Another explanation for the N810's GPS

[RogerS]

I missed seeing an item (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/one-reason-we-need-a-google-phone-free-gps/) in the New York Times technology blog, Bits, that Saul Hansell wrote. On October 10, he noted a report (http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=779241&k=telephia) had come out from Telephia (http://www.telephia.com) that said that "location-based services" accounted for half of all the money spent on cellphone applications.*

Half!

Hansell's irritation centered around the fact that all this money is being spent on services like Verizon's VZ Navigator, which "display maps and driving directions using GPS hardware built into phones. Verizon charges $9.99 a month or $2.99 a day for the service."

"I already own" the phone and the GPS in it, Hansell points out, yet he and any Verizon customer still has to pay extra to use it.

Of course that rubs him the wrong way. And of course it's great that a device like the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet takes the opposite approach.

But the subtext of Telephia's report seems to me to be that people really like and use location-based services. That's why half the money being spent on apps went for them. That seems to me to be a pretty big arrow pointing in the direction Nokia (or any company in the walkaround web arena) would want to be headed.

It's nice to have some facts to flesh out the intuitions now and then.
__________
* in the U.S. in the second quarter of this yearRead the full article. (http://www.internettablettalk.com/2007/11/27/another-explanation-for-the-n810s-gps/)

[YoDude]

I don't have access to his data but what info I did see some many months ago with regard to Nextel (one of the first with AGPS in the US) was that there was a marked drop off after 3 or 4 months of use. This indicated to me that it was somewhat of a fad for new users.
Business use however, continued to grow as new apps became available.

>> http://www.accutracking.com/

What hasn't come to fruition yet were the predictions that marketing apps would use LBS to steer users toward purchases via text messages... based on the users proximity to the target or information searches from the device.

[TA-t3]

What hasn't come to fruition yet were the predictions that marketing apps would use LBS to steer users toward purchases via text messages... based on the users proximity to the target or information searches from the device.
Ah, but that's because it's dangerous you see.. if the person getting spammed with unwanted text messages knows that the spammer is very close indeed, it's almost a certainty that an action of extreme violence will be imminent.

[barry99705]

What hasn't come to fruition yet were the predictions that marketing apps would use LBS to steer users toward purchases via text messages... based on the users proximity to the target or information searches from the device.

Yea, that would piss me off to no end. I just checked my phone, I've had exactly 3 text messages! One was my wife, just seeing if the service worked. One was a wrong number... :rolleyes: and one was a buddy of mine testing out the carrier's web service for sending texts. I don't really see the point of text messaging. If you want to talk to me, you have the damn phone in your hand, call me!

[RogerS]

Location-based services don't have to mean "I am revealing my exact location to anyone and give them permission to annoy me."

The basic "use the GPS and give me directions from here to somewhere else" fall into this category.

So do "where's the nearest [whatever]?" queries or "show me the locations of all the people I have permission to see."

Because of the kickback, I don't expect we're going to see proximity-based ads except on an opt-in basis. And I will opt in if the basis is "you pay me a dollar and you can send me an ad when I walk by your store."

Roger

[Salt The Fries]

I spent months searching for a way to get GPS on my Sprint A900 for free before I found MGMaps, which is a free J2ME mobile map program that accesses your phone's internal GPS. I was able to install it after enabling developer access on my phone via a short form on the Sprint page (this isn't necessary for all phones / providers, nor is it difficult). The program pulls maps from the internet, so don't install / run this unless you have a reasonable data plan.
Installation instructions on the page are good / extensive.

http://www.mgmaps.com/

I also heard that Google has a beta version of its mobile maps application that supports phone GPS and tower-based location data.

As for privacy-- I trust free / open software more than closed, but having a cell phone is already a privacy hazard. Sprint probably has a record of everywhere my phone's been in at least the last 90 days, and I assume the NSA probably has some kind of massive neural network analyzing my phone's movement patterns along with a couple hundred million other Americans' phone movements for suspected terrorist patterns.