Friday, November 30, 2007

Location Based Services

Here we are on earth: we live, work, travel where we choose. You are right here, right now, and maybe at this moment you need something or someone to help you accomplish what you are trying to do. You rub your magic lamp, out pops a genie, and grants you your wish.

Your lamp: it is actually your cellphone or computer...
Your genie: most likely works for Google, but possibly Yahoo, Microsoft? Altavista?? AskJeeves???
Your wish: if you are lucky is the top result of your search query....

Location Based Services, is a concept of providing you with relevant information based on where you currently are. Google recently released a beta update to their mobile Google Maps application which triangulates your approximate location using cell-phone tower information. Based on that information, you can easily imagine where they could be heading with this... Looking for the closest gas station? T-stop? Pizza shop? Done. Take it one more level further, the closest/cheapest gas-station, the train station with an incoming train any minute, the best slice of pizza around... This is where we are heading, and we will get there quicker than you can imagine...

The problems won't be technical, but more security and ethical in nature....

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