Picasa is now integrated with Google Maps and Picasa mobile is also available. I used the new feature to map a recent Yellowtail outing around the Coronado Islands fishing grounds. The feature is easy to use and fun, but dragging-and-dropping photos onto the map is a best-guess positioning exercise. 

Orange’s Pikeo and other Carrier equivalents could eliminate these manual georeferencing uncertainties with streamlined GPS-tagging alternatives...

Traffic modeling company IntelliOne acquired TeenArriveAlive in an effort to symbiotically capture-and-serve cell-probe location data from users and deliver information back out to them by monitoring movements to generate consumable traffic predictions. Why spend millions on sensor network infrastructure and data collection labor to model traffic if an existing user base can collect the data for free? …Makes sense. In other news , TomTom inked a similar cell-probe data feed deal with Vodafone UK for traffic modeling. Why aren’t cell-based traffic prediction data mining’s common Carrier offerings today? Users would gladly contribute anonymous mobile location towards a service that saves time avoiding traffic jams, and Carriers could harness the produced data to reinforce a self-propagating intelligent machine that grows smarter with more contribution and subsequent usage… Ask the guys at Telco 2.0

UAE’s Etisalat marketed two location-based applications as free-use services to consumers, but apparently failed to inform customers that short and multimedia messaging charges would apply for transactions. While informing users may have reduced some of the backlash Etisalat is now managing three months after launch, applying voice-era per-transaction charging models to data simply doesn’t work.

Following a $29M NEA-lead Series A finance round, German mobile navigation software supplier Jentro broke the mold from historical Carrier-marketed billing-on-behalf-of distribution models to support a free, D2C ad-subsidized mobile navigation offering via Das Ortliche—a leading online directory services content provider in Germany. The O-Navi offering is a European first, leveraging house-hold branding for discovery independent of carrier billing. GPS Business News suggests the move will introduce pricing pressures into the increasingly complex mix of competitive consumer navigation options available. I imagine this is just the beginning of more alternative branded D2C models yet to disrupt the market. Congrats to Erno Hempel and the Jentro team for taking the bold leap!

Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs highlighted three main areas of focus for Qualcomm during the BREW 2007 keynote—Innovation, Execution, and Partnership, with examples for each.

Innovation—Showcasing Verizon Wireless’ V-Cast service, Paul suggested the carrier has diversified TV content—if only the same were true for LBS on Verizon which epitomizes the garden mentality. uiOne-powered, personalized devices on Sprint have evolved from dynamic NFL wallpaper to include idle-screen On-Demand services customizable by users. According to Jacobs, Sprint wireless data services usage jumped 200% recently, which he attributes to UI themes.

Execution—Near-field communications and RFID will transform devices into credit cards, hotel keys, airline boarding passes, etc binding personal identity to digital transactions. Lifecomm, Qualcomm’s Health and Fitness Initiative (discussed previously), “will be like your Doctor in your pocket”. The service launches in 2008 and will include retail distribution channels such as pharmacies. Paul also sees Qualcomm executing in emerging economies, where consumers will access the Web through their mobile devices versus PCs. Paul announced the Snapdragon chipset, which will offer an inexpensive, low-power, green alternative for desktop computing to serve these markets. “Qualcomm is working with industry leaders to bring rich services to consumers in these emerging economies”.

Partnership—The BREW developer community has now generated $1B in aggregate revenue, with 218 commercial BREW carriers, and an anticipated 450 million subs by 2010. Paul highlighted a few select partners which represent this growth by way of video testimonials from O₂, 9 Squared, Medio, frog design, Motorola, and Adobe. To wrap up the partner theme, Paul recognized the Amber Alert Highway Network and AmberWatch Foundation, highlighting a location-based application enabling users to instantly alert family members in the event of abduction or emergency. Paul said he and Qualcomm worked with Wavemarket to bring the service online, and Qualcomm plans to make a $100M charitable donation to the Foundation.  How bout dem apples?

Chris Verbil, an A-GPS expert and Qualcomm veteran, hosted a BREW “beyond navigation” panel where members Isaias Sudit, Eric Blumberg, Andy Graham, Vishy Poosala, and Mike McMullen described their respective location-enriched application offerings and market observations. The panel bronzed the ‘location is not an app, it’s an enabler” mantra, reiterating visions for a future world where location is common to many mobile apps inheriting navigation as a feature. Caller ID was once a value added service we paid for, until it became an inherent feature—it’s now free and most wouldn’t pay for it. Will the same happen to Navigation, or will it become a platform similar to Mobile Location today?

“Pipes – You’d think that everybody in the mobile industry was into plumbing”

-Frank Meehan, Director & GM, Hutchinson on the open mobile Web that his company has deeply embraced with the likes of Google, Skype, Yahoo!, eBay, and others.  He’s quite happy being 'a pipe' with all the amazing Web applications on his devices.  And more importantly, his customers are happy with what he gives them!  

Paul Jacobs, President and CEO of Qualcomm kicked off BREW 2007 with a divergence u-turn suggesting the Swiss Army Knife for devices, networks, and services does not exist. In other words, one size does not fit all, there are no killer apps and services, and we aren’t in the phone business anymore. In previous years, Paul pumped-up convergence for mobile phone devices amplified by Qualcomm’s vision to pack as much stuff into a device physically possible. The Web’s collision with mobile through convergence has de-canonized that once held belief, and Paul now embraces a consumer electronics landscape where his chips go into a plethora of devices beyond phones, including low-power consumption green PCs for emerging economies. 

Canalys’ snapshot-survey on mobile Touch UIs reveals European consumer “acceptance of touch screen phones was up to 50% higher among those who had high interest in having mobile TV services, mobile e-mail or handset-based GPS navigation, or who already used most of the features on their current phones.” Translation = TV remote controls, keyboards, consumer GPS devices, and full-featured mobile phones aren't intuitively designed. Nokia agrees, declaring “optical sensors and touch will be the next big things." I recall seeing a camera used to control map panning with device axis tilting—that was cool—props to the folks at V-Enable for that innovative usage of widely available device camera APIs.

German magazine FOCUS broke a story (or rumor) that Apple and Mercedes are planning to fashion select 2009 model vehicles with combo Personal Media-GPS navigation units. Will the duo outfit an iPhone dock to wirelessly connect with other in-vehicle A/V systems for both entertainment and in-dash navigation, or will a dedicated PND strategy prevail over a converged and networked approach? Who knows, but I imagine user-machine interactions at 130 km/h on the Autobahn might influence design towards more intuitive voice-driven form factors around larger car-spaces versus device-space.