Smartspace - Smartspace - Wayfinder Interview: Jed Rice, Skyhook Wireless/Loki

location based services

Welcome to the first in a series of Wayfinder Interviews, where Smartspace queries innovators in locative applications and services, annotative technologies and developers of digital landscapes. For the inaugural Wayfinder Interview, Jed Rice of Skyhook Wireless, creators of Loki, was kind enough to take time to answer questions about the past, present and future of Loki and locative services. Comments and feedback are welcomed.
Smartspace: Why Loki? What does it do that is new and useful?
JR: From a consumer perspective, Loki's unique value proposition is that by automatically identifying and integrating a user's location into his/her Internet search and navigation experience, it delivers the ultimate in local search and content acquisition. With a simple user interface it takes all of the content of the Web and pairs it with the user's exact physical location – delivering a much more personal, relevant and timely response. Now users can, with a touch of a button, get instant directions, find the nearest movie playing in the next hour, send their exact location to friends and colleagues...and the list goes on. Quite simply, it makes location an easy to use element to enhance how they use the Internet and communicate with others.
From a marketer's/advertiser's perspective, Loki is the first application capable of delivering ads and messages based on that anonymous user's physical location. Direct mail marketers will tell you that location information can drive pretty accurate psychographic, demographic and economic profiles – and now Loki can enable that level of targeting, only real-time and online. In other words, we can start to develop 'online direct marketing' campaigns that leverage the cost and deliver efficiency of the Internet with the targeting capabilities of direct mail.
Smartspace: Tell me more about the background of the Skyhook, and what your larger activities are.
JR: We realized a couple of years ago that the rapid 'grass roots' deployment of Wi-Fi access points was in fact creating a network infrastructure of millions and millions of fixed radio beacons. If the geographic location of the access point radio beacons could consistently and accurately be identified then we believed that an efficient software-only system could use the native hardware/equipment on Wi-Fi devices to reverse-triangulate the location of these roaming mobile devices. Because of the number and relatively short-range of these access points, we realized that we could augment GPS-based devices/services in areas where GPS had performance/accuracy issues (indoors, in urban canyons, etc.) or create whole new market opportunities where GPS was impractical, unavailable or too expensive (in terms of cost, power consumption, space, etc.) to make sense.
Skyhook's broader strategic objective is to be the definitive Wi-Fi based positioning system in the world. Operating as a location-determination platform, Skyhook's WPS (Wi-Fi Positioning System) can support any application, device or service that has Wi-Fi capabilities and needs location to perform, deliver or enhance the delivery of its capabilities.
Smartspace: What drove the development of Loki? Where do you see it headed?
JR: We saw the need for a 'mass-consumer' LBS application – one that would location-enable an application or service that would appeal to a broad set of people. In order to do that we focused on three core principals: location-enable a common and popular consumer activity that can be improved through the incorporation of auto-location; deploy it on commonly available and easily supportable platforms; and, finally, accurately and consistently identify the user's location.
Loki was the result. It incorporates location into something people do every day - search and navigate for content on the Internet. It works on the most common consumer computing platform today – the Windows-based PC. It uses Skyhook's Wi-Fi positioning system which delivers location within 20-50 meters and works where people are, indoors in metro/urban/suburban areas.
From here Loki itself can take many turns as we add enhance features like an SMS gateway for sharing location, more channels, deeper integration with existing services and sites like MySpace. It can also become a more effective marketing communications vehicle.
Take a lifestyle brand like REI, for example. They could roll-out an REI-branded version with pre-packaged channels for 'Mountain Biking', 'Kayaking' or 'Outdoor Events' that would create a tighter relationship with their customers.
More importantly, if we can use Loki as showcase for developing LBS applications, wide consumer adoption of LBS applications could be a reality in 12-18 months.
Smartspace: Are locative services just another toy, or will this market evolve into a valuable tool set? What will it take? Where are the big obstacles? What are the sweet spots?
JR: LBS has incredible potential but it is up to application developers and service providers to deliver applications and services that deliver value to a wide consumer audience. Right now the LBS market is dominated by dozens of locative services that operate on a small number of devices supported by one carrier and appealing to a small demographic market. Location-based businesses are simply not sustainable if they operate on the 50,000 GPS enabled Nextel phones and target only those users that are photo enthusiasts.
Just as importantly, the entire locative-services market has for years refused to recognize the elephant looming at the back of the room: most traditional location technologies simply did not work for consumers. GPS-based devices required the user to have a line of sight to several satellites which meant that had to be outdoors and in an open area. A-GPS/cell tower triangulation offered some improvements, but any line-of-sight application requiring a signal to travel dozens or thousand of miles are subject to any number of disruptions/deflections that could make that signal ineffective.
As a community, we therefore have to focus on four key principals if locative services are going to become a reality: One, build on top of technology platforms that deliver a user's location to within 20-50 meters 90%+ of the time. There is nothing worse to a user than being put in the middle of a river or lake. Two, develop applications that appeal to a broad user base. There are only so many people out there who want to track the exact location of their cat. Three, develop applications and services that operate on the most number of devices as possible. There may be 180 million mobile phones, but it is a highly fractured market of manufacturers, operating systems, models, network support, etc. As a developer, you need to focus on the most common platforms – no matter what you may think of Microsoft and Windows, they have market share. Finally, develop applications that can – to the greatest extent possible – operate independently of third party constraints (e.g. buying additional hardware, requiring third party distribution/permission from entities like carriers). Remove as many obstacles between the target market/end user and their ability to independently elect to use the application as possible.
Smartspace: How do you sell the model to partners (operators, advertisers, content partners, etc.)? How can the various pieces in the market (mapping, LBS, locative services, geotagging, annotated environments) link to form a coherent whole?
JR: Loki is unique in that we can deliver our core capability direct to the end-consumer without 'requiring' partners. Loki was described by one commentator as a 'mashup of mashups' – meaning that we once we use the Skyhook technology to determine the user's location, we are integrating that location into already created, defined and publicly available content. Whether it is mapping a user's location or directions, tagging a photo or blog entry or automatically posting the user's location to a 'friend finder' network, we are using open APIs and interfaces. That gives us direct connection to the end-consumer through the innovative use of already available content and services.
That said, partners can enhance the user experience, distribution of Loki and the ability to deliver relevant and personal ads – and that is the focus of the next phase of our initiative. That partner network includes large national advertisers, interactive media agencies, consumer/marketing data providers, search sites services, etc. The model and potential for Loki – to combine location, rich demographic/psychographic data and search/site context to deliver the first highly accurate ad-targeting platform – is and has been well received. The challenge is now building out an interlocking infrastructure/network among all the participants to make it a reality.
Smartspace: Who are the emerging leaders in the market? Will Google become a problem for you if it can replicate your functions?
JR: The leaders in the market – Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, AOL – are just that for a reason. Their well-publicized investment and research in this area clear indicators that they see the strong potential for at least location 'aware' – if not location 'based' – services. Each of them is approaching the market and opportunity from different perspectives, but all with the foundation that location is an important contextual variable to the user experience. For example, Microsoft released a very basic service called 'LocateMe' that can plot a user's location on a Microsoft map, Google is dabbling in municipal Wi-Fi networks to deliver targeted ads and AOL/AIM just released APIs that allow you developers to integrate location into their applications. The good news is that they are all evaluating Skyhook as a component of their strategy.
Whatever the use case or location-based service any organization develops – even one that competes with Loki – will still require consistent, accurate and reliable information. Skyhook is in the unique position of developing intellectual property across a broad number of areas that allow us to confidently stake our position as the only commercial grade Wi-Fi positioning system available. Our investment in data collection, processing, scoring and managing the infrastructure; the operational model for managing a nation-wide organization that drives every single street within our coverage area; and our proprietary algorithms and location-determination processes can not be matched without a significant investment in time, resources and capital.
The more location services developed, the more they will need to rely on a platform like ours.
Smartspace: Where are the next big leaps in innovation going to come from in locative services? What would you like to see happen in this market? Where do you see it in 5 years time?
JR: The two areas of innovation will be in multi-mode location-determination and application development. While WPS has proven to be a very accurate location platform indoors and in metro areas but we're not so arrogant as to think we are the holy grail of location solutions. In wide open, rural areas or on the highway GPS is still the most effective solution. Now if you combine the two, a device like TomTom can now start to deliver consistently deliver location awareness 99%+ of the time no matter where you are – by leveraging multi-mode technologies and using the best available signal of opportunity given the use case, location will become something that the average use can consistently trust. The good news is that we are already working with many of the key innovators in the software, device and chip manufacturing markets to make this a reality.
Application developers are the 'creative' ones that will need to focus on LBS for the masses. While today there is a proliferation of 'alpha' and 'beta' LBS services, they will soon move beyond the creative and experimental stages and transform into versions that will appear to broader audiences - as long as they design them with the needs and requirements of those broader audiences in mind and not just their techie geek buddies.
This combination of consistent and accurate location with mass appeal applications will mean location will be a key component of every application – from desktop productivity, communications, access and security, content creation, etc. Then we'll really see location based services become a common and accepted reality.
This interview can be republished with permission from Smartspace. Contact Scott Smith with questions.

Posted on April 21, 2006 by Scott Smith in Wayfinder Interviews Post a Comment
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