Event of Interest - Explore the Mobile Future

Heads up on this one... Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley Conference to Explore the Mobile Future, April 22. Details - Acknowledging the rise of handheld mobile devices as a dominant computing platform both in the United States and abroad, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California at Berkeley have joined together to sponsor “The Mobile Future: Technology Revolutionizing Our Lives.” The one-day conference gathers leading academics, researchers, pundits and industry experts to discuss their visions of this mobile future, along with technology and business models for achieving them. The conference will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., April 22 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif. For more details, please visit http://west.cmu.edu/sofcon08/13867052.html.

Navteq partners with uLocate

Wow, these guys don't waste any time partnering up... although you could see this one coming a mile away! Navteq has just announced today that they have partnered up with uLocate (these guys developed the WHERE developer platform). Under the deal, uLocate will us NAVTEQ map data for applications running on the WHERE platform and Buddy Beacon products in the U.S. and Europe. FYI, 12 of the 15 finalists in the LBS challenge this week were powered by WHERE! IF your interested in dabbling with the WHERE platform you might take note of their developer contest... a good time to start creating your first mobile, location-aware app. See more

SpotJots from ten23 takes 1st place in 2008 Navteq LBS Challenge with SpotJots

Just managed to catch the award ceremony for the 2008 Navteq LBS Challenge from Vegas... some very interesting apps from some new names. And the winner is... from ten23 Software SpotJots (See http://www.ten23software.com) - about the app:
SpotJots enables users to upload their stories, reviews, pictures, video, audio and documents to their personal SpotJots blog, where the content can be associated with relevant location information and shared with the entire community, just friends or kept private for personal viewing only. Users can discover content and people through various site tools, including keyword searches, a public timeline, city exploration guides, references, a featured user list and maps which promotes spatial discovery of content. Of note, ten23 software was a semi-finalist in last year's challenge with their cool SpotKast application

Congrats to all the winners!

Spotjots from ten23 software - powered by deCarta


1st Runner up - WildLab, powered by WHERE


2nd runner up (and the coolest name!) HeyWhatsThat - powered by WHERE

3rd Runner up AEN Mobile – Americas Emergency Network - powered by WHERE

Interesting to note about this years contest, over half of entries had some form of user-generated content in their apps!

Map your assets with Google Maps mashup - Cemetery gMap and Office gMap

Leave it to another Canuck, Mark Laudon, to come up with a couple of more interesting ways that people can mashup their assets via Google Maps. Mark has put together a couple of clever demos to give you a feel for what he can accomplish.
How about a mashup of cemetery lots. Search for a person by name, then view the tombstone when located.
Or, perhaps a mashup of your office space and employees... imagine visitors going to a kiosk and simply searching by name... they can even click on the hit to view the person's mug!

Nice!
See http://www.laudontech.com/officeplans/

Locate Silvia Wilson and her desk via the mashup! I like the PDF backdrop... clever

or
http://www.laudontech.com/cemmap/

View the Nelson grave and see the location on a map

Google I/O early reg ends April 4th

A reminder, early registration for Google I/O ends April 4th - this Friday! Recall, I/O is a two-day, in- depth gathering for developers to share knowledge about Google's own developer products and web application development in general. Google I/O will be held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on Wednesday, May 28th, and Thursday, May 29th, 2008.
See http://code.google.com/events/io

Nice job on the video Networks in Motion (NIM)

I'm not sure why more companies don't do this! NIM has released a YouTube video directly from CTIA Wireless 2008 describing what they to offers visitors to their booth. With smartphones now shipping with high quality video and mobile apps like Shozu enabling rapid upload to youtube, I would expect this to be more common. Although, it's likely that one would have to upload their 5 minute vid via PC outside the exhibition hall due to the typical bandwidth over-usage at these shows... also, Shozu won't handle a 10MB upload too well! I hope to see more of these on YouTube soon!








In the video, Networks In Motion’s CEO, Doug Antone, describes the company and introduces its newest application, AtlasBook Navigator™, a software platform available to NIM’s wireless carrier partners to implement into their own branded mobile phone navigation applications.

USer research about the Apple iPhone

Interesting findings about the Apple iPhone:
Som mixed feelings in the research as about 40% report that it can't display all the websites they want to visit. On the up-side, Phone Bills have increased by an Average of 24% - this is what the carriers want to see!

Some findings:

- Users are young Apple veterans. Half of US iPhone users are under 30, and 75% are prior Apple customers.
-The iPhone is expanding the smartphone market. About 50% of iPhone users replaced conventional mobile phones, while 40% replaced other smartphones. The Motorola Razr was the conventional phone most often replaced, while Microsoft Windows Mobile devices and the RIM Blackberry were the smartphones most often replaced.
- Email is the #1 function. The most used data function on the iPhone is reading (but not writing) email, with about 70% of users doing that at least once a day. About 60% said they browse the web on the iPhone daily.
- The iPhone increases mobile browsing. Over 75% of iPhone users say they do a lot more mobile browsing on it than they did with their previous mobile phone.
- Browsing compatibility problems. About 40% of iPhone users say it has trouble displaying some websites they want to visit. This is probably due at least in part to the absence of Adobe Flash on the iPhone.
- The iPhone drives carrier switching. About half of iPhone users switched carriers to AT&T when they obtained the iPhone.

Download the report at: http://tinyurl.com/2rkyve

Catch the greatest in LBS via webcast on Wednesday

Webcast of interest... can't get to Vegas this week to take in the Navteq LBSChallenge awards ceremony? No problem as you can kick back in your office chair and watch the awards live via webcast - a great way to save some cash and enjoy seeing and hearing from some of the coolest developers of innovative LBS apps. Watch Live Announcement of Winners from CTIA WIRELESS on April 2, 2008 at www.LBSChallenge.com at 3:00 p.m. PST