"location" entries

Welcome Laurel Ruma to Where 2.0

Where 2.0 2011 welcomes a new co-chair.

Laurel Ruma and Brady Forest will co-chair Where 2.0 2011, running April 19-21, 2011 in Santa Clara, Calif.

Four short links: 23 September 2010

Four short links: 23 September 2010

Location Services, Clever Cursors, Intuitive Trouble, and Maturity Wins

  1. Universal Location Service — API access to location information from mobiles on Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T. “Universe” here is defined, naturally, to be “United States of America”.
  2. The Bubble Cursor in Javascript — Javascript implementation of a circular cursor that grows and shrinks in size depending on proximity to something interesting.
  3. The Revenge of the Intuitive (Brian Eno, Wired) — now I’m struck by the insidious, computer-driven tendency to take things out of the domain of muscular activity and put them into the domain of mental activity […] This appetite for emotional resonance explains why users – when given a choice – prefer deep rapport over endless options. You can’t have a relationship with a device whose limits are unknown to you, because without limits it keeps becoming something else.
  4. “Wait, What?” (Alex Russell) — I didn’t try to organize people who didn’t see the value in organization: instead, I tried to organize folks whose experience was valuable in terms of personal maturity and not just facility with code. We picked a hard technical problem and an easier social problem knowing that the social aspects were more critical.

The state of mapping APIs

Mobile, utility and server-side development will define the future of maps.

Map APIs took off in 2005, and during the ensuing years the whole notion of maps has changed. Where once they were slick add-ons, map functionality is now a necessary — and expected — tool. In this piece, Adam DuVander looks at the current state of mapping and he explains how mobile devices, third-party services and ease of use are shaping the map development world.

Facebook Places plays nice with Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla and Booyah

In one move, Facebook appears to have both validated and claimed the check-in space. We take an early look at the functionality and impact of Facebook Places, the company's just-announced check-in / location tool.

The State of the Internet Operating System

Ask yourself for a moment, what is the operating system of a Google or Bing search? What is the operating system of a mobile phone call? What is the operating system of maps and directions on your phone? What is the operating system of a tweet? I’ve been talking for years about “the internet operating system“, but I realized I’ve never written an extended post to define what I think it is, where it is going, and the choices we face. This is that missing post.

Joe Stump on data, APIs, and why location is up for grabs

The SimpleGEO CTO and former Digg architect discusses NoSQL and location's future

I recently had a long conversation with Joe Stump, CTO of SimpleGeo, about location, geodata, and the NoSQL movement. Stump, who was formerly lead architect at Digg, had a lot to say. Here’s the highlights, you can find the full interview elsewhere on Radar.

Four short links: 12 March 2010

Four short links: 12 March 2010

Seasonal Colours, Fast Peripherals, Wikipedian-in-Residence, Location Abomination

  1. Flickr Flow — a “season wheel”, showing the relative popularity of colours in Flickr photos at different times of the year. Beautiful. (via gurneyjourney)
  2. Light Peak — optical peripheral cabling and motherboard connections. (via timoreilly on twitter)
  3. British Museum Pilots “Wikipedian in Residence”Liam’s underlying task will be to be to build a relationship between the
    Museum and the Wikipedian community through a range of activities both
    internally and public-facing
    . (via straup on Delicious)
  4. Twitter’s Location PolicyIf you chose to tweet with a place, but not to share your exact coordinates, Twitter still needs to use your coordinates to determine your Place. In order to improve the accuracy of our geolocation systems (for example, the way we define neighborhoods and places), Twitter will temporarily store those coordinates for 6 months. Because how could anything go wrong if there’s a database containing 6 months of my precise locations stored on the Internet even when I’ve chosen not to share my precise location? (via straup on Delicious)

We're about to scratch the real-world data itch

Mobile location tools will finally provide analytics from the physical realm

Folks in the web world are accustomed to granular information, yet brick-and-mortar businesses are still largely in the dark on the data front. But what if business owners could gather hard data? What if they could use that information to entice customers and adapt their offerings? Mobile location tools are poised to make this possible.

Three lessons from the Chipotle iPhone app

How centralization, a defined use case, and a uniform menu shaped Chipotle's iPhone app

The iPhone app from Chipotle, the restaurant chain best known for its burritos, is an interesting mix of simple design, e-commerce functionality and location tools. Digging into the app's development reveals three aspects that could prove useful for businesses and programmers pursuing their own mobile paths.

Foursquare wants to be the mayor of location apps

Dennis Crowley on Foursquare's gameplan and the secret sauce that drives the mobile service

Dennis Crowley cut his teeth on location services at mobile pioneer Dodgeball. Things didn't work out there, but he used his Dodgeball experience to shape Foursquare, an on-the-rise app that blends mobile, location awareness and a clever points system. In this Q&A, Crowley discusses Foursquare's revenue streams, its unexpected adaptations, and the one feature that gets new users hooked.