Before I go into the details of the challenge we have, here is a bit of background.

The product I work on is the HERE Geocoder. Geocoder helps find addresses so you can show them on a map, calculate a route to it, show imagery around it, find places near it, use it in logistics solutions, geo-marketing, business intelligence and much more. It is a web service with a RESTful API.

We recently did improvements for Saudi Arabia, where an addressing system with a 13 digit long code is in place. It helps locate addresses in the rural areas where streets are often unnamed. For example “7538-65525-3802” is house number 7538 in the town Al Bahah. (This is a randomly picked address.)

As part of the improvement we want to get the labels and address lines right in Arabic. And this is where I need help.

While Geocoder outputs the individual address parts separately, it also offers a localized output of addresses for over 90 countries. For some countries the house number goes before, in other it goes behind the street name. Some need the zip code after the city name, some before it. And for example in Arabic the address needs to flow from right to left. The localization is applied to two output fields.

1) Label: an assembled address value built out of the parsed address components. It can be used to display the address formatted on a screen.

Here is the expected output of the label.
It’s the first bold line on the right. Below you can see the individual address components:

2) Address lines: Formatted address lines built out of the parsed address components. The first line consists of street name, including prefix, directionals and street type, and house number. The second line consists of the city name and postal code, plus in some countries the state name or abbreviation. They can be used to put the address onto an envelop or package and send something to the location.

And here is the expected address lines formatting as per the Saudi Post:

Now obviously Arabic is read from right to left and this is where is becomes challenging. Especially around the formatting of the postal code and add-on code. The 5+4 number next to the city name.

We have Arabic speaking colleagues on the team, but our computers and systems are English and being based in Germany doesn’t help either. Because when we look at the label and address lines on our Western, Latin script based systems, then things start flowing from right to left depending on the client we use to look at the JSON or XML output.

This is where I need help from anyone how has experience with developing for Arabic output. And running an Arabic system. Because different browser, text editors, and tools render the XML and JSON differently. Your help with looking at this and helping us understand whether we are getting it right is greatly appreciated!

As said above Geocoder returns either JSON or XML as the response format. Here are two files with a random example address and our current state of development:
[Response sample files are not longer available as development is successfully completed. Please see example request in the comments below.]

XML response

JSON response

If you believe you are an expert and have worked with JSON and/or XML data in Arabic, then please let me know whether the formatted output in the label and address lines attributes are correct. Can you work with this as is? Any pointers on the relevance of getting this right – i.e. correct from right to left – is welcome too.

Simply reply in the comments section below.

شكرا جزيلا

My talk was about how location is embedded into everyday activities of a smart phone user and what that all means in the light of the recent NSA and Prism related news. I was given the last 15 minutes of an already packed and very interesting agenda, so I decided to keep things a little lighter and entertaining.

Here are the slides, with an English transcript. The original talk was in German and you can watch the video at the very end of this post or follow the link now over to Vimeo.

#neuland is where you are.

[Neuland, German for “virgin territory,” is a term used by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel to describe the current state of the Internet during a joint press conference with President Barack Obama in Berlin on June 19th, 2013. During the address, Chancellor Merkel was asked to comment on the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM surveillance scandal. Chancellor Merkel’s remark was instantly met by derisive comments on Twitter, with many German Internet users ridiculing her use of the term “neuland” as being out of touch with the progress that has been made in the field. Source: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/neuland%5D

Hello, my name is Philip Hubertus …

In my professional life I work with digital map data and how to used them to build web service for location based services.
I’m the product manager for the Geocoder service at HERE. Me and the Geocoder team are based in Schwalbach, just north of Frankfurt, and we are a Nokia business.

And in my private life I do wonder where my loved ones are at any given moment and if they are alright. You could say I can feel the NSA needs.
But I have a far larger interest in ensuring not everyone can check on the whereabouts of my loved ones.

I brought a few examples with me today on how location based services are used in Neuland.
And I also brought a few recommendation on what to watch out for when you don’t want to share your location or the one of your home to anyone.

So to kick things off, I have a question:
Did anyone of you went to a swimming lake this past weekend?
Alright. And who went to the Neulaender swimming lake?

Or did you just chill out? No smoking! Or a BBQ?

You get it. I did search for Neuland in our digital maps. And I found a few. 15 in total. Most of them in northern Germany. But also three in Paraguay.

As the title said. Neuland is where you are.
So here is a location tracking device the FBI uses. It is not as small as the usual spy movie suggests, is it?

And here are a few of the location tracking devices the NSA is using.
I think you are aware that apps offering local information get your position first, then send that position over the data connection.

Usually this is communicated clearly.
Here is how this looks like on Android …

… on iOS …

…, and on Windows Phone.

Apps should ask you during installation and/or use whether they want to access your location. There are some apps out there where this doesn’t make sense and then there are others where it makes sense.

I decided against installing the World of Red Bull app, because why do they need my location? I couldn’t see that.

But the German railway app here helps me find the best trains from where I am right now, so giving them my location is just fine for me.

So all this leads to the paradox that when you want to ensure your phone doesn’t send any information out, you can now buy the OFF Pocket. It’s $85 and the funding is in full swing for this on Kickstarter.

Now let’s take a look at how easy it is to find out where someone is at home.
This for example is Nelly’s home.

Be aware that photos you take with your smartphone usually include positioning data. And this data is uploaded with the image when you share that. That is how easy it is to find out where you were at what time. Where you live, go to work, and have fun.

Here you can see the positioning meta data. The coordinates are those of the Brotfabrik where we are right now.

And here we are together – in Neuland.
Patrick Lenz may not be using a smart phone for his shots, as you can also easily actively place photos onto a map.

Using Flickr, you can set a privacy zone in which your uploaded photos don’t expose their location to the public.

And now I have a little story for you from the far away country of China.

Coca-Cola and 20 other companies were investigated by Chinese officials for illegally mapping the country. What happened? The position of the trucks delivering Coca-Cola are monitored. Not because the beverage is of high value, but because this is standard practice in logistics these days, keeping tabs on the vehicles and deliveries. And as Coca-Cola is enjoyed in Chinese military installations too, the government saw the need to investigate.

So this is how things are in Neuland.

Now I want to introduce someone to you that can probably best attest to how it feels when the FBI wants to know where you are.

This is Hasan Elahi.

He was born in Bangladesh and raised in New York. Today he is a Professor for arts and director of the Digital Cultures and Creativity program at the University of Maryland.

He somehow ended up on the FBI’s suspect list. But is not a terrorist and he didn’t wanted to go on holidays to Guantanamo. So he decided to voluntarily tell the FBI where he is at any given time. And so since over 10 years he is sharing pictures, information, and his position using his mobile phone on his website.

This is where Hasan Elahi is right now – checking his website.

And these are the hotel beds he slept in.

The taco he ate at 4 pm.

And because the FBI wants to know about his business, he takes photos of where he does his business.

Thank you!

In case you want to take a photo right now, for the ladies turn left up the stairs and the men’s is on the right before the bar.

 
Here is the video from the event – in German.

I recently had the chance to do a guest lecture at Wiesbaden Business School. Thanks to Peter Krause who invited me to his course “Consumer Markets and Buyer Behavior” of the Master of International Business Administration class of 2013. I felt honored.
And so I went and spoke about two things.

1. The mega trends that lead to Location technology becoming a key ingredient in marketing and business processes.
2. The very basics of Location Based Services. How we here at Nokia (where I work) build digital maps, how positioning, geocoding, mapping, routing, traffic work and how all this is linked to each other.

However the interesting part came at the end of 90 minutes. It was the homework I asked the students to complete. Here it is.

Imagine the relationship and touch points between a technophile housekeeping consumer and a drugstore retail chain.
Think about how the retailer can create a consumer experience that leverages location aware smart phones and in-store technology to increase consumer spend, loyalty, and satisfaction.
Don’t limit yourself by what is currently technologically possible!

Think about the whole consumer experience from both, the consumer and retailer point of view. What does each want to achieve?
Think along the time span from consuming drugstore items at home, planning for the next store visit, the store visit itself, and the time after the store visit.

I showed the below picture to illustrate how consumers and retailers are separated by time and space in their own thinking and doing, that they come together at the store (where the love has to happen!), only to then separate again into their own thinking and doing.

Write up user stories in the following format:

As a <type of user>,
I want <some goal>
so that <some reason>.

For example:
As a consumer, I want to be notified of special offers as I enter the store so that I can save money.

I had use case templates printed out for the students as I wanted to hang up all use cases on the board along the two paths I have illustrated above. So I handed those out at the end. I said good-bye, packed up and here is what we did the week after.

One week later the students had done their homework. I chalked up the two intersecting lines and asked the students to walk up and pin their use cases to the board. Pre-purchase use cases went up left, at the store use cases in the middle and post-purchase ones on the right. Consumer use cases went to the top, retailer/enterprise uses cases to the bottom of the board.

We went through all the use case and briefly discussed how each ties in Location, where the benefit and the value for consumers and retailer is. The students also came up with two use cases from a products company point of view.
After the discussion I asked each student to assign three points to the use cases they liked best, see the highest potential, or easiest to implement.
And they did. What was the outcome?

Here are the use cases. Unfiltered, all of them. Grouped by point of view. Sorted by points awarded by the students {point in brackets}.

Consumer

• As a consumer, I want to get electronic (phone) ticket [receipt] of purchase with some cumulative points so that I have some discount for next purchase and save environment (by using less paper). {2}
• As a consumer, I want to be guided through the store so that I’m shopping all the products in my shopping list quickly. {0}
• As a consumer, I want to know where in the store I can find new things that mirror my shopping behavior so that I can find new interesting things that fit to my interests. {0}
• As a consumer I want to be directed to my desired products in the shop so that I don’t waste time looking for the right aisle, spot, etc. {0}
• As a consumer, I want to be frequently updated on new offers so that I can save money. {0}
• As a consumer, I want to know price and availability of my product in advance so that I can compare with other offers. {0}
• As a customer, I want to know which skin care products fit best to my skin so that I don’t have problems with my skin any longer (test on website of drugstore). {0}
• As a mother [consumer], I want to get information about the availability of a list of baby products so that I can plan my shopping route before leaving home. {0}

Retailer

• As a retailer I want to send special offers to customers when they check-in somewhere else so that I can give them context-based offers from my product range. {7}
• As a retailer, I want to know how much do I need to refill with a code so that we save time doing that. {6}
• As a retailer, I want to keep in touch with my customers so that I can tell him when there is a special offer for his favorite product. {2}
• As a retailer, I want to know how much people stand in front of my store and how much went inside so that I can improve my advertisement in front of the store. {0}
• As a retailer, I want to make to customer conscious [aware] where to find new products so that he will have a unique shopping experience in my shop. {0}
• As a retailer, I want to use  consumer shopping lists to stock up in time or convert them to get items shipped (if they are not in store) so that revenues, profit, and consumer satisfaction are maximized. {0}
• As a retailer, I want to know when a certain customer buys something (and how much) so that I am not running out of stock. {0}

Products Company

• As a producer [products company] e.g. for shampoo, I want that my new products are located in the drugstore map (with their position and a special sign) so that customers pay immediate attention to the new products and buy it. {4}
• As a producer, I want location store interactions with “free consumer offers” so that my consumers are satisfied. {3}

There are a lot of uses cases that don’t tie in location at all. You could use that to proof either one or all of the following points.

1. Location technology is still new and has not yet become a major element of what is taught to students. (Although I tried to change that with my lecture!)
2. It takes more than a single guest lecture to get students (or anyone really) to grasp Location and inspired them to think creatively how to embed it into marketing and business processes.
3. Location isn’t really that important in something as mundane as buying drugstore items.

What do you think?

Feel free to add your feedback, thinking, and use cases in the comments.

P.S. Meanwhile Rossmann, a German drugstore retail chain has kicked-off a “check-in for charity” campaign. Read more about it on the Foursquare Blog.

Full disclosure. I work for Nokia Location & Commerce, but these are my personal views and thoughts which do not necessarily reflect Nokia’s views.

Here we go:

What do you do in your job as a Product Manager for Geocoding?

My role as a Product Manager is about communicating and providing context. I’m helping to define our product vision and mission, focus areas, and again context to make sure that as a team we work towards a common goal. And of course that includes grasping and then translating user and business needs into product stories so our team can build and improve the product against these. But it goes the other way around too when I’m explaining the value and benefits of technical product features to the user and business audience. I also look at the business side of the product. What are the revenues we help to create with our product? What is the usage and value of features? What do my colleagues in Sales need to sign up customers? What do we need to do to increase the bottom line?

What is geocoding, and why it is so important for navigation devices?

Very basically geocoding is the translation between how people describe an address and how spatial systems – like a navigation device – stores and works with an address location.
Let me give an example. My office address is “Am Kronberger Hang 8 in Schwalbach, Germany” which spatial is at “latitude: 50.1618996; longitude: 8.5334997”.

Let’s go a bit deeper now. There are two ways of geocoding.

First, geocoding allows users to find an address.
It is the equivalent of searching for a road name in the street index that is printed on the back of a paper map, then remembering the quadrant’s code, turning the map and pointing your finger at it. Compared to a paper map, a geocoding software has a much larger, if not gigantic global index, is much faster, more precise, and often supports multiple languages. Plus, there is a lot of additional information and data a good geocoding software provides. This is especially of value to enterprise users who are using geocoding to make smarter decisions and optimize their processes.

Then, geocoding also works the other way around, which is called reverse geocoding.  This is used to answer the popular questions “Where am I?”, “What’s here?”, or even “Dude, where is my car?”. Here, a user resolves the latitude and longitude from a GPS/location sensor into an address.

Why is all this important for navigation devices? Because they operate on spatial data but people don’t. People are used to textual addresses not a location’s spatial latitude and longitude. So that translation is needed. And a piece of geocoding software is the first thing that kicks in on a navigation device when looking for directions.

Geocoding not only happens on navigation devices. We’re running our Geocoder software as a service in multiple data centers around the globe. The Geocoder service has global, fresh coverage based on our continuously updated automotive-grade map data. It is an essential building block of our Where Platform. Geocoder works seamlessly with the other Nokia location services like Places, Maps, Positioning, Directions, and Traffic. The Geocoder API is robust and offers high availability, performance and scalability and it’s in use by 300+ customers including Bing and Yahoo!.

And apart from the consumers being able to find addresses or locate themselves around the globe on the web and in apps, I’m really excited about the value of the smart things businesses can do with geocoded information; like analyzing the size of markets, geo-marketing, tracking and optimizing the efficiency of vehicles, workforce, or other assets.

You must use navigation and location a lot in your daily life given what you do.  Which devices and applications do you tend to use most, which are your favorites and why?

I’m sure it’s not a surprise I use and love my Nokia Lumia 800. I use the Nokia Drive app for my daily commute to avoid traffic. It has this great new commute feature that watches the traffic situation for me and helps me pick the right time and route to go. Being a “spirited driver” I often run the Trapster app in the background for driving safety. I’m using Foursquare daily to “share my Where” and facilitate serendipity. And I’m tracking my running with the Nike+ Running app. Another favorite of mine is the Navigon app, specifically when used on the large screen of an iPad. I can also recommend Navigon’s PNDs. I bought one for my mum recently.

One of the hottest topics around the future of mobile mapping services is indoor location positioning and indoor positioning systems.  Once this new technology becomes widely adopted what do you think will be the main usage applications for it?

The first thing that comes to everyone’s mind is of course displaying indoor maps and enabling navigation. So let’s say you’re in unfamiliar territory visiting friends at their new house. You don’t want to come with empty hands so you’re looking to buy some fresh flowers nearby them. You search and there is a florist in a gigantic mall not far away. What you want is to be guided to a parking row near the best entrance of the mall and then as you walk in, to be seamlessly guided inside the building to the store. Now you can slightly tweak that scenario at will, e.g. with a gate at the airport, booth at the show, rest room at the stadium, the Van Gogh at the museum, or the power tools section inside the home improvement store. It’ll still be a “portable and connected device – last mile indoor guidance” use case.

And then I see other great ways to use indoor location positioning.
For example in mobile payment solutions where location can be used for customer loyalty programs and better fraud protection mechanisms. Upon entering a store you can get relevant offers and when you’re ready to pay, that transaction’s location is checked against your actual location. This is a big, valuable, and exciting market. You want to see what Square and LevelUp are doing already.
With the global trend towards huge urban metropolises here is a use case for that: Public transportation, especially when this is underground. Again, think mobile payment based on where you enter and exit a station, so no paper tickets or swipe cards, and no more turnstiles. Plus up to date departure times, always the best connection, and never be lost in those long corridors. Doesn’t that sound good?
On the fun side I see virtual games in actual locations. Museums, parks, and resorts can create whole new engaging experiences.

The market is ever-changing, and there are plenty of challenges facing the traditional in-car navigation brands especially with high adoption rates for smart navigation. Do you think navigation devices have a future or will they soon be replaced by navigation apps on mobile phones?

I’m pretty sure there will always be demand for navigation devices, in-dash navigation and smartphone navigation apps. Each of these has their own advantages and limitations and ultimately it’s up to the consumers to decide what they prefer. Nokia offers data products and location platform service for each of these.

Yes, the trend towards using navigation on smartphones is growing, especially as navigation is already included on many smartphones today. And then there is a wide choice of apps to download. But I also see some interesting benefits that are not fully leveraged yet, e.g. as smartphones already come with a data connection this allows users to get fresher and more detailed data. I’m not talking map data here. Nokia was one of the first to store map data offline on the phones, so that you can navigate even if the connection drops and save on data usage fees. I’m talking about dynamic data e.g. traffic, gas prices, parking availability, detailed places information like reviews and pictures, and relevant local offers. Also for some people one device is already more than enough. So they don’t want to carry a separate navigation device and learn how to use it if they can get navigation on their smart phone with a user interface they already know. But again, consumers will decide and as devices and cars become more connected; some of today’s advantages of navigation on smart phones will not be unique tomorrow.

The key for the traditional navigation device brands is to acknowledge this and think about what markets and needs they can focus on to outperform smartphones and in-dash navigation. This may also include thinking about new markets. Look at Garmin. They are big in the great outdoors market too and historically they’ve come from marine and aviation. Navigation and location isn’t only about driving cars.

What are your own predictions for Location over the next couple of years?

Location will become ubiquitously ingrained into a lot of what we do as consumers and businesses. The adoption of GPS and location sensors in devices will grow further, not only phones but also things like cameras, watches, or luggage. Apps and services using location will transform quite a few industries. Personally I see mobile payments as the one that is going to be the most exciting with lots of opportunity. Health care and well-being is another area that has a lot of potential for connected location sensors and using that data. And it’s a growing industry. And there are great possibilities in inventory and supply chain monitoring and management.

The following three mega-trends will push innovation around using location: 1. The Internet of Things; 2. Mega Cities; and 3. Multi-modal Mobility.
These three trends can nicely tango. Let look at a few examples. Location sensors and connections to the Internet will be embedded in a lot more things. These things can then share data which can be used to optimize processes automatically or influence decisions. Of course this will be in cars but also motorbikes, bicycles, buses, trains, trucks, and anything else that moves people or goods. There it will not only help people find the best route, but also manage and avoid traffic, and support them make smarter decisions around which mode of transportation to use at any given time. This will have great benefits especially in and round Mega Cities with good public transport networks. And it will enable new usage-based vehicle insurance models, reduce emissions, and help improve safety.

But the main reason for this blog post is that I want to share another interesting article I came across.
Kevin Dennehy of GPS World interviewed Mike Dobson who hit some very interesting things that help get a better understanding of the powers at play.

For those of you who don’t have the time to read the full article, here are what I think are the three most interesting sections:

[…] the week following the announcement, there were more than 1 million downloads of the app and data. […]
[…] the top five countries downloading the new, free version of OVI maps were China, Italy (with the highest number of smart phone users in Europe), UK, Germany and Spain. The number of users of Google’s navigation applications in these same five countries is zero, […].

Gartner’s recent analysis of the phone market says that Nokia leads the pack with 36.4 percent of the [global phone] market, based on selling nearly 441 million phones in 2009. This is followed by Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson (whose percentage was 4.5). Google’s Android, Apple, and Rim were included in the “others” category, whose members must have had percentages lower than Sony Ericsson, […].
170 million smart phones were sold in 2009. Categorized by operating system, [Nokia’s] Symbian was the leader (46.9 percent market share [81 million units]) followed by Research in Motion [34 million units], iPhone OS (14.4 percent [25 million units]) and Windows Mobile [15 million units] (which led Android Phone sales by almost 9 million units).

Google’s primary interest is not in selling Smartphones, or […] Android […]. Google has developed both initiatives as methods of forward integrating into a “distribution channel” that will help them sell geospatially-targeted advertising[…].

I hope you find the article and above quotes as interesting as I did.

In case you wonder what Nokia and NAVTEQ have to offer in terms of geospatially-targeted advertising, please visit NAVTEQ Media Solutions to find out more.

Since mobile phones found their way into the pockets and hand bags of everyday people the often heard questions when taking a call is: “Where are you?” followed by “What do you do?”. These are the things that most social network services revolve around. Up to the minute status messages have created a new neural network among friends, business partners and otherwise connected crowds. Mark Zuckerberg talks about “creating efficiency within society” and I agree.
And while it is good to see that “Melina has chocolate for breakfast”, “Martin is freezing in Chicago”, or “Jeff is returning from a conference in Berlin”, theses posts are of limited relevance when either enough time has passed between when they are posted and when they are read or simply thousands of miles are between poster and reader. Add in proximity filtering and alerting options and posting like the ones above can become a whole lot more relevant and actionable.

So let’s step back for a moment and have a look at the different usage scenarios of social location features today. There are a few basic differentiation possibilities:

1. Static location information
That’s an easy one. Post your home or business address and see a map of where other users are at home or doing business.

XING – a Germany based business network – allows you to see your contacts on a map. This is helpful when you have no idea where a contact’s home town or office location is, but it only puts a static location on a map. It’s not sharing a current location of a contact and hence doesn’t cater for ad-hoc meetings or location based information exchange. Please note that XING color-codes locations it can not geo-code exactly; so the point on the map and actual position of a contact’s business address to not match. That is because either the user has not entered his full address or doesn’t want to share the exact location with every other user – a good to see application of privacy rules.

2. User posted activity and location information
This takes things a step further. These are often referred to as “Status Messages”. Users who post their current activity in combination with location information expose themselves voluntarily. They open an opportunity to connect with them based on their activity and location.

But that information is only of value as long as activity and location last. As soon as the window of opportunity closes without the user actively updating she is moving on, you may arriving at the bar where your friend is enjoying a drink only to find out she is not there anymore.
Some services give their users the option to enter future activities and locations and to time when the information is released. Plazes allows this and another good example is Dopplr,  a service for frequent travelers which lets their users share their trips and travel tips.

The advantage of this non-automated sharing is user have full control over what and when to share what they do and where they are with the outside world. They can do both, an activity update with location, e.g. “Jay is at Mobile World Barcelona, booth 1G45(1-0) with his jaw to the floor.” They can share only limited location information, e.g. “Jay is in Barcelona” (or pretend, because Jay is actually at home in Mesa, Arizona and watching TV). And of course there is no need to include location information at all, e.g. “Jay is at a congress seeing amazing things”.

As Status Messages are the most basic – and easiest to implement – form of sharing location you will see theses in nearly all social networking services.

3. User posted events, enriched with automated location information
This is very similar to the status messages from above. But while users actively and manually use these services to post their current activities they don’t have to include the location into their status update manually; it’ll be added automatically based on their actual location.

There are various ways to do this: geo-IP, Geode, WiFi geo-location or GPS to just name a few. Depending on the device, technology used and the current location of the user this is more or less accurate.
The two essential privacy options needed when implementing this are; first, an option for users to decide whether they actually want their current location to be appended when posting an activity and second, a selection possibility for how accurately to share the location, e.g. city level or exact location.

There are various services out there like Brightkite or Yahoo! Fire Eagle and interestingly they are really strongly focusing on automating location with the possibility to optionally add on activity information rather than the other way around. I personally find this a bit odd because what is the point of sharing where you are without any context?

But there is also challenge for these kind of services. They are only of value when they are able to create a network effect. It’s pretty pointless posting activity and location when no one listens or takes action upon the information.
Some social networks are open enough to let users tie in location and activities information into their status messaging. Facebook who is aiming to become a social aggregator is particularly good at this. Check out their Facebook Connect API.

But location information can also be appended to other online activities. Google Mail has just added a new feature which allows users to automatically add their current location as part of an e-mail signature.

4. Real-time, automated location information
The location of vehicles, valuables, convicts or personalities have all been tracked for a long time already. So this is not really brand spanking new.
New is the ability for a broader audience to broadcast themselves and follow others without the need for very special equipment. A new window of possibilities has opened with the growing adoption of super-smart phones equipped with enough processing power and space to run location-aware application at all times in the background. Now users can feed and receive a constant stream of location information to social networks without lifting a finger.

With the right level of privacy controls in place this is probably the most comfortable and interesting option of the four discussed in this post. Throw in proximity based alerting options as a feedback channel to enable location based instant meetings and socializing. These proximity alerting options may not only be person based, they could also be place based.
So let’s say a user traveled to a meeting which got canceled. She now has three hours to kill before the next flight home. Setting her device into explore mode, she can follow the trails and tips of previous visitors or locals and go see places or meet industry peers in the area. And in case the user is more interested in finding a place with free WiFi and decent cup of coffee; there may be an offer just around the corner. In fact my colleagues at NAVTEQ Media Solutions have built a location based advertising network for advertisers to send message to selected customers based on their location and time of day through either their mobile device or in-vehicle navigation unit. Needless to say this is also based on real-time, automated location information and works both one-way and with a two-way connection that is standard on phones and soon on many navigation devices.

But let’s come back to social location and the super-smart phones and look at some figures and trends to see where this may take us.
Currently only about 5% of the 3.2 billion mobile phones in use worldwide are super smart phones, according to T-Mobile’s Hamid Akhavan. But there are two factors indicating a tremendous growth in the coming months and years. The growth of data traffic is surging worldwide – Western Europe is showing growth of 400% annually.
In many regions of the world people simply don’t own PCs or let alone have easy access to high speed internet to explore social location at home. But they do have a phone – and often having a fancy phone is both, a social status booster, and a piece of freedom and independence. And here is a story Mark Zuckerberg told in Davos: “People in the Middle East walk 2 miles to a cyber café to check out Facebook and then use the app on their phone.”
25 million users of the Facebook Mobile app proof that mobile is becoming an increasingly important factor for the success of social networks. (Note: comScore attested Facebook 200 mio. unique visitors for Nov. 2008 )

Several real-time location broadcasting services for mobile phones already exist and have been reviewed in depth.
So I would like to take a closer look at one new entrant: Google Latitude
Google Latitude can be used on compatible phones and on computers. It allows its user to constantly broadcast their location to their contacts. This of course only works well from phones – the desktop version has other advantages we will look at later. So the mobile application is what users should get.
But don’t expect a stand-alone application. Google has done a very, very clever thing here: they integrated Latitude into Google Maps Mobile. So not only new users download both functionalities at once, existing Google Maps Mobile users who update to version 3 can instantly tap into Latitude. And if you have an account with Google already, there is no need to sign up for a separate Latitude account. Google has enabled single sign-on – like with every other Google service out there – and hence removed another barrier of conversion.

Location detection in Google Maps Mobile and Latitude work either based on GSM localization or GPS. A flat rate data plan is recommended as Latitude will constantly stream a user’s location information, even in the background while others tasks are performed on the phone. Interestingly when shutting down the Google Maps on my Nokia it asks me whether I want to continue to share my location with Latitude.

If a user doesn’t have an existing Google account or wants to set up something with a separate user id, it’s easily done from the phone. An e-mail address and password is all that is needed. Once signed-in users can add or change their status message, profile picture, phone number and privacy settings. You can see the different universal setting in the screen shot below.

But it gets even better. Let’s say a user has set Latitude to automatically detect, update and share her location. Now she can also set the level of location accuracy and sharing individually per contact:
– Share best available location
– Share only city level location
– Hide location from this friend

Actually, when connecting with a new friend Latitude will ask users to select one of the three choices. This can be edited any time later. So a user can decide to share her best available location when she is comfortable doing so but can also switch ad hoc to not share or share the city level only anytime. This comes in handy when a user wants to escape the watching eyes of the boss, the spouse, the mother or whomever else the user accepted sharing her location with but now needs to give that a break.

Adding new contacts to Latitude is limited to entering a friend’s e-mail address manually or selecting from existing Google Mail contacts (if the user has an active Google Mail account). So there is no user directory or any possibility to see or connect to other, yet unknown users. As of now, there are also no tie-in possibilities into social networks.

As said Google Latitude for phones comes in combination with Google Maps Mobile. Once signed up and friends added, simply fire up Google Maps on the phone, select Latitude from the options to see your own and friends’ positions on the map or as a list.

Because Latitude is part of Google Maps there are some clever integration options like getting directions to a friend or search something nearby a friend’s location. When the friend has added his mobile number, calling or sending a text is possible directly from Latitude as well. However, there is no direct friend messaging embedded within Latitude.

Another good addition is the possibility to use Latitude within iGoogle on a computer. You get the same options and friend viewing possibilities. Of course signing up and adding friends is much easier on the bigger screen. And because Latitude is run from Google’s servers every addition or change users make on their computer is instantly reflected on the phone as well.

Using the desktop version I was actually wondering whether Latitude might be a good entry level alternative for vehicle tracking for small businesses. Let’s say a cab, bike messenger or delivery company equips each of their pedal pushers with a proper phone and signs them up for Google Latitude. The dispatcher would then have a pretty good idea of where they are and possibly what their status is. This will lack many of the features of a professional industry solutions but maybe a good low cost entry for some.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article and as always I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Please get in touch!

Finally I would like to recommend reading WIRED Magazine’s “I Am Here: One Man’s Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle“, TechCrunch’s “The State of Location-Based Social Networking On The iPhone” and take a look at the comprehensive list of social location service by Claudio Schapsis.

The list of 10 is fairly US/Western world centric so I would not be surprised to learn more about applications that support some fairly exotic use cases. If you have interesting examples from the Middle East, Africa or Asia, please post them to the comments!

So let’s start with my personal expectations first. The ad promised to “localize your friends via mobile phone and find out where they hang out – easily and free”. So that sounded interesting.

After registering on a rather dry looking site and confirming by SMS I want to be located with NowHere, I was keen to find out how I can find or add friends. But the only option given to me was a search form. No way to access friends I’m already connected with on other social communities or even run a match with my address book. I also didn’t find out how to use the service on my mobile. Wasn’t the promise of the ad to localize friends via mobile phone? Or did they mean the localization happens utilizing my friends’ mobile phone, not necessarily me being able to localize them using my phone?? Oh well.

So I’m left with locating myself in front of my laptop. And while I do this the pin marker often appears miles from my actual location. So in terms of proximity the location is more on a city level than on a street level. Maybe NowHere should take a peak at how the guys at Google display the “My Location” pin on Goggle Maps Mobile and nicely manage the user expectation of how exact the location is.

And then, what do you do with a city level location? Is this suitable for a service targeted at a young, urban user base – who want to find out where their friends hang out? Or should NowHere think about targeting business users – who are more interested to find out who of their peers are in town today. (If the latter is the case, then move advertising from Facebook to LinkedIn or Xing!)

My view is that NowHere seems to got the technology side to work, but needs a better way of making this an actual marketable product. One first step might be to try and tightly integrate into existing social networks, so NowHere users are not required to built up yet another friends list.

With Nokia Sport Tracker you can keep track of training activities like running, cycling, skiing, and driving (of course!). First you need to register with the Nokia Sport Tracker site, set up your profile and download the Sports Tracker application for your phone. Sport Tracker basically works with all Nokia phones running the S60 software. See a full list of supported Nokia phones here. Then of course you need a GPS enabled phone. Either one that comes with GPS as a standard (e.g. the N95, N82, 6110 Navigator), or one you can pair with an external GPS receiver, like the nifty Nokia LD-4W.

Here is the route of my first go at using Sports Tracker. I did a quick drive around the area of my office. All you have to do is start the Sport Tracker application. Then select “new workout” from the menu und press “start”. Now the clock starts ticking and the tracking begins. It took a while for the N95 I used to pick up the GPS signal, but then everything was cool. The application started to record time, speed, elevation, and the route I was driving.

After I did my lap I simply pressed “stop” and then uploaded my workout to the portal straight from the phone.

Now back to the Sports Tracker web site where I can see the route I was driving and a nice graph of the speed and time it took me to get around my lap. I can’t wait to take this to a proper track next spring.

While I think this is a great demonstration of how to extend the physical Nokia phone products to the web, I wonder how many athletes will make use of Sports Tracker in the long run, literally.

So what I did was bookmarking or “map-marking” a couple of places on an online map.

View Larger Map

I annotated those map marks and so whenever I needed to orientate myself I could quickly open the mapping site on the web and have a look without typing in and looking up the same place (hotel, office) every time again.
I also updated the comments of my map-marks as I will probably visit Chicago again and want to remember where I went and how the experience was. Plus I can now share my personal map with colleagues or friends going to Chicago.

The only two things I was missing were these:

I’d love to have my personal map and map-marks on my mobile for on the go orientation. This could have been even an offline version, as all I want to do is quickly have a look at what I had set up already online. Of course I wouldn’t mind using the map online on my phone (i.e. over a data connection). But I somehow struggled to use my phone to go online and so and offline version would be a safe bet for such a service.

The other thing I’d love was to have an offline version on my laptop. My hotel had a steep rate for Internet access and although my company would probably pay for it, I was just to greedy to use it. So when returning back to the hotel after work I’d love to be able to check my map again and see where exactly to go for food and drinks I had researched before the trip.

One can argue that all hotels have some sort of free tourist guide and a map available at the concierge. However, those recommendations are often quite mainstream or biased by being paid for to be on that map.
Call me a punk or a chicken, but in today’s digital age I just don’t want to scribble around on a paper map and carry it around in my back pocket. Not to talk about unfolding it and letting everyone know that I’m a tourist.

I’d like to know if you have any experiences, tips and thoughts about what I just described. Are there better tools out there to set up and share map-marks?