Location-Based Services: Staying Relevant for a Moving Target

By Chris Wain

If your business isn’t already impacted by location-based services, that’s likely to change quickly.

When the Internet boom began in the mid-1990s, it appeared that the traditional secret of business success (“location, location, location”) would go the way of a doctor’s house call. Today, while the location of a company matters far less, the moment-to-moment location of customers is becoming an incredible business opportunity.

Connectivity and mapping technologies are combining with robust portable devices to enable companies to identify/target people located in a narrowly defined place, and enable individuals to customize their mobile device experience on the fly as they move around. New opportunities abound in marketing, people locating, product location sharing and finding, traffic and news, games and videocasting.

“Location services are where the Internet was in 1995,” said Audodesk’s Rob Duffield, speaking at an Internet Professionals SIG meeting on location-based services (LBS).

The connection
LBS start with a wireless connection to a range of devices, including laptops, PDAs, mobile phones and dedicated devices. The connectivity landscape encompasses a variety of technologies – some established, some emerging. They fall into 3 major categories:

• Wireless and mobile carrier networks – The mobile industry is one of the fastest growing on the planet. Wireless carriers are growing at amazing speeds to adapt to customer demands for increased mobile devices and services.

• Wireless LAN – With a range of up to 1,000 feet, the key technology is WiFi, also known by the intuitively obvious term 802.11a/b/g/n.

• Wireless Wide Area Networks (WWAN) – Ranging up to 10 miles and drawing on a veritable alphabet soup of technologies, WiMax is an emerging standard for wireless WANs. However, cautioned Reinier Tuinzing of Vivato Networks, “In networking, every evolving standard solves all of the problems of the existing standard – until it actually comes out.”

The challenges with all of the wireless technologies will be determining the value and making them easy to use. “It’s all just a connection,” said Tuinzing. “The real compelling value is the application built on top of the connection.” Building the applications, he said, will require “thinking out of the box to put the applications together.”

The location 
While several methods are available to determine the user’s location, including GPS, antenna triangulation and router location, access to detailed mapping information is required to put make that location useful. Navteq, a leader in digital map data and applications, supplies digital maps of 60 countries. Their services use multiple formats to capture digital map data, with Geographic Data Format (GDF) emerging as a de facto international standard.

The most pervasive consumer use of location information on mobile devices is to get directions, said Navteq’s Steven Si. Other significant uses are to locate a specific service (such as an ATM), find nearby entertainment options, play an LBS game and locate a friend or family member.

Making LBS useful and relevant
The key to developing valuable location-based services, said Autodesk’s Duffield, is in developing LBS that actually add value to someone’s daily life. For example, Autodesk Family Finder allows parents and guardians to view the location of loved ones via a web interface or a mobile handset.

For small businesses, Autodesk Insight helps businesses manage a mobile workforce. One company saw a tracking/mapping application allow them to complete at least one additional work order per technician per day.

In addition, Feedia’s John Anthony Hartman shared an even more futuristic application based on technology from Microvision. Their Color Eyewear allows mobile users to access their personal content and services while keeping their vision of the outside world free and clear. For example, users could access navigation and GPS-enabled services while keeping their eye on the road ahead.

Going forward, the major challenge will be imagining and developing applications where location is the key, said Duffield. “If not, the wireless carriers will not be 100% convinced of the need to add it to their ‘deck’.”

For more information, see the presentations from the IPSIG forum.

About the panelists

• Reinier Tuinzing is director of product development and operations at Vivato Networks – an established technology vendor in the market for outdoor, extended range broadband wireless infrastructure. 
  
• John Anthony Hartman is president of Feedia, a Social Media consulting firm helping companies develop strategies in the web 2.0 landscape. 
  
• Robb Duffield is the senior manager of marketing and development for Autodesk Location Services.
  
• Steven Si is senior tech consultant in the Partner and Developer Program at Navteq
  
• William Mutual is Chairman and CEO of ComVu
  
• Mike Wills is the principal of an Internet marketing consulting practice that specializes in e-marketing with an emphasis on search engine marketing and other web marketing strategies.

About the author
Chris Wain, a local marketing consultant and writer, is a 10-year veteran of eBusiness and Internet marketing. His eBusiness experience encompasses website management, communications, training, managing a user experience team, and transition and change management. He can be reached at chris.wain@comcast.net.