Buddyping is like any one of dozens of other social software’s I no longer keep track of. There are a couple differences though – one, it’s mobile; and two, it runs across and has access to all 4 networks in the UK. At last October’s LBS World Forum, Phil Derry of Trackaphone Ltd educated the audience on how all UK carriers got together to sort out premium wholesale location access for any developer to get access to. He noted that the US, while far advanced when it came to positioning, lacked the attitude to cooperate to offer location wholesale so that applications can extend and operate across networks. Buddyping is the only example of a social software application I’m aware of that can serve all users across networks. One would think that in order for a social software app to be successful and reach the masses it must run on all networks, but today networks in the US aren’t that open. US carriers differentiate from their competitors by protecting their offerings with app exclusives that only run on their network. That’s not very social. If Myspace, facebook, LinkedIn, or some other social software provider hopes to be able to accomplish the same as buddyping did with context additons through Location, they better help networks (i.e. the carriers who run them) become more social with incentives to do so...

Following a UK National Physics Laboratory meeting on Jan 18, there were a bunch of rumblings coming out of Europe this week about how they cannot and should not rely on the US GPS system for mobile location-based services – one such remark was made from my former Profesor Jonathan Raper.  Carriers in Europe agree, but suggest waiting for Galileo is hindering market development and their objectives. Meanwhile, device manufacturers are hesitant to release GPS-based devices waiting for Galileo, so the projections for location-enabled phones is less than I would have expected in comparison to US shipment numbers over the last 6 years.

Remember this bit of history – Europe launched LBS first back on 1999 with low-accuracy and there was little demand and therefore limited market success. At that time, the US looked to Europe for creative application ideas because they were there. However, the US lagged overall on commercial deployments, concentrating efforts on 911 and high accuracy. Now, the US has millions of GPS phones shipped, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers using commercial applications. The US has leapfrogged Europe. It’s now 2007, and Europe is moving ahead with high accuracy following the US lead. We have flip-flopped twice already. Ready for a third? I saw evidence this week from the social software community that 2007 could usher in high-demand for CellID-based low-accuracy in the US, where it is now unpopular in Europe. Seesaw…

The UK's Yell.com and Yellowpages.com in the US recently launched their mobile local offerings within days of each other. It's good to see ‘The Book’ incumbents step up to serve their customer base who want those eyeballs on the go.

...Looking for a 411 app while on the go? Check out the TellMe Mobile beta. It downloaded smoothly to my Sprint Samsung a920 and runs nicely through a simple UI. If you are looking for free voice-initiated 411 with maps and routing, but without the dial tone and charge, this app has it. The app isn't accessing carrier location infrastructure or GPS for auto-locates, but with the voice driven interface it’s not needed since you can speak your origin, destination, etc.

The saying goes 'most criminals are stupid or fall asleep at the wheel' - to paraphrase Goodfellas. InformationWeek reports on a story about both. Three Suffolk County criminal geniuses stole 14 mobile phones from the County. That same booty that they thought they scored was the source of their demise and capture.

The NY Times reported that NYC mayor Bloomberg said the city's 911 and 311 systems will soon support citizen-generated video and images for emergency and non-emergency reporting. Will this type of user produced content be location-tagged since most of it will come from mobile phones… Surely this type of government service for citizens is subject to accidental misuse or intentional abuse, but then again, so is the traditional 911 service we depend on.

Following Newsweek’s prediction that 2007 will be the year of the Widget, Third Screen suggested hat Mobile Widgets will likely fix the broken experiences of the Mobile Web. I agree. Today, most rich mobile apps must be downloaded, each has a MRC which leads to over inflated monthly bills, and apps are hard to discover among the hundreds of mobile apps on or off the deck directory. There are hundreds if not thousands of possibilities for location-enhanced apps, but the download model (akin to the desktop software model in the PC world) doesn’t scale to support the niches. I think the Widget approach to mobile application development removes these existing barriers for mainstream discovery and usage, while supporting the emerging personalization of the mobile Web.

It's the new year, and I closed out Dec with a trip to Hollywood Florida to support Sprint at their 4th annual Developers Conference.

This event has grown significantly over the years, with 2006 attendance reaching over 1000.  There were a bunch of things LBS going on, but the one thing that stood out for me was Ryan Wick's presentation on JSR-293.  This is a new Java ME API for location is similar to its predecessor JSR-179, but JSR-293 not only includes a way to get at location, but also a set of APIs to map, route, search, geocode, and NAVIGATE.As far as I know RIM i s the first OEM to offer this API (Nokia is leading the JSR working group). And with the emerging trend of OEMs doing LBS Navigation apps themselves, I can see this API being used soon by the mobile Java community.Of interesting note, no one from the geospatial community has joined this JSR working group.