We’re seeing more and more services use GPS and other location based tagging to add more metadata to information objects and to enable a richer interface by enabling the browsing of this information by location and superimposing it on maps and other representations of the earth.
I saw Brian Suda present the various ways you can use GPS data and visualize GPS-annotated data using Google Earth on Barcamp Brighton. It looks as though GPS is finally getting a lot of traction with GPS enabled devices such as TomTom Navigators everywhere, GPS integration in some phones and GPS dongles available for about $100.
And if you have a website where data can be reasonably geotagged, you should think about breaking free of browser list pages as the dominant way of perusing your data. There’s no reason people couldn’t get at your site from Google Earth just as easily or (in the near future) just by walking around the world.I’m coming across more and more location based services and some old ones, so I thought I would share some impressions here.
Plazes
The archetypal location based service used to be Plazes, a German startup revealed some three years ago which used a small application to tell a central server where you are located. Early on the application gained a lot of traction among the laptop carrying tech crowd. A lot of people could be found on Plazes and it had some nifty features such as calculating the probability of meeting another person or displaying the velocity of a person in kilometers travelled per day. I used a version of their API to make my own Plazes Dashboard widget back then.
After a while the service stagnated somewhat. Plazes had gotten funded and they had Adaptive Path clean up the site and do a redesign to solve outstanding issues with the Plazing experience.Some time ago they relaunched their service with some major differences. Most important among which were the fact that you no longer needed a desktop application to Plaze yourself on a certain location. The granularity of internet connection points was given up for a new paradigm where anybody could plaze themselves on any location. They had already done this partially with a mobile client (out in 2005 or so) and with an SMS interface to the plazes service (also out pretty early).
The other major feature they introduced is that they added microblogging or status information in their updates. Felix Petersen —Plazes’s founder— had always defined Plazes as a service for ‘rich geo presence’ and a very important part of presence does seem to be what you are doing. Obviously, after they had been beat to this game by Twitter and Jaiku, they had to add this as well. This feature has now been redubbed into activities (as described in the Plazes podcast) and it is now possible to add current or future activities to locations. So I can schedule that I will be working at my new house this week.
A last thing I don’t really understand is why Plazes does not show more information sources on the same map along with your contacts. Knowing somebody is nearby is interesting information but seeing there is an Upcoming event that you are both interested in in the same area that night, would be really great. Plazes promises to release a complete API in the near future, with which it should be easy to make these kinds of mashups. I might try my hand again then.
Bliin
A small Amsterdam based startup that is taking a different approach to the location problem is Bliin. Bliin really is a cute application that allows you to upload geotagged photographs and provides you with a visually really attractive way of browsing the traces.I don’t really know much more about Bliin, but I think the name and the app are really cute. Seeing as they are in Amsterdam we may have more extensive coverage of them in the near future.
Dopplr
A startup getting a lot of buzz by the travelling tech crowd is Dopplr. Dopplr also recently got some funding by some notable users of the application.Dopplr allows you to indicate the locations you are going to visit next and the dates you are planning those visits on (my profile). If you share these future plans with your travel buddies you can then see when you are in the same metro at the same time and meetup.Dopplr’s is yet another social networking site, but it is taking pains to decrease some of the burden of keeping track of your information and making sure it is up to date and correct by making judicious use of microformats. It is expertly designed and implemented and it tries to head up the portable social networks effort by trying to deduce my information. Its guesses of people I probably know and its social network importer, work quite nicely already.
It would seem that a service such as Plazes with its rich array of location data and its installed user base, could easily whip up a similar service and wipe Dopplr out. The information is there but I seem to have some trouble finding relevant stuff on Plazes. An app with a specific focus like Dopplr has a lot of advantages in providing a coherent experience.
FireEagle
During his presentation on dConstruct Tom Coates talked about his work at Yahoo! and a project of his there code named FireEagle. FireEagle is supposed to be a central repository for you where you can store your location data any way you can find it. So this could be GPS based, GSM cell based or any other way you can come up with to pass your location information to the repository. I have no clue what it exactly does, so an invite would be appreciated.
That location information in the repository could then be used to provide you with services and enrich your experience with other sites and provide you with functionality. You would have full control about the privacy and how to share this information.
This sounds pretty similar to what Plazes does and did when I and my friends were using it. Everybody would update their locations to Plazes and Plazes would track that and apply appropriate privacy filters. You could then use the API to get a list of your friends and their locations and other stuff though this used to be quite limited. If there is something we have learned, and which Tom Coates hammered on in his presentation, is that APIs offer a lot of value both to your users and to your business. Plazes looks like they have taken this hint.Maybe it’s a nice idea for Yahoo! to stare their data in Switzerland just like Plazes does. The British government looks like it’s not the most trustworthy one to entrust with your sensitive personal information.
Concluding
The abundance of GPS data is going to make the location space heat up enormously in 2008. I have only touched on a couple of sites I found interesting but there is too much happening in this space to give a complete coverage in one post. Where 2.0 looks like a nice conference where a lot of interesting stuff in this area will be visible.
Just to look at a simple example. Almost everybody in the Netherlands currently has a TomTom Go or similar in their car. TomTom currently offers WiFi updateability of route, traffic and other relevant information for your trip. But shortly the newer editions will have full internet connectivity. Just imagine the kind of social applications you can build on that platform.
Add your location sites and observations in the comments.
