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Mittwoch, 10. August 2005 |
Location Based Super List, courtesy SamC of Daily Wireless.
SamC from Daily Wireless blogged on Meetro.com and assembled such a spectacular list of location based services that I felt obligated to re-blog his post in its entirety here so that those of you foolish enough to NOT HAVE Daily Wireless on your Blogroll don't miss this incredible list. Thanks loads Sam. Really exceptional (and fun!) list.
Meetro is a new location-based
community building software. Using WiFi signals, it is able to discover the
general location of a user without GPS.
City residents are then visually shown exactly who's in their vicinity and
the general interests they share.
The software itself is a free download from www.meetro.com. A
desktop-compatible version has been recently released so people without WiFi
can also get in on the fun.
Other related projects include
Skyhook Wireless, a software-only positioning system (see DailyWireless: Next Generation 911?). They use a nationwide database of known Wi-Fi access points to calculate the precise location of any Wi-Fi device.
The location of any Wi-Fi device can be determined without new hardware.
Skyhook says they created a reference database of over 1.5 million
private and public access points along with their locations. The WPS
client software utilizes this reference database to calculate a
device[base ']s location to within 20-40 meters. The Wi-Fi Positioning System
(WPS) initially is being rolled out in 25 metropolitan areas.
Herecast provides location-based services on a WiFi device.
At its simplest level, it can tell you where you are. More advanced
services can use your location to enhance information lookups, publish
presence information, and create unique games -- all while preserving
privacy.
Herecast
uses a symbolic naming system -- instead of using coordinates such as
"42.9875, -81.2915", it expresses your location in terms an ordinary
person would use -- for example, the name of the building. Every
wireless access point broadcasts a unique identifier, which can be used
to tell it apart from other access points. That identifier can also be
used as a "landmark" to identify a particular location.
Quarterscope's Wi-Fi positioning technology, is a similar GPS replacer. Wi-Fi Planet has the scoop on Quarterscope and their Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS). It calculates the position of a client in a manner similar to other Wi-Fi positioning developers such as PanGo Networks, Newbury Networks, Bluesoft and Ekahau.
Location Based Services might also develop around some of these (free) software packages:
Directions Magazine has a series of articles on mobile location-based services and content. Other magazines include Geospatial-Online, Geo World, GPS World and Wireless DevNet.
Here's a great list of innovative mobile projects. Hacking Google Maps has become a professional endeavor.
[Thanks, Nigel Ballard]
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[The Mobile Technology Weblog]
5:27:08 PM 
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Nokia Launches Smartphone Mobile Search Tools.
SlashPhone reports that Nokia has launched a new set up tools bringing search directly to their 6680, 6681 and 6620 series smartphones.
The announcement indicates that the service will be bundled with all new purchases and can be downloaded if you already own one of these phones.
This is the kind of step that I think a lot of people have been waiting for. As Russell Buckley of Mobhappy has said here before I took over, if it's anymore complicated than how you do things already people won't do it. Making mobile search convenient and FAST are the two components necessary to encourage wide-spread adoption and use.
Once people learn that they can find what they're looking for quickly, easily and without paying extra or waiting on hold for an operator, we'll really see this space heat up, but it won't be until voice commands are useful for entering data for mobile search that this technology will replace operator services. After all, people shouldn't do what I do and text to SMS GOOGL or 4INFO while driving in Los Angeles rush hour traffic... [The Mobile Technology Weblog]
5:25:49 PM
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Mobile Porn Swells in Europe.
Informa Telecoms and Media's newest report, Mobile Adult Services predicts:
The [European] market for erotic content for mobile devices is predicted to be worth USD2.3bn by 2010, but realization of this is highly dependent on mobile phone carriers and content providers working with regulators in order to determine solid controls and age verification procedures.
Here's what I know...in the US where we've yet to see any real substantial penetration (yes, pun intended) of pornography into the mobile space, I can still gauge interest in simple ways. For example, even though there are hundreds of other posts on this blog that I believe are of more immediate value to the regular readers than comments on mobile porn, the traffic for these posts is dramatically higher on average and not from the usual sources.
This means people are actively searching for mobile pornography. Of course it's only a matter of time before an MVNO gets in the game with a heavily adult themed product. Hopefully, as stated above, when this happens, they'll at least do a decent job of controlling subscriber access by conducting age verification. We can also hope that people will exercise good judgment about when they display their collections.
Films and even magazines lend themselves to more private viewing opportunities; mobile phones could prove a bit more problematic. There are plenty of folks out there I'm sure that wouldn't appreciate one guy (why is it always us guys?) enjoying his 2 inch screen while riding the 9 from Union Square to Central Park...
One last note; although there are plenty of articles ABOUT mobile pornography, in a quick search on Google I didn't come across any sites that I could download or access via my phone and get myself into trouble. [The Mobile Technology Weblog]
5:24:28 PM
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First Excerpt. This post will be the first of a number of excerpts from my book. Over the next month I'll post as many as I can. This first one is from a chapter I wrote on Bill Gross, who has founded many search companies (his latest is Snap), but Overture (nee GoTo nee Yahoo Search Marketing) was his biggest hit. I think Bill makes for one of the best stories in the book, and I hope I did him justice. This is a small portion of the chapter, titled "A Billion Dollars, One Nickel at a Time." Each chapter in the book is broken into sections, this excerpt starts with a section, about a third of the way through the chapter, which focuses on Gross's early insights into market economics. As with all things book related, I look forward to your feedback and clarifications/corrections. The Sugar Daddy: It’s All About Arbitrage When he was twelve, Gross lived in an apartment building in Encino, California, outside of Los Angeles. There were hundreds of kids in that complex, Gross recalls. “We all roller-skated together, played baseball together, swam together, did everything together,” he tells me. And when they had saved up enough money, they all made the pilgrimage to a local pharmacy, where they’d buy their fix of candy. “We used to hop the cinder-block wall surrounding the complex and go buy candy for a dime at the West Valley Medical Center,” he recalls. “We’d go there all the time.” Now here’s where it gets interesting. In Gross’s words: “One day I was at Savon [pronounced Save-on] on Ventura Boulevard and saw they had a special on candy, three for a quarter. So I bought five dol- lars worth—at eight and a third cents each—and brought them back to my apartment, where... [John Battelle's Searchblog]
5:23:10 PM
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Microsoft debuts RSS in IE7 Beta 1. Jane Kim, program manager for RSS in Internet Explorer, has written a useful post detailing the new RSS features in IE7. A few comments from me...
1) Microsoft has decided to call RSS "web feeds", at least for now. Jane says they're "still actively exploring what is the right name to use for RSS feeds". Although I agree that end users need not be concerned with knowing what RSS is - they just need to see the benefits of syndication and subscribing to information - I don't think 'web feeds' is any clearer than 'RSS'. Personally I think RSS and its orange branding has gotten too much traction on the Web already and it's too late to change it now.
Don't mess with the brand Microsoft - it's bigger than you. Even the Atom proponents admit that RSS is the brand name.
2) Discovery: "If a web feed is found, the web feed button on the toolbar lights up." Additionally it can play a sound. Bing! This is good stuff - it will help promote RSS feeds to normal Web users if it is highlighted in this manner. Apparently publishers will be able to control this setting. Naturally the user also can tweak their browser settings.
3) That format thing: "Beta 1 of Windows Vista and IE 7 for XP currently supports the web feed formats RSS .9x, RSS 1.0, and RSS 2.0. As Sean mentioned, Atom 0.3 and Atom 1.0 support will come in a later release."
I suppose the Atom folks will be slightly miffed. But how many feed-enabled blogs and websites don't have at least one varient of RSS .9x-2? (I actually don't know the answer to that, so someone feel free to enlighten me).
4) IE7 will display a browser-friendly version of the RSS feed - much like Feedburner does with my RSS feed. Again, this is a good way to make sure RSS gets adopted by the mainstream.
Summary
Not a bad start by Microsoft. It doesn't appear they have all the functionality they promised at Gnomedex ready to roll out yet - e.g. there was no mention of support for Simple List Extensions. This Beta 1 seems to be aimed at users, rather than developers. Having said that, there was also little mention of the RSS Reader functionality that IE7 will have. I expect we'll hear more soon.  [Read/Write Web]
11:57:41 AM
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53 million pages licensed. Yesterday Yahoo! announced that their search index had grown to 20 billion documents. That, along with continued adoption of Creative Commons licenses, explains 53 million linkbacks to our licenses according to Yahoo! linkback queries. In May, when Yahoo!'s index apparently consisted of 8 billion documents, we found 16 million pages with license links. So discounting the growth of Yahoo!'s index, the number of Creative Commons license links have increased by approximately one third in the past three months alone -- 53/(16*(20/8)) = 1.325. Take the exact numbers with a lump of salt, but the indication of growth is impressive nonetheless.
You can search for Creative Commons licensed content at Yahoo! Search for Creative Commons. [Creative Commons Blog - rss]
11:54:18 AM
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Stock Market Dependant Self-Watering Plant.  In most cases I would naturally say an idea like this would be completely worthless, but this only escapes the grasps of worthlessness by being an extremely cool. This plant, purchased at Home Depot is controlled by the stock fluctuations that the Home Depot stock is taking. Once a week a wifi adapter checks the stock and sends the data to electronic components that controls the watering. The idea is if the stock were to go low enough that the plant dies, then the plant is simply returned back to Home Depot and replaced free of charge thanks to their unconditional plant guarantee.
Rubber tree plant's health tied to Home Depot's stock price [BoingBoing]
[Gizmodo]
11:52:50 AM
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eBay Deal of the Day: WiFi Speed Spray.  Somebody is making something up, I think. However, anything scientific has to be true, including intelligent design, so this stuff must work. But don't take our word for it.
As your computer sends data, each bit also carries hundreds of invisible WiFi Speed Spray™ "scrubbing" molecules. It works at the speed of light. and even penetrates lead walls (not even Superman can do that!). Within .0025 seconds, the entire path between you and the receiver is cleaned, scrubbed, polished, and sanitized. You'll notice the improvement immediately as your productivity soars!
I could use some increased productivity. I could also use a beer. [Thanks, Scott]
Wi-Fi Speed Spray DramaticalIy Increase Data Throughput [eBay] [Gizmodo]
11:51:22 AM
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Worldwide wonder. The 10th birthday of the internet as a mass phenomenon is rightly being celebrated this week to mark a decade since the explosive stock market debut of Netscape, which triggered the dot.com boom and unleashed a friendly browser to navigate the web. The Guardian reports.
To understand the extraordinary revolution that swept the world so quickly, existing users need simply to imagine what life would now be like without email (on which corporate life depends), search engines such as Google, web companies such as Amazon, eBay and Yahoo, the ongoing explosion of online commerce, not to mention the burgeoning world of personal journals (blogs), downloaded music and films, free newspapers, web cameras, internet telephony (now the hottest thing on the web) and the growing convergence of the net and mobile phones.
... Although, contrary to the instincts of its early protagonists, the web has long since been colonised by commerce, it still nurtures its founding community spirit.
More [Smart Mobs]
11:46:22 AM
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Buddyping. [Thanks David!]
Inspired by a mobile social network system named Dodgeball, UK-based Buddyping also brings social networking to mobile communications:
If you're out on the town and want to find your friends, use buddyPing and your mobile phone (or the internet) to broadcast your whereabouts and to receive notification of your friends in the same area.
Just log into buddyPing (either via text message or using the "Your Location" feature once you have logged in via the web site) and we will scan your designated local area for friends and notify you of their location. We'll also notify them of your location so all your friends can find out what you're up to and where they can join you. This all happens in real time, and will continue until you logout of buddyPing. [Smart Mobs]
11:45:02 AM
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Seeing that link's performance on del.icio.us. Michal Migurski of Stamen Design has this site that gives a "visual analysis of del.icio.us popular links.The collection of stripes are a near real-time cumulative view of popular sites posted to the del.icio.us social bookmarking service,arranged left-to-right as old-to-new,in the order of first appearance.Color refers to relative growth (green) or decay (red) of the site's popularity on that day.Selecting a color chip shows a small graph of that link's performance over the previous month".
vox delicii [Smart Mobs]
11:42:49 AM
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RFID: To Tag or Not to Tag. Companies and government agencies increasingly use radio frequency identification technology to track products and people, and RFID opponents say it poses privacy risks. Here's what the technology is all about. By Kim Zetter. [Wired News]
11:38:41 AM
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Sorting the Uproar Over Downloads. It seems like Hollywood won in the Grokster ruling, but the file-sharing universe will be largely unaffected, at least for a while. What the federal ruling against Grokster really means. By Jeff Howe from Wired magazine. [Wired News]
11:36:56 AM
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Outside-In. Another prototype from Promise Design, Phytoslim is a modular system for growing plants on walls. Its slim panels are made of coconut fibers and supported by a hidden plastic skeleton. The 2"-thick pieces supposedly attach to any surface, indoor or out, vertical or horizontal. Although we're absolutely smitten with the idea of a grass-covered... By noemail@noemail.org (Parker Hutchinson). [Cool Hunting]
11:34:09 AM
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Henk Suitca....Stuff Container.  According to the product page, this is "No Suitcase." So what is this? Maybe a $28,000 footrest? Well after further investigation, this is a container that holds a lot of stuff to be carried around easily. It also fits a briefcase inside it, so it's maybe a briefcase holder. It’s made out of carbon fiber, titanium, magnesium, aluminum and is easily carried onto an airplane. Bah, I don’t care what the Henk website says; this is a fancy suitcase, period.
The Henk [Cool Hunting]
[Gizmodo]
11:23:21 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Joerg Rheinboldt.
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