Tell me when I get there

location based services

Nagging can be annoying, but it also helps us get things done. Andrew Zymer sells it. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he has invented a location-based reminder programme for BlackBerrys, which he calls Naggie (www.naggie.com). The idea is pretty simple: you program a reminder, or "nag", with an address attached to it into your handheld. Naggie then finds the longitude and latitude of that address. So whenever you arrive, the GPS chip on your handheld knows you're there, the nag is activated and you're reminded of what you needed to do.


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In theory, you then email your boss as soon you get to the office, or pick up that birthday card when you walk into the supermarket, or whatever it is. Naggie is just one example of how location-based information, or information delivered to our phones, which we trigger by our arrival at a particular place, may change the way we live our lives. In the case of location-based reminders, we might no longer have excuses for not doing something. Except, perhaps, "my GPS signal failed".
Searchable user tags
Navizon (www.navizon.com) a software company based in Manhattan, sells what it calls its Wireless Positioning System. As well as a Buddy Tracker, which lets your phone or laptop show you exactly where your friends who have consented to be tracked are on a map, Navizon's WPS also lets you search the area around you by keyword. This search works remotely from your phone. When you type in a keyword, a function call to Navizon's API scans the Golden Pages, Google and MSN local search to find shops or places that match what you typed. A small map is then sent to your phone.
Another feature of Navizon's package is that you can add a geotag to a place of interest, allowing other users to be alerted to something you've highlighted, as they pass through that area. Or you can search through the tags which other users have left. Along with the location of a place, and some simple keywords (eg restaurant, Italian, dining) you can leave some comments. Suddenly that terrible meal you had has become a cautionary tale on someone else's mobile phone, and since it's triggered when they're in that area, probably not a minute too soon.
And you may not even need to have GPS enabled to use WPS. This is because although it works almost identically to GPS, instead of triangulating the signal from satellites, it uses the signal from Wi-Fi access points and cell towers. The programme will work on any Wi-Fi enabled laptop and on phones using the Windows or Symbian operating systems. However you'll need to be in an area that is covered by the Navizon database. (You can check at www.searcharoundme.com.)
It costs $19.99 (£10.54) to download Navizon's WPS for your laptop or handheld device, but GPS-enabled users can get it for free, because Navizon needs them to help create their map of Wi-Fi points and cell towers. By mapping cell towers and Wi-Fi points automatically as you travel around, you can even earn money.
Users get two points for every Wi-Fi point mapped and 10 points for every cell tower. For every 10,000 points, you earn $19.99. Navizon president Cyril Houri claims he knows a taxi driver in Manhattan who earns $100 a day this way. Navizon has also created an API which it calls its web locator. This Java applet lets website developers embed location searches in their web pages, so visitors to a site can be located, or locate places around them.
Houri explains: "The web locator is like a virtual GPS, sent to the client computer for the time of the transaction. Every single brand that has a store locator could include a web locator like this, to allow their customers to find the nearest branch.
"This also creates new advertising opportunities. Say you're looking for the closest Starbucks around you, we could suggest that maybe with your coffee you want a cookie, and then show you the places that sell cookies nearby. Or perhaps you are conducting an important financial transaction, your bank could check that you are at your own address, and if you are they allow the transaction to go ahead".
A new outlet for spammers?
As useful as some of these services are, do we really want Starbucks or even our bank using tracking technology, even if it is supposed to make things easier? Will our location soon be just another front on which we are bombarded with annoying ads and spam? And what's to stop shops posting glowing comments about themselves, disguised as user-generated tags?
Perhaps the key is that we can turn off the function to receive tags, or set a very strict filter for them. However, if email has taught us anything, it's that the spammers always find a way. For the moment at least, you don't need to worry about spam. There are just a handful of GPS-enabled phones on sale in the UK - and, for better or worse, the location-based information they provide is tightly controlled. One of the most anticipated is Benefon's Twig, due for release before Christmas, at a cost of £330 SIM-free.
Twig is one of the few GPS phones available in the UK to come with a friend-finder. However, finding your friends is not possible in real time, at least from the phone itself. Instead you send location texts to another Twig user. You then receive a map showing where they are, which helps you to get there. Or if your Twig-using friends have consented, you can look up their whereabouts on the Twig website.
While these location texts seem handy, they're not really that different from the more traditional text asking, "Where R U?" The other drawback with the GPS phones on offer is that all the maps are preloaded, with content dictated by the manufacturer.
So while you can tag as many places as you like, other users won't be able to see your tags, nor you theirs. This removes a major part of the fun.
In fact, all the software on current GPS phones is preloaded. But if this changes, and we're allowed to tinker around with things, the phones could quickly become a lot more interesting.
For example, one site plots geotagged Wikipedia entries on to Google Earth (www.webkuehn.de/hobbys/wikipedia/geokoordinaten/index_en.htm). If these Wikipedia entries could be sent to us as we passed through the corresponding areas, it would be like having a tour guide in our mobile phone.
Similarly, when the tags and opinions we attach to places appear on our networks for others to see, location-based information becomes user-generated content. Every place that we visit could then come tagged with the opinions and experiences of others and it would be up to us to decide who we believed.
A vast array of information now lies dormant, whether on Wikipedia or in peoples' heads. Soon we may be able to receive this information on our phones, when we need it most. The local knowledge we accumulate daily has massive potential if it can be harnessed like this.
The next big thing on your mobile phone? Location, location, location.
· Bloggers who are tagging the world
Everything happens somewhere, though we're not always sure where. With geotagging, we are sure. Geotagging is the process of adding geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) to another piece of information, such as a news story, blog post, website or photograph. When we add a geotag to a file or piece of information, we link that file with the place with precision accuracy. If someone want to find where a photo was taken, where an event took place or where a website is based, they can feed the geocoordinates into one of the many mapping programmes and zoom in to have a look. Often geotags will open up a location automatically in Google Earth or Yahoo Maps.
Photos are one of the most commonly geotagged media. Sites like Flickr or Zooomr allow users to attach location tags to the pictures they store, so when you look at someone's photo, you can click a link which opens up a map and shows you where in the world it was taken. Since so many photos are shared on sites like Flickr, users can browse a map and look at photos of a place simply by clicking on it. While one geotagged picture or event cannot tell us much, many collated together can tell us a lot more. Geotags relating to similar events or happenings are gathered and plotted on to maps of the Earth, allowing users to look for trends or patterns. There are now many geotagging blogs, or geoblogs (which aren't about geology) such as www.geobloggers.com, which show a thriving subculture of people using the information from tagged photos and files to make some very interesting deductions about which part of the world is the most photographed on Flickr, or what spot at a famous landmark is producing the most popular photos.Ronan Fitzgerald
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