Digital and Societal Transformation ideas-expertise-proces

Foursquare and Gowalla have a new rival on the mobile apps field of location: Facebook launches application for geo-localisation called check in. With its “Places” feature, users can broadcast their location to the web, track their friends’ movements and see who else has checked in to a specific location. The optional service, available initially in the US, will also allow users to tag their friends in posts, flagging their whereabouts as well.

Alsways an interesting exercise make forecasts, although some trends go often slower than predicted, and other disruptive factors come into place. Let's look at this list of predictions from Geoloco summit: Prediction 1. Geo-data will be free, with OpenStreet Map and other crowd-driven open-source data eclipsing commercial vendors: panelists of the summit did not think this prediction would be true due to quality issues. 2. Location-awareness will be integral to any mobile app: palists agree. 3. More than half of all mobile advertising in 2014 will be location-based: mixed review from panelists . Virtually all user-generated content will be geo-tagged: probably yes 5. Proximity will become a critical filter for content: probably yes, anyay a filtering of relevant information is needed. Prediction 6. Mobile devices scanning QR and bar codes will revolutionize how consumers access information: no clear answer 7. LBS will be integrated with social networks: already done, this...

Two years ago I started to analyse the different new trends when geographic maps and participatory web were converging. A first presentatin was made in 2008 , with elements mentionned like crowdsourcing for gathering data, and location based information put on screens. On 13th of October 2010 I will be making a new presentation at Gisotopolis event in Brussels and here I am reaching out to you: what are great cases that you have seen in this GEO 2.0 field? What has emerged as a new trend? Let me know, and I 'll include them in a new anlysis, that of course will be shared back to you. Feedback to tanguy@delestre.org or in remarks below

See the Demo here or link to article (French)

HaptiMap, Haptic, Audio and Visual Interfaces for Maps and Location Based Services, is a project which receives financial support from the European Commission in the Seventh Framework Programme, under the Cooperation Programme ICT – Information and Communication Technologies (Challenge 7 – Independent living and inclusion). More info http://www.haptimap.org/ COMPETITIVE CALL FOR ADDITIONAL COMMERCIAL PARTNER

Google Buzz for mobile allows you to see what's going on around you, post messages tagged with your location, and keep up with your friends on the go

Nokia has been making vast announcements in location based services latelu, such as the Augmented Reality point and find tool, letting evryone add interesting Point of interests. http://pointandfind.nokia.com/publishers Besides, Nokia is making its maps available for free on its Phones, very interesting evolotion. Seems that we are getting a neck to neck race for conquering the mobile application field with contenders like Android (Google), Apple and Tomtom.

All Points Blog

All Points Blog

Location-Based Ads Come to Augmented Reality in the US

Layar , a quickly evolving and much hyped augmented reality browser has anounced a new version with the inclusion of 3D objects viewable within your smartphone on location. Check it out.

Christian De Backer is CIO of TOMTOM. He has been nominated as CIO of the year and in its interview (dutch) some interesting elements can be found. Evolution to real-time maps (instead of now 3 months) Importance of user generated content

The new ODOS newsletter is out from Routeyou

Waze, a free provider of driver-generated maps and real-time road information, announced a new version of its free navigation app to include fun gaming elements in addition to smart algorithms, so that waze maps all over the world are updated even quicker. The consumer application is available on the Apple AppStore and the Android Market Place and can be downloaded from the waze web site for Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. The new version adds more capabilities to waze's already popular 'munching' game that encourages users to validate road driving directions as they drive around. The game will now be upgraded to munch `road goodies' - cherries, hammers and small gift packages worth bonus points - that will be placed in areas where the waze system has identified map problems. The highest scoring `road goodies' will be placed in locations with the most severe map issues, and as users drive around to munch these `goodies', waze's system will utilize the dr...

The announcement of a GPS pack included in the next Android 2.0 (product from Google) has created the stockmarket to dump shares of companies like Tomtom. Having gone through the demo of this Google GPS pack, I have following comments for discussion: + Over the air (off-board) - "free" is quite relative if you have to access the info through mobile data: mobile data packs for connectivity to the cloud are not 'free or unlimited' in my first trial of nav4 free application, a 10 km drive through Brussels did cost me 11 Euros:); alternative networks like wifi are not really of use when on the move; - the Google GPS software is thus a competitor for the applications on smartphones that take maps and info over the air; Nokia provides free mapping services, with a premium for voice guided traffic; a real free GPS over the air service is NAV4all , already existing a few years now, with good maps, speed traffic information, etc... - battery life: wonder if you will be able...

Google is taking a shortcut in navigatin, especially in US, where it is relying on its own maps, own user data etc, eclipsing the Teleatlas etc of this world. The following youtube trailer is explaining some of this:

Identifying people, objects and data by their geographical location has always been crucial, though it has provided limited commercial value. However, the rapid evolution and commoditisation of the communication services technologies has led the way to the development of this activity as a business opportunity. One way to identify the data and objects by their physical location is by geotagging them - the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as photographs, video, websites, RDF or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata.