In the meantime, someone get on writing an app to deliver those LBSs that may well just be web-based for now.
Location-aware search portal, for instance.
Jim
· 1 year ago
They already have this, look at the NYC subway app, and there are one or two others. An integrated one would be nice, yes, but this is a start.
Chris Setwart
· 1 year ago
I've been in like with this idea for a while now, even before the iPhone existed. Microsoft's been promised location-aware services (LaS) for Windows Mobile devices for years now, but still hasn't delivered a compelling experience (my sources tell me the next version will deliver; I'll reserve judgment till then). Nokia, Samsung, and others haven't delivered a tipping point experience either.
So, in the annals of time, who will be credited for bringing Las into the mainstream? Simple. Those who took the time to hack the iPhone and bring Installer.app to the masses. These daring men and women risked life and limb to make it possible for us to unlock the limitless possibilities of mobile experiences outside the stymied walled gardens that are mobile carriers. Perhaps now a crack in the wall has emerged allowing LaS to become a reality for all of us.
Chris Stewart
· 1 year ago
It's a sad day when you mis-type your own name. Ah well. Quick notice that I'm not condoning the use of Installer.app, merely pointing out the fact that people want the ability to leverage new services on their mobile devices and are willing to take action on there own if business models don't exist that fit their needs.
Bastian
· 1 year ago
> "For example, you’re waiting for the train and you want to know the train schedule. Yes, you can probably dig it up on the internet, using Safari, but it would be so much easier if an easy to use train schedule/trip planner application, specific to that exact station and that exact town, were to automagically pop up as soon as you enter the area and ask you if you want to install it?" <
Quite honestly? I would throw my iPhone away if it would do that every time i´m near or in a train station. I´m probably just walking by or i´m about to commute to work. Stan your idea is not bad, even though miles away from being new or unique. This is pretty much what everyone in the LBS space talks about for years. However the topic is way more complex than this. Just because you are somewhere does not mean that you want to do something. It is always about "location" and "situation". It is not given that you want to see "prices of meals in nearby restaurants pop up" every time you walk down a street. And most users would also hate the idea of not being able to access the train schedule app from home but only in the station, where in most cases i can easily find a schedule or i informed myself about which train to take before i left the house.
This is why most useful LBS services rely on pull rather than push technology and i´m quite happy with this.
You might be right with the general principle. I could see my car triggering an alarm when i have an accident sending my location and a detailed error report to my car manufacturer and or 911.
My iPhone telling me that i could eat a burger for 3.99 right around the corner while i just ate is a very stupid idea.
So next time let´s think about a really useful blog post around the LBS topic and let´s come up with some unique ideas rather than playing the same old tune over and over again.
Less hype then but a better post.
Bastian
Christopher Osborne
· 1 year ago
Spot on Bastain.
Location is the new buzzword, and rightly so, its been slowly gathering momentum for years. However, there's a reason its called "location based services" and not "location based advertising". People are pretty fed up with the amount of advertising they have to face everyday. True, location would enable better targeting of adverts but once it becomes ubiquitous these ideas hold no water. Walking down a highstreet would involve hundreds of popups on your phone, I don't think this is how people want to enjoy the liberation of technology.
Location based services will be more about location intelligent apps that answer questions like: "where's a good restaurant within 5 minutes walking?" These are not easy projects to pull off as it requires massive datasets and routing capabilities.
My guess is that Google will dominate for a few years then smaller more innovative players will start to break through. Google hold the monopoly on online mapping data (hopefully OSM will break this in a few years), and guess what? They've been crowdsourcing the locations of businesses and everything under the sun for the last few years....
Emily Williams
· 1 year ago
@Bastian you bring up exactly what I thought when I read about walking down a restaurant-filled street and being bombarded with pop-ups. That would be horribly intrusive and just plain annoying!
Maybe better organization would be something like a "relevant apps" menu - the train schedules and restaurant menus are constantly being updated there, so that you can go to one place to find the info you need without pop-ups taking over your phone.
balebond
· 1 year ago
I think on the iPhone at least, to mitigate the concerns raised by @Bastian and @Emily Williams, the best implementation of this would be to have an app that basically served as a database of local apps. Local apps developers could submit their location to the app maker... or Apple if they chose to make it a standard app... and it would work like email updates or app updates work now. When I enter an an area with local apps the "Local Apps" icon would have a notification of say, "2" indicating there are 2 local apps available in my region. I could then chose to enter the local apps interface and drill down to whatever may be of interest to me. Ideally I could manage pinging for services in the "Settings" app or for battery conservation could chose to only have it check manually. This way I'm not getting "buzz" spammed but also can take advantage of local apps at my own discretion. I think that sort of a method would be a marvelous idea.
balebond
· 1 year ago
And hey... as a DBA and developer I could build the back-end for this if anyone is iPhone SDK savvy. :P
balebond
· 1 year ago
Oh... another great use case would be for Amusement parks like Disneyland. It would be terrific to have a local apps here to provide park maps on my mobile device for example. Even better, apps that provide special entertainment by interacting with rides.
Museums are another great concept. Local apps for self-guided tours.
My mind is churning now.. lol
Bastian
· 1 year ago
@balebond i like the idea and i had a similar concept in mind, the problem i still have is that we could never tell if the user wants to DO something right now.
But hey maybe we get a small team together and start talking about this via E-Mail?
Basti.
balebond
· 1 year ago
My proposal indeed can't "know" if you want to do something now... however as a user, I can be easily trained to check for apps when in new locations where I'd like to have local app functionality. Take the Disneyland concept for example... as a mobile app user when I come on to the premises, its the sorta place I'd expect there to be apps so I'll check to see if any are on the radar as it were. (As a tech savvy establishment.. I may also advertise the fact that there are live apps here on via kiosks, poster, bboards, etc.) If there "should have been apps" I may take action to suggest it. Also, if I were not adverse to spam and just an app junky I could set my profile to receive uninvited notifications of local apps.. thus sorta solving your issue w/o pissing off the norm.
I've been looking for a "location-aware" application or portal for a long time now and I think I may have found it. This company's tech/algo play is off the charts.
There was something vaguely like this for Palm some years ago when they were the new hotness. I remember trying it at the Sony Metreon. There was a beaming station which could squirt interactive maps of the Metreon floorplan via IR to Palm handhelds.
Brandon Eley
· 1 year ago
Location awareness inside an app is fine, but I don't want to be walking down the street with my iPhone buzzing at me to install a dozen random apps just because I'm in NYC or on the subway.
I'm all for creative developers making more applications location-aware. In fact, I'd like to see more of it. The ONLY good thing about the BoA app is that you can find ATM's just by clicking a button... no zip or city/state needed. It finds the ones closest to your exact location.
That said, I do NOT want anything to notify me unless I've downloaded an app and set it that way. I don't think any third party should be able to push messages to you (or apps, or anything) without your prior approval. That's just crossing a line.
David Chartier
· 1 year ago
I think this sounds kinda silly. Why do the apps have to be disposable? People are increasingly using lots of location-based services, and that's why there are location-based aggregate services and apps like Yelp, Where, and Vicinity that are doing many of the things we're talking about. The apps aren't disposable because they do all sorts of location-based stuff, a feature that is increasingly useful on all phones.
iPhoneTeacher
· 5 months ago
Absolutely Brilliant!! I am pretty sure Apple would move in this direction. Ofcourse they would charge more to developers or publishers who wanted such an arrangement - which is OK, as everyone wins here - the publisher, Apple and the consumer! Those looking to get onto the iPhone developer / publisher bandwagon should check out the Online iPhone Training Program course offered at www.EDUmobile.ORG
All Comments
Location-aware search portal, for instance.
So, in the annals of time, who will be credited for bringing Las into the mainstream? Simple. Those who took the time to hack the iPhone and bring Installer.app to the masses. These daring men and women risked life and limb to make it possible for us to unlock the limitless possibilities of mobile experiences outside the stymied walled gardens that are mobile carriers. Perhaps now a crack in the wall has emerged allowing LaS to become a reality for all of us.
Quite honestly? I would throw my iPhone away if it would do that every time i´m near or in a train station. I´m probably just walking by or i´m about to commute to work. Stan your idea is not bad, even though miles away from being new or unique. This is pretty much what everyone in the LBS space talks about for years. However the topic is way more complex than this. Just because you are somewhere does not mean that you want to do something. It is always about "location" and "situation". It is not given that you want to see "prices of meals in nearby restaurants pop up" every time you walk down a street. And most users would also hate the idea of not being able to access the train schedule app from home but only in the station, where in most cases i can easily find a schedule or i informed myself about which train to take before i left the house.
This is why most useful LBS services rely on pull rather than push technology and i´m quite happy with this.
You might be right with the general principle. I could see my car triggering an alarm when i have an accident sending my location and a detailed error report to my car manufacturer and or 911.
My iPhone telling me that i could eat a burger for 3.99 right around the corner while i just ate is a very stupid idea.
So next time let´s think about a really useful blog post around the LBS topic and let´s come up with some unique ideas rather than playing the same old tune over and over again.
Less hype then but a better post.
Bastian
Location is the new buzzword, and rightly so, its been slowly gathering momentum for years. However, there's a reason its called "location based services" and not "location based advertising". People are pretty fed up with the amount of advertising they have to face everyday. True, location would enable better targeting of adverts but once it becomes ubiquitous these ideas hold no water. Walking down a highstreet would involve hundreds of popups on your phone, I don't think this is how people want to enjoy the liberation of technology.
Location based services will be more about location intelligent apps that answer questions like: "where's a good restaurant within 5 minutes walking?" These are not easy projects to pull off as it requires massive datasets and routing capabilities.
My guess is that Google will dominate for a few years then smaller more innovative players will start to break through. Google hold the monopoly on online mapping data (hopefully OSM will break this in a few years), and guess what? They've been crowdsourcing the locations of businesses and everything under the sun for the last few years....
Maybe better organization would be something like a "relevant apps" menu - the train schedules and restaurant menus are constantly being updated there, so that you can go to one place to find the info you need without pop-ups taking over your phone.
Museums are another great concept. Local apps for self-guided tours.
My mind is churning now.. lol
But hey maybe we get a small team together and start talking about this via E-Mail?
Basti.
Also, if I were not adverse to spam and just an app junky I could set my profile to receive uninvited notifications of local apps.. thus sorta solving your issue w/o pissing off the norm.
I'm down for any offline convos. My email is avantbond[at]gxxxx.com . replace xxxx w/ mail of course. Also, anywehere you'd wanna socnet with me is here http://appsalot.com/my-lifestream/
Check it out:
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I'm all for creative developers making more applications location-aware. In fact, I'd like to see more of it. The ONLY good thing about the BoA app is that you can find ATM's just by clicking a button... no zip or city/state needed. It finds the ones closest to your exact location.
That said, I do NOT want anything to notify me unless I've downloaded an app and set it that way. I don't think any third party should be able to push messages to you (or apps, or anything) without your prior approval. That's just crossing a line.