1. TrailRunner
2. PublicEarth
3. G-Park
4. meetnowlive
5. wenear

Russ penned a post at Law of Mobility on his views for extracting value-added business intelligence from Carriers in the open garden model we're evolving towards. Can you imagine the power of a network API that renders usage statistics, coupled with historical location, and other subscriber identity vitals? This priceless data can enable applications to become learning machines leveraging digital symbiosis to deliver targeted information derived from mobility contexts—contexts that oust mechanical turk Web contexts.

Following week-old news of Telenity’s enablement at Indian carrier BSNL [shout outs to Nitin Patel wherever you are!], Bharti Airtel revealed an order with Swedish Wayfinder for GPS navigation services atop their 8800 RIM Blackberry, validating a previous post hinting at the win via a content deal with MapmyIndia. With LBS heating-up in India, it's interesting to observe the abnormal flip-flop of GSM out ahead of CDMA when launching location-based infrastructure and applications.  Any comment Reliance?   

Gator students at the University of Florida might soon eliminate guesswork and save time waiting for campus transportation. The Regional Transit System (RTS) has plans to equip buses with GPS, which Sprint, TransLoc Inc, and the University Transportation and Parking Services dept. plan to couple with a Web and mobile service allowing student-subscribers to locate RTS buses enroute.

Though in active D2C circulation for nearly a year, Slifter now has GPS smarts and a billing-on-behalf-of distribution and charging channel courtesy of Sprint and their Digital Lounge. Attention shoppers… Shout outs to Alex and Maya.

Last weekend, my home town of Boulder, CO hosted the 29^th annual Bolder Boulder 10K road race. This year, Bones in Motion teamed with Verizon Wireless to offer fans and supporters a live tracking feature to monitor BiM Active-user progress on the course. I spoke with Jon Werner about the new BiM Active feature, and he said that while users are pleased with existing BiM Active publishing features, the BiM team recognized that BiM blog viewers and subscribers were also interested in monitoring user progress in real-time on a dynamic map, versus a static post-processed representation. Jon said the feature will eventually evolve into a twitter-like pluggable presence widget for mainstream social networking applications. Quite clever!

Congrats to Parm Sandhu, the Telus team, and the 3^rd party applications providers for extending Telus Navigator and Telus Kid Find to Quebec province customers.

Smarter Agent will reportedly (subscription required) close their first VC finance round next week, with plans to double staff thereafter and make a run for it. I’ve encountered widely varying opinions on this type of app. Back in 2004, a then Director of LBS at Sprint said marketing cash support for a real-estate app was unlikely based on direct industry experiences she had, citing MLS listings as fragmented, inaccurate databases with little-to-no-value. Strong words for sure, but conversational nonetheless since Sprint eventually deployed the app—minus the expensive marketing effort to support its discovery.

Given the current infighting for real-estate mapping among the big portals and GIS vendors, and given Microsoft’s 80% market share in this space via Virtual Earth, I wonder if it makes sense for Smarter Agent to find, well, a smarter agent D2C channel.

Back in January, I struggled to make sense of Motorola’s announcement to abandon internal ViaMoto navigation application efforts and partner-up with Destinator and Jentro for an alternative 3^rd party solution. That fogginess lifted a bit with Destinator’s PR yesterday.

First of all, ViaMoto’s main check-writer was Avis who now offers Where2 eliminating hopes of a US navigation power-play. Secondly, the Chinese automotive industry boom presents an opportune time to discount any on-board PND momentum that might arise, and with Moto eyeing emerging D2C models popular there, they need a partner with a strong Chinese presence. Lastly, there are other emerging competitive threats in China for Moto previously mentioned.

Sporting their new black WHERE tees, the Boston crew took the stage at Where 2.0 with one key message for this audience of hackers, artists, publishers, and entrepreneurs—“Carriers are our friends, they don’t need to be yours”. Where 2.0 attendees and speakers notoriously slam mobile Carrier-gatekeepers who hold location close to their chests and hinder the creative development and innovation found in this auditorium. With any luck, uLocate put an end to the undereducated rant. So go for it, extend your website with location-smarts on mobile devices, build a widget, or publish your KML or GeoRSS out to mobile devices. You’re officially abstracted!