With the "growing popularity of US dognapping of rare and expensive breeds of dogs" in the US, according to Russian sources, President Vladimir Putin is ampd about a GLONASS dog-tracking module scheduled for release in '08.  He plans to use it to keep track of his pet Labrador, Connie, who is purportedly named after Condoleezza Rice.  Maybe something got lost in translation with this one...

-Russian News and Information Agency

Lowest common denominator semi segment M&A activity is rounding out the year for LBS acquisitions, the latest arriving today from NXP (i.e. Philips Semiconductor) as the winner of GloNav's GPS silicon.  This one arrives following last week's news of Atheros Communications, Inc. gobbling up u-Nav Microelectronics, with SiRF-Centrality before that, and 2007's loudest Broadcom-Global Locate firecracker back in June.   It seems that as the LBS industry gets larger, we are getting smaller care-of more mainstream provider assimilation..

Yes, it's another end-to-end claim from SiRF, this time riding on the Android hype dropped weeks ago.  I thought SiRF's previous end-to-end announcement at their inaugural ecosystem event last Oct was strange, arriving like a hangover after the middleware party tried to rock the house years ago.  I mean, if you're a developer, what do you gain by using a proxy of other proxies to get a map on your SiRF-powered device, other than increased latency?  Why not just use an OpenLS API, web service, or any other XML or javascript derivative directly...  Is it better from a silicon company? 

The same goes for OMA-SUPL with this latest E2E PR.  What does SUPL have to do with Android, other than perhaps HTC or some other OHA member may ship SUPL-ready handsets with SiRF chips in them?  It has nothing to do with Google, that's for sure - they are embracing an Open Source approach to mobility - the antithesis of tired telecom standards coming out of the OMA.  Water and oil don't mix guys...

Fixed-Mobile Convergence (FMC) with the Web is introducing a melting pot view of Location as a morphed creation with no discrete heritage or affiliation to a specific camp, and the cellular regime is loosing its grip on 'their' Location power tool.  Maximiliano Firtman (I guess that's his real name) over at Nokia's Forum has a nice review of the various Location options available which span networks, devices, methods, and cultural attitudes.  Welcome to the new world!   

Aaron Katsman thinks P-Nav devices are "just another way that as a society we are getting lazier and dumber".  On average, most car drivers (on a daily basis) commute from home to work/school and back again.  Places frequented in between are etched into brains like a geointuition.  A box telling them it's there and how to get to it is like listening to a broken record of life - just like staring down the barrel of an electron from a TV.  Someone please reverse the brain-shrinking by making these systems more interactive with access to content that changes - geoviews published by interest groups, communities, and loved ones.   

-BloggingStocks 

Paul Hsu of NeoCarta Ventures purportedly has cash to dole for your LBS start-up, if you can set-up business overseas in emerging CRIB nations/economies. 

Just because it's technically possible to do something from an engineering perspective, doesn't always mean that you should do it.  For example, TomTom's integration with Google Maps for POIs (be they expert edited or user generated) allows users to update their P-Navs with the freshest content via a save to GPS option in Google maps.  The data is then uploaded to the device via a desktop offline sync and then users are ready to go.  Sounds like the iTunes-iPod paradigm to me, and well, I think most acknowledge that works just fine for music content.  So why not maps? 

A connected PND with access to the Internet doesn't make it any better than an offline one.  In this particular argument, adding a chip to connect to the Internet means the user gets charged twice - once for the device and many many times more for the service - and that sucks.  I'll take the offline iTunes-iPod paradigm, thanks.   

So I've been too busy to comment on news, but heard about Verizon allegedly opening up under pressure (I'll believe it when I see it), about Google's 700 Mhz "money where our mouth is" intention, and about MyLocation.  What do they all have in common?  Freedom, and the impending end of a tyrannical good ol' boys club of privileged access to scarce mobile Location resources. 

The later is remarkable.  I don't think MyLocation is RF science or algorithmic, but rather sources inherent handset-based Cell-ID keys and couples them with anonymous and voluntary GPS positions through Maps usage, which is elegant; as is appending voluntary address inputs with Cell-ID keys to further build up the database.  It's classic Google and looks like what LBS old-timers might consider a wisdom of the crowds MPC/GMLC minus the privacy management mechanics.

...Lets hope this manifests itself as a wrecking ball against walls for Cell-ID access and perceived value, allowing anyone to start building applications, not just those who have built their business on courting carriers who still foolishly assume this data is worth something.  These guys aren't so special now, neither is the information, and I suspect you'll be free to compete in an open market soon enough (and once this is commoditized by the very people who use and generate it).

The Austrian Tirol Avalanche Brigade isn't your typical outdoor guerilla response unit.  These snowmen are equipped with dogs, TNT, seamless comms, arsenal, flight-for-life systems and super sophisticated early warning emergency alert systems supported by a sensor network of stations collecting and crunching data metrics like prevailing wind, snow depth, and variability to produce GIS-based prediction models for potential events.  Their specially designed mobile phones that consume the models take punishment too.  These were smashed to smithereens during standard ops in real elements.