Location Based Services – April 25, 2008

Animoto = Automated Imagery PED

By G C Network | December 3, 2008

Over the past two days, I’ve spent quite a bit of time with Stevie Clifton, Co-founder & CTO of Animoto. Besides being one of the coolest things I’ve seen in…

World Summit of Cloud Computing 2008

By G C Network | December 1, 2008

Video by Animoto using cloud computing technology. (Done in 20 minutes for free)!! Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

2008 World Summit of Cloud Computing

By G C Network | November 30, 2008

After a uneventful trip , I’m now in Israel for the World Summit. With over 500 people expected to attend, it promises to be an exciting time. Unfortunately, I arrived…

CloudCamp Federal ’08

By G C Network | November 28, 2008

| Get your Presentation Pack Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

NCOIC Cloud Working Group

By G C Network | November 26, 2008

The NCOIC will be holding a cloud computing working group on December 10th during plenary session in Costa Mesa, CA. The session focus will be “Requirements for Enterprise Cloud Computing”.…

IBM Rating Clouds

By G C Network | November 25, 2008

According to Cloud Computing Journal, and Red Herring, IBM will now rate other cloud providers. Using the “Resilient Cloud Validation” program, IBM will validate their facilities, applications, data, staff, processes…

Cloud Computing vs. Cloud Services

By G C Network | November 24, 2008

In September, Frank Gens provided an excellent overview of the the new “Cloud Computing Era”. In preparing for an upcoming talk, I re-read the post and found myself appreciating it…

Inaugural “Inside the Cloud” Survey

By G C Network | November 21, 2008

Appistry and CloudCamp recently released results from the first “Inside the Cloud” survey. Key takeaways were: Amazon perceived as cloud leader, with twice as many votes as Google Infrastructure providers…

FIAC Presentation Mentions Cloud Computing

By G C Network | November 20, 2008

At the recent Federal Information Assurance Conference, Bob Gourley, CTO Crucial Point LLC, and former Defense Intelligence Agency CTO, recently provided his views on the state of Federal IT. His cloud…

Sun Cloud Czar

By G C Network | November 19, 2008

Earlier this week it was announced that, Sun, Senior Vice President, Dave Douglas, was appointed to lead the Company’s cloud computing efforts. A JDJ Article also stated that, in addition to becoming Sun’s…

INmobile.org is a exclusive community for executives in wireless industry. As a member, I have the opportunity to participate in a number of interesting discussions about mobile and wireless technology. Here’s a summary of the points made in a recent discussion about location based services. Thanks goes to Adam Zawel for this excellent summary.
CARRIER’S ROLE
While no one suggests that operators should EXCLUSIVELY focus on their own location-based applications, there is debate about how fully the carriers should embrace the open 3rd party route:
Ashish Thomas from Singapore Telecom agrees with Walt Doyle of uLocate:
“the business models are simply not there yet to merit or justify one route or another…if a carrier goes the third party way there is fear of losing (or diminishing ) a potentially large revenue source”
Lloyd Williams from NewStep Networks adds:
“…High volume services with relatively generic functionality that can be applied across a broad base of users is ….[the operators’] sweet spot. Highly customizable applications are more of a challenge and therefore the internet model works better.Most comments, however, focus squarely on the value to carriers (and especially the ecosystem overall) if carriers focus on location as an “enabler”,
Asais Sudit, CEO of LOC-AID Technologies says:
“Inter-carrier raw location data, along with some additional attributes, will create the necessary ecosystem for third party developers/channels to make location an indispensable part of mobility.”
Tony Rose from Drop In Media adds:
“…opening up the location API’s to developers and create a competitive environment where the best applications will float to the top.”
Matt Kapp, CEO of Ozmota says:
“Location is a key variable to many innovative applications, including the ability to create new marketplaces from the virtual representation of space.”
Larry Corvari (a regional U.S. service provider executive) says he wants to provide
“open access via a standard set of published web objects” and support his enterprise customers with presence and LBS capabilities.”
Paul Nerger, dotMobi suggests
“If I was an operator, I would open up and start by publishing my data via OpenCellID.”The carriers can provide value on top of a free or low priced location API service:
Matthew Roth from StudioComm (WPP agency) says:
“… it makes much more sense to open up the location APIs and charge for access to the demographic data of the subscriber.… combined with lat/long within a mobile web or SMS based campaign would provide the necessary catalyst for brands and marketers to embrace mobile in the same ways they now embrace the Internet.”….In any case, the ecosystem may not wait around for the carriers too much longer:
Kevin Jackson of Sirius Computer Solutions:
“Absent industry-wide cooperation and adoption of an open source philosophy, competition and consolidation will force many carriers to fail.”
Ole Jakob Thorsen, Arctic ApS CEO describes a start-up solution that can turn Kevin’s warning into reality.
“…any service provider with access to user SIM cards can build any type of LBS without even telling the operator about it”
Follow me at https://Twitter.com/Kevin_Jackson

G C Network