving technologies to intrigue a new generation of tourists.
Visitor Attractions AZ - www.ArsonD.comPlaces to go. Things to see. With phone numbers, web sites and maps.
Dublin - What to Do? - dublin.etravelreviews.comFree Dublin Ireland Guide - When to go, where to stay, what to do. Free
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)
A small number of entrepreneurs have already latched onto this idea as national tourism is hitting the bandwagon too. Dublin Tourism is launching iWalks -- the first in a series of podcasts or audio guides available to tourists, as one way to help boost its tourism business. "In the past few months, podcasting has taken the Internet by storm and Dublin Tourism wanted to be at the cutting edge of the latest innovative technology available to tourists," said Frank Magee, chief executive of Dublin Tourism. "It's a response to changing tourist needs and interests. Dublin has achieved third position in Europe for urban tourism. We use ecommerce extensively in gaining and maintaining this position." Updated regularly, the series tells a story of Dublin within 12 themes and are narrated by Irish historian and artists Pat Liddy. Themes include the historic Northside, Viking and Mediaeval Dublin, and Castles and Cathedrals. The audio series, which also comes with a brochure and map in pdf form can be downloaded from the Web site, is free, financed by Dublin Tourism, a membership based organization. But Ireland isn't the only one who is using podcasts to attract a generation of tech-savvy tourists -- so has its neighbor Scotland. "VisitScotland are keen to experiment with new marcomms and podcasting provides an excellent opportunity to target the younger market who are currently using this technology, giving us another route to reach one of our key target markets and it is also the perfect fit with our city break portfolio," said Jillian Swankie, group product manager of Cities & Culture at VisitScotland. There have been as many as 15,000 views of the podcast cityguide page since the site was launched in November 2005, according to Swankie. VisitScotland along with others in their tourism industry hope this is one way that will help the country's goal of achieving a 50 percent growth in tourism revenues for Scotland by 2015. The free tour provides accounts of streets of Edinburgh from castles to local attractions and pubs, narrated by Edinburgh-born Vicky Liddelle. "Today's technology is vitally important as a tool for VisitScotland and the industry to communicate with our customers -- prospective and existing," Swankie said.
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Visitor Guide DublinInfo on Dublin Hotels, Attractions Tours, Museums, Nightlife, Maps etc
Dublin City Travel GuideDublin Guide for Hotels, Museums Attractions, Tours, Nightlife, Maps
Tourist Guides UkGuide For Finding Cheap Flights To London. Save Money On Flights!
(Ads by Google)
But a number of online audio tour business already exist, such as iJourneys who is taking the audio headphone concept at museums to the next level of convenience, using the iPod. "It's a whole new way to travel ... now you don't have to follow the woman with the red umbrella with a herd behind her," said iJourneys' Elyse Weiner, an Emmy-award winning former network TV news producer. "You're traveling with your best friend." According to Weiner, audio tours allow tourists to base their schedule on their time and pace without the frustration and expense of in-person guides. Hers in particular provides interesting facts and history as well the best espresso in town, she says, for $14.95. Weiner's company, which provides audio tours in European countries including Paris, Rome, Florence among others, sold online since last spring using iTunes and Audible.com as well as her site, and has had thousands of downloads already, Weiner said. If travel sales on the Internet continues to escalate, as Merrill Lynch predicts by the end of 2007 that 39 percent of all travel sales will be online, then digital audio tours is logically the next step. "There has been evidence out there that the tourism sector often takes the lead in technology," says Professor Dan Erkkila from the University of Minnesota's Tourism Center. According to Erkkila, the tourism sector adapted to the Internet quickly, and this is no different, as it is logically adapting with consumers' interest in portable media devices and gadgets. Even though, he says podcasting may be attracting the younger generation, there is evidence that even the Baby Boomer generation -- who has the most disposable outcome -- likes their gadgets too. "It's a very natural and logical extension of what other people are doing already in life," he said. "It allows people to be free of all strapped to the location." Copyright 2006 by United Press International
GeoVector and Japan’s Mapion Deliver the First Pointing Based Search Solution for Mobile Phones
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, January 30, 2006 - GeoVector Corporation (www.geovector.com) and Japan’s Mapion, owned by CyberMap Japan, (www.mapion.co.jp) today announced the immediate availability of Mapion Local Search for mobile phones in Japan.Similar to using a mouse to click on a computer screen to access information, users can now “Click on the Real World®” using their mobile phone. With Mapion Local Search, users can walk down virtually any street in Japan and point at over 700,000 buildings, retailers, restaurants, banks or historical sites to instantly retrieve information on what they are looking at, or find what they are looking for just by pointing their phone. Mapion was the original developer of Yahoo maps and provides content for AOL Japan maps and Excite Japan maps.“Soon users will point their mobile phones at restaurants to get reviews, point at billboards to shop at the advertiser’s website, point at a movie poster to buy tickets, or play a game by pointing at their friends,” said John Ellenby, president of GeoVector. “With the real world as your desktop, the potential is enormous.”Mapion Local Search combines Mapion’s Point of Interest information on locations throughout Japan with GeoVector’s pointing-based technology and spatial search engine technology.“Incorporating GeoVector’s technology allows us to give users an experience available nowhere else in the world,” said Takehiko Murata, President of CyberMap Japan. “This gives us a significant lead over global competitors.”The service, initially launched over the KDDI network and available for users to download on W21S phones (CDMA with aided GPS and an integrated compass), will be available to a variety of additional models this winter.To see a demonstration of this unique new technology, please visit www.GeoVector.com. About GeoVector Corporation Based in San Francisco, CA, GeoVector develops solutions for location-based services and tools for wireless communications manufacturers, wireless service providers, and mobile content developers. Supported by significant intellectual property, GeoVector’s search engine technologies provide the foundation for new community, gaming, advertising and other location sensitive applications. GeoVector allows mobile web services to be attached to any object, launched just by pointing at them, including “Point to Call®” one click mobile calling, and “Point to Buy®” M-commerce transactions.About Mapion Headquartered in Tokyo, Mapion is Japan’s number one mapping search service, with over 700,000 page views per day. Serving over 200 enterprise customers such as Starbucks, ANA, Ford, NEC, and Panasonic, Mapion is also Japan’s number one mapping ASP service. Mapion’s service is nation-wide in Japan and is ubiquitous across PCs, PDAs and all of Japan’s mobile operators. Mapion’s shareholders include Toppan, NTT East, Dentsu, Yahoo Japan, and Sharp.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, January 30, 2006 - GeoVector Corporation (www.geovector.com) and Japan’s Mapion, owned by CyberMap Japan, (www.mapion.co.jp) today announced the immediate availability of Mapion Local Search for mobile phones in Japan.Similar to using a mouse to click on a computer screen to access information, users can now “Click on the Real World®” using their mobile phone. With Mapion Local Search, users can walk down virtually any street in Japan and point at over 700,000 buildings, retailers, restaurants, banks or historical sites to instantly retrieve information on what they are looking at, or find what they are looking for just by pointing their phone. Mapion was the original developer of Yahoo maps and provides content for AOL Japan maps and Excite Japan maps.“Soon users will point their mobile phones at restaurants to get reviews, point at billboards to shop at the advertiser’s website, point at a movie poster to buy tickets, or play a game by pointing at their friends,” said John Ellenby, president of GeoVector. “With the real world as your desktop, the potential is enormous.”Mapion Local Search combines Mapion’s Point of Interest information on locations throughout Japan with GeoVector’s pointing-based technology and spatial search engine technology.“Incorporating GeoVector’s technology allows us to give users an experience available nowhere else in the world,” said Takehiko Murata, President of CyberMap Japan. “This gives us a significant lead over global competitors.”The service, initially launched over the KDDI network and available for users to download on W21S phones (CDMA with aided GPS and an integrated compass), will be available to a variety of additional models this winter.To see a demonstration of this unique new technology, please visit www.GeoVector.com. About GeoVector Corporation Based in San Francisco, CA, GeoVector develops solutions for location-based services and tools for wireless communications manufacturers, wireless service providers, and mobile content developers. Supported by significant intellectual property, GeoVector’s search engine technologies provide the foundation for new community, gaming, advertising and other location sensitive applications. GeoVector allows mobile web services to be attached to any object, launched just by pointing at them, including “Point to Call®” one click mobile calling, and “Point to Buy®” M-commerce transactions.About Mapion Headquartered in Tokyo, Mapion is Japan’s number one mapping search service, with over 700,000 page views per day. Serving over 200 enterprise customers such as Starbucks, ANA, Ford, NEC, and Panasonic, Mapion is also Japan’s number one mapping ASP service. Mapion’s service is nation-wide in Japan and is ubiquitous across PCs, PDAs and all of Japan’s mobile operators. Mapion’s shareholders include Toppan, NTT East, Dentsu, Yahoo Japan, and Sharp.
Location Based Marketing - Could it Really Work? Part One at MobHappy
When ZagMe, my previous foray into Location Based Marketing (LBM), was shut by its investors, I wrote at the time that we were 5 years too early. This didn’t mean 5 years too early for user acceptance, incidentally, but too early for marketers and the available technology.
However, ZagMe closed 5 years ago now and I sense that the world and technology is catching up with the thinking, so I thought it would be interesting to re-examine the business case.
Whenever location based marketing is mentioned, there are usually a number of predictable reactions.
At one end, we have what I’ll call the traditional techie, or possibly the anti-marketer (not always one and the same person) who tend to run around shouting stuff about invasion of privacy and calling for damn-fool advertisers to leave us alone. “We don’t,” they say, “want marketing messages on our phones (or anywhere else, in our heart of hearts) under any circumstances. It’s Evil.
Well, unless it’s Pull Marketing, where we get to decide when we want to be marketed to - obviously maybe that’s OK.”
At the other end of the spectrum is the traditional marketer or ad agency. They know the traditional channels are dying. People PVR out ads, have spam filters and their minds are adept at ignoring marketing messages.
They need a new magic bullet and mobile marketing may be the answer.
What both parties seem to be missing is what the ordinary mobile phone user might want. So I thought I’d have a look at this and see what the role of marketing on a mobile phone might be.
Firstly, let’s bust the Pull myth. Most ordinary people don’t want the hassle of pulling down information. They want it presented to them as a seamless part of their device experience, to ignore or act on, as they see fit.
That’s not to say that there isn’t an important role for Pull - I think being able to access information to supplement other media, as an example, is a great idea. And some die-hards will always stick to Pull and that’s fine too.
But the ordinary person wants to access marketing messages without any hassle, provided that the messages will be of interest - more of that anon.
I’m also not going to belabour the the Opt In Rule here. Trying to run non-Opt-In campaigns is not only illegal in Europe, but will be anywhere where marketers try to run this type of campaign. It’s simply too annoying for recipients and too tempting for politicians to run vote-catching legislation to ban it.
Having said that, illegal or not, it’s fundamentally Stone Age marketing, akin to bludgeoning passers-by with a huge marketing club and shouting after those you miss “Oi, shithead come back here, so I can smack you round the head and tell you how much I much I disrespect you”. In other words, it’s not for reputable brands, as they’ll find out damn quickly if they try it.
So let’s assume that your user has signed up to receive LBM from you.
Yes, this is a very big assumption and leads to the first fundamental LBM question: Would anyone sign up and if so, why would they?
Well, I think we can tackle this pretty quickly. Yes, they would sign up or opt-in to receive LBM. And they’ll sign up because of the type of marketing messages you promise (and they believe) that you’ll send them.
At ZagMe, for instance, we had 85,000 people sign up to our opt-in mobile marketing channel. These people weren’t tricked into something, they were simply promised marketing messages from shops in the mall, as in “great deals on essential brands direct to your mobile – free”.
So, in fact, the really important question when studying LBM, the-answer-to-life-death-and-the-universe question of the subject, is: what kind of marketing messages should you say you’re going to send that will attract opt-in in the first place, that recipients will welcome and that they’ll respond to? In other words, what kind of messages will work? Knowing what the user wants is key to both opt-in in the first place and subsequently, optimising the channel’s effectiveness.
I’ll examine this in Part Two of this exploration and I’ll publish it later this week. If you have any ideas or feedback, leave a comment and I’ll incorporate the best in the follow-up.
Have a great week.
-->
9 Responses to “Location Based Marketing - Could it Really Work? Part One”
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1 Tom Hume Jan 29th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
A thought: is push marketing considered so offensive because it’s so interruptive? If there were ways to push messages to individuals without masquerading as a friend of family member (which is what SMS marketing messages effectively do, after all), would it be more welcomed?
I’m thinking of the work that many mobile operators are doing now to do with pushing messages (usually adverts for content) onto the homescreen.
2 Martin Jan 29th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
“In other words, what kind of messages will work? ”
I don’t mean to be rude, but isn’t this rather obviously the central question? Is this not the central question of all marketing efforts since the beginning of ever?
“What kind of marketing messages should you say you’re going to send that will attract opt-in in the first place…”
Just to be clear: are you talking about the marketing-of-the-service in the first place? Or the service itself? In other words, are you talking about the initial “hey, sign up for this service” call to action, or the subsequent, “hey, buy this widget” messages that users will start receiving?
3 Russell Buckley Jan 30th, 2006 at 6:46 am
Martin
Sorry, old fruit, it might seem obvious to thee and me, but it’s one that’s missed by the majority of commentators and marketers, time and time again.
In the past, marketers simply haven’t needed to concern themselves with what would be accepted or even welcomed by recipients of their messages as they were trying to interrupt people as they went about their lives, watched TV, listened to the radio etc. Therefore what “worked” were ads that were most effective at cutting through and interrupting most effectively.
If you have to ask permission from people to send them marketing, your mindset has to change completely.
As to the distinction between getting people to sign up and what you send them subsequently - they are one and the same. The justification for the first part has to be based on what you intend sending them in the second part. So they must be considered symbolically. Any approach that’s based on “hey sign up for our groovy service” without formulating what that service is will disappoint the recipient, who will feel conned and quickly opt out.
Tom - I certainly think honesty and authenticity are central to any successful service and indeed, marketing today. Trying to pretend to be something you are not, is a no-no these days. And yes, I think non-obtrusiveness might be important - you need to view the mobile as if you were a guest in an important person’s home. Respect the environment, don’t outstay your welcome, ask before you use the facilities and don’t shit all over the carpet.
More in Part 2.
Keep the comments coming.
Russell
4 Rudy De Waele Jan 30th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Good you dig deeper in this subject, it’s definately worthwhile.
Before to ask oneself “what kind of messages will work” we need to gather more information on behaviour of different kinds of communities and their people. To get this information you need the permission of course.
The only ones who can push marketing to their subscriber base with permission (and expect % return) are the operators. What is lacking to create sustainable mobile marketing is the existence of profiles of groups of people (and their behaviour). The operators are not opening their subscribers list for 3rd parties (luckily!) and will not do so in the near future unless the 3rd party creates a service himself -now becoming more and more accessible through the mobile web, for example, and that’s the new thing that’s going to open new possibilities here.
I am sure people are willing to give their permission to certain aspects of their profile (ex. music, movie prefs) as they do on the internet, if the service, or community they ‘belong’ to, is reliable and promises not to mess up with their data.
The absence of such services and communities in mobile is pathetic as of now if you look around (apart from some starting experiments in the good direction). Once we have those in place, there is going to be space for mobile marketing, and it’s going to be different and more powerfull as to anything we have known before.
But what people tend to forget is: marketeers need insight and numbers on the people they reach on radio, on TV, in print and other media, this is going to take some more time still.
So first things first… Start building those communities!
On the other hand, I just received my latest mobile browsing bill from my beloved operator. It exceeds my average ADSL flat fee/month for only a couple of times per week condensed mobile web surfing, as of now, I just can’t see a mass market starting to surf the mobile web with these pricings. Antime, anywhere, anyhow? Yes but at an affordable price!
5 scott shaffer Jan 30th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
“So let’s assume that your user has signed up to receive LBM from you”
The key ingredient needed for location based advertising, is your location. Identifying the users location via GPS (or other triangulation technologies) will play a vital role for this industry.
6 Jim Parsons Jan 30th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
At the risk of sounding like comment spam (and believe me this is not) the Navizon Wireless Positioning System (which blends GPS, WiFi and GSM/TDMA Cellular signals, providing accurate mobile geolocation for Symbian/PocketPC device platforms) already enables everything this thread is talking about… through it’s implementation of “GeoTags” for geoblogging and the linking of meta-data with GPS location.
In my view Location Based Marketing messages don’t necessarily always need to be pure advertising — they can easily and inexpensively be offered up in the form of: local public service, public safety or local economic development initiatives. Web 2.0 style “social tagging” is already exploding within our user base… and the list of commercial possibilities goes on and on.
The answer to the question posed in this blog post is simple:Location Based Marketing will work if the Location Based information offered up is actually USEFUL to people it’s being offered to. Period.
As for Rudy’s call to action for building communities (above):Navizon users now number 20,000 in 20 countries and we’re doubling in size every month.
7 Jacomo Jan 31st, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Location Based Marketing (LBM)will flourish under the umbrella of these new Metro Area based Wireless Mesh Networks that have 2 of the key ingredience (system components) to make them work.1. A wireless Mesh Network have a series of Wireless Nodes located on Poles along major and select side streets. By definition they are a fixed reference point usually broadcasting a WiFi based signal 1000′ around the node.2.These nodes connected back to a Central Data Center where a LBM server can be deployed that recognizes (continually monitors) the location of the Wireless subscriber with reference to those surrounding Nodes as they roam into an area and knows what advertisers want to advertise to them. By creating a Splash Page or Ad insert and broadcasting it out to the subscriber on the Mesh Network they make immediate contact with that subscriber-This is the real definition of Bullet marketing.Just watch this flourish, especially when the subscriber is using a large screen Laptop/PDA or the new large screen Smartphones with WiFi capabilities. These large screens/displays are key here and will allow very high quality graphics/Video content to be delivered-Big premiums.
Jacomo
8 Sceptic Jan 31st, 2006 at 10:48 pm
You must be kidding. What on earth would make me want to get marketing messages on my cell phone -location based or not?
When ZagMe, my previous foray into Location Based Marketing (LBM), was shut by its investors, I wrote at the time that we were 5 years too early. This didn’t mean 5 years too early for user acceptance, incidentally, but too early for marketers and the available technology.
However, ZagMe closed 5 years ago now and I sense that the world and technology is catching up with the thinking, so I thought it would be interesting to re-examine the business case.
Whenever location based marketing is mentioned, there are usually a number of predictable reactions.
At one end, we have what I’ll call the traditional techie, or possibly the anti-marketer (not always one and the same person) who tend to run around shouting stuff about invasion of privacy and calling for damn-fool advertisers to leave us alone. “We don’t,” they say, “want marketing messages on our phones (or anywhere else, in our heart of hearts) under any circumstances. It’s Evil.
Well, unless it’s Pull Marketing, where we get to decide when we want to be marketed to - obviously maybe that’s OK.”
At the other end of the spectrum is the traditional marketer or ad agency. They know the traditional channels are dying. People PVR out ads, have spam filters and their minds are adept at ignoring marketing messages.
They need a new magic bullet and mobile marketing may be the answer.
What both parties seem to be missing is what the ordinary mobile phone user might want. So I thought I’d have a look at this and see what the role of marketing on a mobile phone might be.
Firstly, let’s bust the Pull myth. Most ordinary people don’t want the hassle of pulling down information. They want it presented to them as a seamless part of their device experience, to ignore or act on, as they see fit.
That’s not to say that there isn’t an important role for Pull - I think being able to access information to supplement other media, as an example, is a great idea. And some die-hards will always stick to Pull and that’s fine too.
But the ordinary person wants to access marketing messages without any hassle, provided that the messages will be of interest - more of that anon.
I’m also not going to belabour the the Opt In Rule here. Trying to run non-Opt-In campaigns is not only illegal in Europe, but will be anywhere where marketers try to run this type of campaign. It’s simply too annoying for recipients and too tempting for politicians to run vote-catching legislation to ban it.
Having said that, illegal or not, it’s fundamentally Stone Age marketing, akin to bludgeoning passers-by with a huge marketing club and shouting after those you miss “Oi, shithead come back here, so I can smack you round the head and tell you how much I much I disrespect you”. In other words, it’s not for reputable brands, as they’ll find out damn quickly if they try it.
So let’s assume that your user has signed up to receive LBM from you.
Yes, this is a very big assumption and leads to the first fundamental LBM question: Would anyone sign up and if so, why would they?
Well, I think we can tackle this pretty quickly. Yes, they would sign up or opt-in to receive LBM. And they’ll sign up because of the type of marketing messages you promise (and they believe) that you’ll send them.
At ZagMe, for instance, we had 85,000 people sign up to our opt-in mobile marketing channel. These people weren’t tricked into something, they were simply promised marketing messages from shops in the mall, as in “great deals on essential brands direct to your mobile – free”.
So, in fact, the really important question when studying LBM, the-answer-to-life-death-and-the-universe question of the subject, is: what kind of marketing messages should you say you’re going to send that will attract opt-in in the first place, that recipients will welcome and that they’ll respond to? In other words, what kind of messages will work? Knowing what the user wants is key to both opt-in in the first place and subsequently, optimising the channel’s effectiveness.
I’ll examine this in Part Two of this exploration and I’ll publish it later this week. If you have any ideas or feedback, leave a comment and I’ll incorporate the best in the follow-up.
Have a great week.
-->
9 Responses to “Location Based Marketing - Could it Really Work? Part One”
Feed for this Entry Trackback Address
1 Tom Hume Jan 29th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
A thought: is push marketing considered so offensive because it’s so interruptive? If there were ways to push messages to individuals without masquerading as a friend of family member (which is what SMS marketing messages effectively do, after all), would it be more welcomed?
I’m thinking of the work that many mobile operators are doing now to do with pushing messages (usually adverts for content) onto the homescreen.
2 Martin Jan 29th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
“In other words, what kind of messages will work? ”
I don’t mean to be rude, but isn’t this rather obviously the central question? Is this not the central question of all marketing efforts since the beginning of ever?
“What kind of marketing messages should you say you’re going to send that will attract opt-in in the first place…”
Just to be clear: are you talking about the marketing-of-the-service in the first place? Or the service itself? In other words, are you talking about the initial “hey, sign up for this service” call to action, or the subsequent, “hey, buy this widget” messages that users will start receiving?
3 Russell Buckley Jan 30th, 2006 at 6:46 am
Martin
Sorry, old fruit, it might seem obvious to thee and me, but it’s one that’s missed by the majority of commentators and marketers, time and time again.
In the past, marketers simply haven’t needed to concern themselves with what would be accepted or even welcomed by recipients of their messages as they were trying to interrupt people as they went about their lives, watched TV, listened to the radio etc. Therefore what “worked” were ads that were most effective at cutting through and interrupting most effectively.
If you have to ask permission from people to send them marketing, your mindset has to change completely.
As to the distinction between getting people to sign up and what you send them subsequently - they are one and the same. The justification for the first part has to be based on what you intend sending them in the second part. So they must be considered symbolically. Any approach that’s based on “hey sign up for our groovy service” without formulating what that service is will disappoint the recipient, who will feel conned and quickly opt out.
Tom - I certainly think honesty and authenticity are central to any successful service and indeed, marketing today. Trying to pretend to be something you are not, is a no-no these days. And yes, I think non-obtrusiveness might be important - you need to view the mobile as if you were a guest in an important person’s home. Respect the environment, don’t outstay your welcome, ask before you use the facilities and don’t shit all over the carpet.
More in Part 2.
Keep the comments coming.
Russell
4 Rudy De Waele Jan 30th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Good you dig deeper in this subject, it’s definately worthwhile.
Before to ask oneself “what kind of messages will work” we need to gather more information on behaviour of different kinds of communities and their people. To get this information you need the permission of course.
The only ones who can push marketing to their subscriber base with permission (and expect % return) are the operators. What is lacking to create sustainable mobile marketing is the existence of profiles of groups of people (and their behaviour). The operators are not opening their subscribers list for 3rd parties (luckily!) and will not do so in the near future unless the 3rd party creates a service himself -now becoming more and more accessible through the mobile web, for example, and that’s the new thing that’s going to open new possibilities here.
I am sure people are willing to give their permission to certain aspects of their profile (ex. music, movie prefs) as they do on the internet, if the service, or community they ‘belong’ to, is reliable and promises not to mess up with their data.
The absence of such services and communities in mobile is pathetic as of now if you look around (apart from some starting experiments in the good direction). Once we have those in place, there is going to be space for mobile marketing, and it’s going to be different and more powerfull as to anything we have known before.
But what people tend to forget is: marketeers need insight and numbers on the people they reach on radio, on TV, in print and other media, this is going to take some more time still.
So first things first… Start building those communities!
On the other hand, I just received my latest mobile browsing bill from my beloved operator. It exceeds my average ADSL flat fee/month for only a couple of times per week condensed mobile web surfing, as of now, I just can’t see a mass market starting to surf the mobile web with these pricings. Antime, anywhere, anyhow? Yes but at an affordable price!
5 scott shaffer Jan 30th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
“So let’s assume that your user has signed up to receive LBM from you”
The key ingredient needed for location based advertising, is your location. Identifying the users location via GPS (or other triangulation technologies) will play a vital role for this industry.
6 Jim Parsons Jan 30th, 2006 at 11:20 pm
At the risk of sounding like comment spam (and believe me this is not) the Navizon Wireless Positioning System (which blends GPS, WiFi and GSM/TDMA Cellular signals, providing accurate mobile geolocation for Symbian/PocketPC device platforms) already enables everything this thread is talking about… through it’s implementation of “GeoTags” for geoblogging and the linking of meta-data with GPS location.
In my view Location Based Marketing messages don’t necessarily always need to be pure advertising — they can easily and inexpensively be offered up in the form of: local public service, public safety or local economic development initiatives. Web 2.0 style “social tagging” is already exploding within our user base… and the list of commercial possibilities goes on and on.
The answer to the question posed in this blog post is simple:Location Based Marketing will work if the Location Based information offered up is actually USEFUL to people it’s being offered to. Period.
As for Rudy’s call to action for building communities (above):Navizon users now number 20,000 in 20 countries and we’re doubling in size every month.
7 Jacomo Jan 31st, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Location Based Marketing (LBM)will flourish under the umbrella of these new Metro Area based Wireless Mesh Networks that have 2 of the key ingredience (system components) to make them work.1. A wireless Mesh Network have a series of Wireless Nodes located on Poles along major and select side streets. By definition they are a fixed reference point usually broadcasting a WiFi based signal 1000′ around the node.2.These nodes connected back to a Central Data Center where a LBM server can be deployed that recognizes (continually monitors) the location of the Wireless subscriber with reference to those surrounding Nodes as they roam into an area and knows what advertisers want to advertise to them. By creating a Splash Page or Ad insert and broadcasting it out to the subscriber on the Mesh Network they make immediate contact with that subscriber-This is the real definition of Bullet marketing.Just watch this flourish, especially when the subscriber is using a large screen Laptop/PDA or the new large screen Smartphones with WiFi capabilities. These large screens/displays are key here and will allow very high quality graphics/Video content to be delivered-Big premiums.
Jacomo
8 Sceptic Jan 31st, 2006 at 10:48 pm
You must be kidding. What on earth would make me want to get marketing messages on my cell phone -location based or not?
'We're not a one-trick pony'
No longer just a search engine, Yahoo can offer video on demand, news and even its own TV show, says CEO Terry Semel
Owen Gibson
Monday January 30, 2006
The Guardian
Yahoo chairman and chief executive Terry Semel is battling his way through the crowds in the Las Vegas sunshine to his company's stand at the mammoth Consumer Electronics Show (CES). He is in a hurry because he has a rendezvous with his pal Tom Cruise, the movie star roped in to lend his keynote address a bit of Hollywood stardust.
The Mission: Impossible actor is already in place, pregnant partner Katie Holmes in tow, feigning interest in the "home of the future" that Yahoo has erected to show how its content and services are migrating from PC to mobile phone, TV and elsewhere. Ellen DeGeneres, the US comedian who was also handed a starring role in the Semel address, is milling around and waiting to interview the pair for her hit daytime chatshow. You do not get this at the Westminster Media Forum.
The diminutive Semel, who for 24 years was at the heart of the Hollywood power elite as he rose to the top of Warner Brothers, is waxing lyrical about the promise of the second wave of internet expansion, fuelled by broadband takeup and the convergence of home entertainment devices. "Three or four years ago, people would say to me, 'How will Yahoo survive? These other portals are much larger, much heavier financed, they've got more of this and more of that,'" he says. "You know what? We not only survived, to a large degree we've overtaken them because we just focused on great products and services."
'Basket case'
Back in May 2001, he provoked raised eyebrows and some stifled chuckles when he moved to Yahoo in the wake of the dotcom crash. The one-time Wall Street darling was widely thought to be a basket case, as the received wisdom was that do-it-all portals were dead. His former colleagues in the world of old media are no longer laughing, as he successfully turned the company round. Now Yahoo and a handful of its rivals are jostling for position to act as the middlemen between the big content providers and the technology giants. "When you wake up in the morning, you are always going to have competition. That's good. It makes you step up every day and continue to strive," Semel says.
Like most media executives of a certain age, he looks to his kids for inspiration. In his speech, mainly concerned with plugging a new service called Yahoo to Go that works seamlessly across a variety of devices including mobile phones and TVs, he points to the way his teenage daughter will juggle three mobile devices to stay in touch with friends, listen to music and contribute to communities on the move.
"The overall audience of Yahoo is over 400 million. Those numbers say: this is real," he says. "This is very large and is more and more part of the mindset of entire generations that have been growing up with it over the last 10 years."
If there is one message from the internet giants that dominated CES it was that 2006 is going to be the year when the long- predicted convergence of entertainment devices finally happens. Every speaker trotted out the same mantra, promising that users would be able to access content any time, any place on any device. Google's Larry Page unveiled its video download service and Microsoft's Bill Gates trumpeted a tie-up with Sky that would allow its new internet video-on- demand services to be delivered to his Media Centre home entertainment systems. Yahoo's strategy is to provide a platform via which users can access all of their content - whether music tracks, emails, user generated content, downloads of Lost or their own blog - on any device at any time.
"I might capture all this on my mobile device but want to view it on my big screen TV," explains Marco Boerries, head of Yahoo's Connected Life division and one of a number of bright thinkers who have joined the company in recent years as a result of their own firms being acquired.
"The important thing that the internet brought about is that we're becoming our own programmers - we get what we want. We're taking that paradigm shift and putting it on the TV or on the mobile device. That's very powerful," he says.
Semel, too, is excited about the possibilities for video. Combined with its community features, he sees video putting Yahoo at the centre of the emerging on-demand world. Yahoo recently announced plans for an online reality show, The Wow House, and has recruited its own war correspondent and adventure writer, sealed exclusive deals to show extra footage from programmes such as The Apprentice online, introduced a weekly American football show and offers a library of music videos.
All of this activity has unsettled some of its media partners by suggesting a move into their territory. But Semel is impossible to ruffle, possessing the rhino hide and smooth patter of the US corporate veteran. He insists Yahoo's foray into content is a small-scale experiment to point the way for others: "We've been doing a little bit of original content. It's about us experimenting and putting things in front of our users - like the live video stream of a Nasa launch."
Nor are there plans to buy a traditional media company or independent production outfit, a move which could compromise one of Yahoo's strengths. "One of the strong suits of Yahoo is its desire and capability to partner with people," he says. Instead, it will concentrate on integrating its content with its burgeoning community features and glueing the whole lot together with a much-improved search engine.
The increasing overlap between the worlds of traditional media and the internet was highlighted again last week when former Channel 4 chief executive Michael Jackson agreed to join Barry Diller's US firm InterActive Corp, owner of a string of sites including Ticketmaster and Ask Jeeves, as president of programming. In contrast to the headlong rush to new media in 1998, the rise of broadband and video content has given an editorial imperative to such high-profile moves.
Crossing borders
Meanwhile, Google's "don't be evil" mantra was under scrutiny after it launched a Chinese version of its search engine and agreed to cooperate with the government on censorship. Yahoo faced a similar situation last year, when it handed over the details of a journalist who was later jailed. Semel maintains that the company will comply with the national laws of each country in which it operates. But given his rhetoric over the democratic, empowering qualities of the internet, Yahoo will find it difficult to reconcile its words with its actions.
He is more forthcoming when it comes to what marks Yahoo out from the competition - globally comprising AOL, Google, MSN and the emerging threat from News Corp, but also including local giants in each market from China to Germany. "You don't look to Yahoo for one thing. Fundamentally, whether they're sharing photos or listening to music or using our mail and messaging products, our users have multiple things they come to Yahoo for," he enthuses.
"Not all of our competitors have all those pieces, certainly not on a global basis. As new generations continue to become more dependent on the internet and put more of their personalised needs on Yahoo, I think the relationship becomes better and better. We're not a one-trick pony."
The more of their own content, from photos to TV shows to emails, that users store on Yahoo, the more advertising they view and the less promiscuous they become. Given that Yahoo is, according to Semel, so well placed to benefit from the changing media landscape, it must rankle that so much attention gets lavished on Google. While it could be argued that Yahoo is ahead in integrating its various services, its Californian neighbour is seen as more thrusting, more innovative and a better bet for investors. In contrast, Yahoo shares slumped by 13% last week after fourth quarter earnings figures failed to meet escalating analyst expectations.
"Google does a good job but when I think about email I think about the fact that 250 million people in the world currently use Yahoo email. And hundreds of millions of people are using Yahoo's IM. Nothing rankles me," he insists.
Semel's PR minders are making frantic hand signals. In corporate America, chief executives are almost as protected as the talent. Somthing else, perhaps, for him to talk to Cruise about.
No longer just a search engine, Yahoo can offer video on demand, news and even its own TV show, says CEO Terry Semel
Owen Gibson
Monday January 30, 2006
The Guardian
Yahoo chairman and chief executive Terry Semel is battling his way through the crowds in the Las Vegas sunshine to his company's stand at the mammoth Consumer Electronics Show (CES). He is in a hurry because he has a rendezvous with his pal Tom Cruise, the movie star roped in to lend his keynote address a bit of Hollywood stardust.
The Mission: Impossible actor is already in place, pregnant partner Katie Holmes in tow, feigning interest in the "home of the future" that Yahoo has erected to show how its content and services are migrating from PC to mobile phone, TV and elsewhere. Ellen DeGeneres, the US comedian who was also handed a starring role in the Semel address, is milling around and waiting to interview the pair for her hit daytime chatshow. You do not get this at the Westminster Media Forum.
The diminutive Semel, who for 24 years was at the heart of the Hollywood power elite as he rose to the top of Warner Brothers, is waxing lyrical about the promise of the second wave of internet expansion, fuelled by broadband takeup and the convergence of home entertainment devices. "Three or four years ago, people would say to me, 'How will Yahoo survive? These other portals are much larger, much heavier financed, they've got more of this and more of that,'" he says. "You know what? We not only survived, to a large degree we've overtaken them because we just focused on great products and services."
'Basket case'
Back in May 2001, he provoked raised eyebrows and some stifled chuckles when he moved to Yahoo in the wake of the dotcom crash. The one-time Wall Street darling was widely thought to be a basket case, as the received wisdom was that do-it-all portals were dead. His former colleagues in the world of old media are no longer laughing, as he successfully turned the company round. Now Yahoo and a handful of its rivals are jostling for position to act as the middlemen between the big content providers and the technology giants. "When you wake up in the morning, you are always going to have competition. That's good. It makes you step up every day and continue to strive," Semel says.
Like most media executives of a certain age, he looks to his kids for inspiration. In his speech, mainly concerned with plugging a new service called Yahoo to Go that works seamlessly across a variety of devices including mobile phones and TVs, he points to the way his teenage daughter will juggle three mobile devices to stay in touch with friends, listen to music and contribute to communities on the move.
"The overall audience of Yahoo is over 400 million. Those numbers say: this is real," he says. "This is very large and is more and more part of the mindset of entire generations that have been growing up with it over the last 10 years."
If there is one message from the internet giants that dominated CES it was that 2006 is going to be the year when the long- predicted convergence of entertainment devices finally happens. Every speaker trotted out the same mantra, promising that users would be able to access content any time, any place on any device. Google's Larry Page unveiled its video download service and Microsoft's Bill Gates trumpeted a tie-up with Sky that would allow its new internet video-on- demand services to be delivered to his Media Centre home entertainment systems. Yahoo's strategy is to provide a platform via which users can access all of their content - whether music tracks, emails, user generated content, downloads of Lost or their own blog - on any device at any time.
"I might capture all this on my mobile device but want to view it on my big screen TV," explains Marco Boerries, head of Yahoo's Connected Life division and one of a number of bright thinkers who have joined the company in recent years as a result of their own firms being acquired.
"The important thing that the internet brought about is that we're becoming our own programmers - we get what we want. We're taking that paradigm shift and putting it on the TV or on the mobile device. That's very powerful," he says.
Semel, too, is excited about the possibilities for video. Combined with its community features, he sees video putting Yahoo at the centre of the emerging on-demand world. Yahoo recently announced plans for an online reality show, The Wow House, and has recruited its own war correspondent and adventure writer, sealed exclusive deals to show extra footage from programmes such as The Apprentice online, introduced a weekly American football show and offers a library of music videos.
All of this activity has unsettled some of its media partners by suggesting a move into their territory. But Semel is impossible to ruffle, possessing the rhino hide and smooth patter of the US corporate veteran. He insists Yahoo's foray into content is a small-scale experiment to point the way for others: "We've been doing a little bit of original content. It's about us experimenting and putting things in front of our users - like the live video stream of a Nasa launch."
Nor are there plans to buy a traditional media company or independent production outfit, a move which could compromise one of Yahoo's strengths. "One of the strong suits of Yahoo is its desire and capability to partner with people," he says. Instead, it will concentrate on integrating its content with its burgeoning community features and glueing the whole lot together with a much-improved search engine.
The increasing overlap between the worlds of traditional media and the internet was highlighted again last week when former Channel 4 chief executive Michael Jackson agreed to join Barry Diller's US firm InterActive Corp, owner of a string of sites including Ticketmaster and Ask Jeeves, as president of programming. In contrast to the headlong rush to new media in 1998, the rise of broadband and video content has given an editorial imperative to such high-profile moves.
Crossing borders
Meanwhile, Google's "don't be evil" mantra was under scrutiny after it launched a Chinese version of its search engine and agreed to cooperate with the government on censorship. Yahoo faced a similar situation last year, when it handed over the details of a journalist who was later jailed. Semel maintains that the company will comply with the national laws of each country in which it operates. But given his rhetoric over the democratic, empowering qualities of the internet, Yahoo will find it difficult to reconcile its words with its actions.
He is more forthcoming when it comes to what marks Yahoo out from the competition - globally comprising AOL, Google, MSN and the emerging threat from News Corp, but also including local giants in each market from China to Germany. "You don't look to Yahoo for one thing. Fundamentally, whether they're sharing photos or listening to music or using our mail and messaging products, our users have multiple things they come to Yahoo for," he enthuses.
"Not all of our competitors have all those pieces, certainly not on a global basis. As new generations continue to become more dependent on the internet and put more of their personalised needs on Yahoo, I think the relationship becomes better and better. We're not a one-trick pony."
The more of their own content, from photos to TV shows to emails, that users store on Yahoo, the more advertising they view and the less promiscuous they become. Given that Yahoo is, according to Semel, so well placed to benefit from the changing media landscape, it must rankle that so much attention gets lavished on Google. While it could be argued that Yahoo is ahead in integrating its various services, its Californian neighbour is seen as more thrusting, more innovative and a better bet for investors. In contrast, Yahoo shares slumped by 13% last week after fourth quarter earnings figures failed to meet escalating analyst expectations.
"Google does a good job but when I think about email I think about the fact that 250 million people in the world currently use Yahoo email. And hundreds of millions of people are using Yahoo's IM. Nothing rankles me," he insists.
Semel's PR minders are making frantic hand signals. In corporate America, chief executives are almost as protected as the talent. Somthing else, perhaps, for him to talk to Cruise about.
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