In-Brief: MSG’s favourite LBS pundit Andrew Grill turns practitioner and provides a detailed look at the location services and schemes high on his radar. Read on for more on Google, Yahoo!, and Nokia, as well as a slew of cool newcomer companies sure to leave their mark. Peggy adds: A wonderful coincidence that several of the companies that have captured Andrew’s attention are also companies that I connected with before and during Navigation Location Europe 2008 in Amsterdam. The event was a huge success with 170+ attendees, and this positive review from Jonathan Raper (on his blog) is a great testament to the quality of the event and – in particular – the session I led on mobile location services. I’m on my way to London, where I am holding a mobile search & content discovery workshop, but will circle back next week with analysis of Skyhook Wireless and Lightpole – for starters!

Location isn’t just about coordinates; it’s about community. Over the last months, I watched location evolve from a nice-to-have feature to a must-have ingredient of a raft of mobile social networking services and apps sure to cross the chasm in the coming months. How can I be so sure? Because, while Internet giants Facebook, Bebo, MySpace & Co. have extended their reach to mobile, they are still working out the value propositions that will make it worthwhile for users to access their mobile sites on the move.

Real-time location, and more specifically, presence, are the features that will give their mobile sites a real boost. Play their cards right and these Internet giants may just find themselves on equal footing with made-for-mobile social networks that understood from the start how to wring real value out of real-time location and presence.

When I’m not running Sales and Business Development for Seeker Wireless, a leading location company, or spending time with my family, I’m trawling the Web and twittering with colleagues in search of the cool new location-based apps. As I’m not one to be satisfied with lists of URLs (they say little about the user experience), and I reckon the MSG readers community is the same, I have either tested or regularly use each app I review here.

A survey of these location-aware services allows us to divide them into two camps: Services that have location baked inside the handset through the full integration of GPS, and services that cleverly rely on some hybrid approach. Prime examples of this are Skyhook Wireless (Loki), whose Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) is the world’s first location platform to use the native 802.11 radio already on mobile devices to deliver accurate positioning worldwide. At the other end of the spectrum (no pun intended!), Google’s My Location feature builds on the company’s proprietary base station almanac. But, as I argue later in this column, this list of mobile operator Cell-IDs by physical location, operator, and network code, which Google was the first to create, has some serious gaps that other clever companies may soon rise to fill – and likely make a profit in the process.

With this in mind, here are some apps and companies that merit a much closer look.

Locatik from Psiloc – I first came across this app at the Symbian Smart Show in London in 2007. It therefore pre-dates Google’s My Location initiative, but the approach is quite similar. For one, it uses GPS-enabled phones to survey and report the location of base stations. This information, reported by the phone, provides the basis for a global database of Cell-IDs. Users without GPS-enabled devices who visit a similar place will report back the local Cell-ID, and the Locatik database will estimate a position and plot it on a Google map based on the previous GPS survey. The mobile app has a couple of neat services, including one that allows you to see how close friends are who are also running the Locatik application. Unfortunately, because it lacks the sheer scale of the Google application, Locatik will likely remain a niche player in this space.

Locr – This is a photo blogging site on steroids. The cool mobile application – that works on Symbian and other platforms — essentially geocodes the location where the user took the photo (derived from the GPS fix) and provides an easy way to promote these geotagged photos on a purpose-built website. I first came across this site on the Nokia Download! section of the Series 60 deck – so Nokia must be keen to promote this application. The website and mobile application also lets you see photos taken close to your current location.

Loki – As I mentioned above, this is the flagship app offered by Skyhook Wireless. The company has taken a novel approach to location, using Wi-Fi enabled handsets to compare against a list of Wi-Fi base stations surveyed by Skyhook staff. The Loki application is available as an Internet Explorer or FireFox plug-in as well as a Symbian 60 application for Wi-Fi enabled handsets.

Gypsii – This geo-integration and social networking platform has been on my radar since Geocentric, the Benefon company behind the scenes, came out of stealth mode at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. In a word, the Gypsii app brings together fixed and wireless worlds in an app that combines social networking, location services, friend-finding, and content-sharing. The company has a tightly integrated mobile application that makes use of the GPS fix and also provides a mapping ability on the handset. The website is building a community based around location, and invites users to blog and post photos etc on interesting places they have been. When you are in the same area, you can see what other Gypsii users thought.

Jaiku – This service (still in invite-only mode) caused quite a stir when it was snapped up by Google last October. Jaiku can be compared to Twitter, but there are some notable differences. For one, you really can take it with you. A neat S60 application allows access to much of the website’s functionality on a mobile phone. The S60 application also captures the country code of the handset and publishes this information along with handset availability (the current phone profile – green if it’s “general” / red if it’s “silent”). This cool feature effectively enables Jaiku to show the presence/status of each contact in the phone’s contact database. Put simply, each contact – who is also on Jaiku – will appear with their real-time presence (green/red) next to their name. The best mash-up in my book would be if Jaiku pushes the Cell-ID and LAC (GSM Location Area Code) to the Google My Location application, an interplay that would vastly improve location accuracy. (In practice, linking Jaiku with Google’s My Location would be fairly easy. Harnessing the power of the Google global base station almanac would make Jaiku the clear winner in the battle to provide GPS and operator- independent live location/presence updates. Will Jaiku do this? Guess we will have to wait and see…)

Rummble – I found this only recently thanks to a post on my blog from Andrew Scott, Rummble CEO. Rummble calls itself a location-based social search and discovery tool. At basic level it lets users find recommended content for a location (as suggested by the social network) without having to do a keyword search. Instead, Rummble’s algorithm provides personalized results based on a trusted profile it builds for you and the content in your social network. Rummble functions across Web, mobile, and Facebook, and hooks into GPS or Cell ID. A hassle: You have to tell the application where you are first – and then it updates your presence and makes it available to other trusted Rummble users.

Shozu – This is one of my personal favourite applications. I mainly use it as a mobile photo geotagging tool. (It reads the internal GPS and tags photos for upload to sites such as Flickr with just one click – nice!) But it doesn’t stop there. It also allows mobile blogging, photo sharing, and video posting. It’s a broad range sure to reach a huge audience. I am therefore convinced that Shozu will be a major must-have mobile application for even the “nomob” (normal mobile) user.

Sniffu -This app from Useful-Networks has just launched in the U.K. Its singular focus is to answer the popular question: Where r u? To do this the company uses the paid-for location feeds offered by the four major operators in the U.K., and effectively “sells” that information to users who sign up to “sniff” (translated: locate) friends anywhere in the country. (Privacy is ensured because users have to grant their permission to be sniffed (located) in the first place.) Each sniff costs the sender 50 pence ($1) and users have to send a lot of texts – so the business model can make money. (Users text friends to invite them in and/or give their permission to be sniffed, for example.) There is also a neat Facebook plug-in which shows the location of the person you sniff on a Google map.

Nokia maps – Version 2.0 (beta) of this application puts to use the assets Nokia gained when it acquired Gate5. As a result, the application now caters for those of us who navigate on foot, and has a number of useful pedestrian modes. The UI is slightly cleaner and gives a direct indication of satellite strength, as well as GSM/UMTS network status. Luckily, when I did the upgrade, all of my geo-favourites were imported cleanly from Maps 1.0 to Maps 2.0. Kudos for ease of use. However, I still had to refresh all of the map data stored on my memory card. Overall, it is a useful application as the maps are stored locally, so getting off a plane in a foreign country you have instant access to maps (as long as you have side loaded them) instead of pulling the maps down over the air.

Google Mobile Maps – Combine this with My Location – and Google is without a doubt the big daddy of them all. To secure its market-leading position, Google has quietly and cleverly thrown its might and massive processing power around a well built mobile application that works across multiple platforms, and stepped up efforts to build the world’s largest base station almanac that is operator-independent.

Connect the dots and mobile operators have every reason to be worried. In fact, most mobile operators I have spoken with – who represent a good cross section of the global mobile operator community – have confided that they have not provided their Cell-ID lists to Google – and don’t plan to. (But even if they did give this information to Google, it’s data that is not static and changes quite often. Put another way, there is room for improvement and huge market opportunities for companies that recognise this first.)

Look under the hood and you’ll see that Google is currently filling the gaps in its Cell-ID database by tapping into the customer base of users with GPS-enabled devices who are running Google Mobile Maps version 2.0 and higher. Google harnesses these users as nodes in the network and simply adds their exact GPS fix to Google’s global database of Cell-IDs. This approach makes it possible for me to get off an aeroplane in a new city, fire up Google Mobile Maps, and hit the “0″ key to find where I am on a map to within 1700-5000 metre accuracy – even if I don’t have a GPS-enabled phone or a GPS fix. Smart!

To be clear, this is a proprietary solution. It’s highly unlikely that Google will be integrated anytime soon into the Yahoo! Fire Eagle platform. But this limitation is also not likely to hinder Google from baking location into a long list of mobile social networking apps.

Yahoo! Go 3.0 – This application is strikingly similar to Google Mobile Maps (no surprise as they are a fierce competitor). However, Yahoo! gets higher marks in my book. For one, the native application is more tightly integrated into the Yahoo! suite of social networking applications such as Flickr, Yahoo! Mail, and news. What’s more, it has a good mapping client, and it is integrated with GPS – if it’s available on the device. Granted, the application does not yet have the “My Location” feature that Google Maps has, but a survey of initiatives such as Zonetag and Fire Eagle tells me this is next on the roadmap. (Zonetag is a lot like Shozu. It let’s users geotag photos and send them directly to Flickr. The Fire Eagle website tells us that “soon you will be able to update your location directly from your phone with zonetag” – so it’s one to watch for sure!)

Finally, I’d like to hone in on two new entrants. However, it’s not the companies themselves as it is the way I came across them that confirms the speed, spread, and significance of social networking on the move. It wasn’t some large marketing campaign that made me sit up and take notice of these newcomers; it was by tuning into my personal Twitter feed, which brings together professionals and practitioners passionate about LBS, mobile advertising, and mobile 2.0. (In fact, it was my Twitter followers that turned me on to Brightkite, a cool beta application I profile below that lets you location-enable your Twitter feed.)

Brightkite – This application fits into the “self service” LBS category. You have to manually “check in” to a new location via the website, which then updates your Twitter profile, via the twitter API, and can also integrate into Fire Eagle to propagate these location updates to a broader range of applications. At each “checked in” place, users can attach photos and notes to describe what is available at each of these locations.

Lightpole – This application only runs on a few phones, so I have not yet been able to trial it. It’s much more than a social networking app; this mobile discovery offer provides users access to real-time, geo-specific content about restaurants, shows, local history, and many more points of interest (POI). Users can also make comments, recommendations, and alert their friends. The real surprise: Content providers and publishers can get in on the act as well, pushing out geo-contextual information (travel, news, restaurants etc…) and offers that are relevant to the community. Distribution can be supported by ads, subscriptions, transactions, or other models.

The market is bursting with cool location-aware social networking apps. But what are the platforms and who are the providers with the capabilities mix to turn good ideas into great revenue generating services?

In my view, the one to watch is Google. Google Mobile Maps with the My Location feature has managed to break new and lucrative ground where others have failed. The value proposition: Automatic, free, and reasonably accurate location on any handset (no need for GPS here). I’ve tested the app throughout my travels and no matter the country or city, Google Mobile Maps returns a reliable location estimate every time – enough to help me search for where I am going, or at least get my bearings to help orientate me on a map.

To be fair, there are a number of open source approaches around, such as www.opencellid.org, but these rely on individual users updating a common database. The Google approach taps its vast user base to do the same task. But even Google’s scope and scale doesn’t guarantee Google will always have the right answer.

As mobile operators add, remove, and change mobile cell towers, the quality of the Google database will suffer. Sure, there will come a time when enough Google Mobile Maps users have essentially re-surveyed the area – at no cost to Google – and corrected errors in the database. However, this process will take valuable time that even Google can’t afford.

Put another way, Google will have to plug the holes in its database quickly and accurately – otherwise it risks losing users who will likely vote with their feet when the device display tells them: “Your current location is unavailable.”

Return to the present and no other vendor comes close to Google. And it’s unlikely that any company will. (Unless, of course, a company follows Google’s blueprint and invests in a dedicated team of location experts and a global database of Cell-IDs.)

But who ever said we need another Google?

Rather than reinvent the wheel, Yahoo! is doing one better with Fire Eagle. This Yahoo! backed initiative isn’t a me-too Google app on the handset; its strategy revolves around creating a clearing house for location feeds from any trusted source. Put another way, Yahoo! wants to be the platform – the open broker – that provides the best available location estimate from a number of (or just one) sources and make this information available to other applications. It’s a model sure to encourage a thriving business ecosystem – and it already has the attention of a growing developer community if we consider that most of the apps I have reviewed here either have a Fire Eagle interface, or could easily provide one.

My take: The Fire Eagle approach will work, because it is agnostic and is not trying to solve the multitude of problems that have held back automatic cellular location until now. Another ace in its hand: It has a common API framework to make integration into social networking sites straightforward.

As I have pointed out, location and community is a potent combination that stands to gain ground as more mobile users opt to access their mobile social networks on the fly. It’s not a fad; it’s a full-fledged ecosystem that will bring together more traditional players (Google, Yahoo!) and newcomers (Loki, Locr, Shozu etc…). The result is a plethora of apps and services – many of which we haven’t even thought of yet.

But the real excitement for me is not about the cool services on the horizon. It’s the emergence of disruptive tools and technologies that allow content companies and developers to deliver location-enabled and presence- aware apps without having to rely on the mobile operator.

For more thoughts on mobile advertising, mobile location, and local search visit Andrew’s blog (London Calling) at andrewgrill.com/blog

This entry was posted on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 10:34 am and is filed under Content Discovery, Local Search, Location-based services, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Search, Mobile Social Networking, Web 2.0. 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.