by Anne Galloway

We often think of mobile technologies simply in terms of their communication capabilities, but their increasing ability to trace our movements and collect information about the spaces through which we pass, can also make it easier for people to keep track of the places and things that matter most to them. From geo-visualisations and mapping mash-ups, to the mobile geospatial web and location-based services, people’s relationships to places (and each other) are changing. 

Community mapping and sensing projects that use commonly available consumer electronics as environmental measurement devices, enable people to collect and view a wide array of location-based data. As a form of public science, such projects stand to reinvigorate environmentally focused civic engagement. However, given public concerns around environmental risks and their connections to technological progress, I believe that this kind of active citizenship should promote more critical reflection on the values and goals of the very projects that expect to create such profound changes in these domains, and carefully consider the limits of its own power.  

From Vodafone Receiver Magazine 

Posted in Location-based |

Blast Theory are presenting Can You See Me Now? as part of the Arte.Mov festival in Belo Horizonte along with TRUCOLD & Other Works in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Can You See Me Now? is a chase game played online and on the streets. Players are dropped at random locations into a virtual map of Belo Horizonte. Tracked by satellites, Blast Theory's runners appear online next to your player. The runners use handheld computers showing the positions of online players to guide them in the chase. Can You See Me Now? won the Golden Nica for Interactive Art at Prix Ars Electronica and was nominated for a BAFTA Award.

Belo Horizonte Performance Dates: November 20th and 21st 4pm - 7pm (BRST) and 22nd 11am - 2pm (BRST)
Artist Talk: Blast Theory artist Ju Row Farr will give an artist talk on November 23rd, 4pm at Palácio das Artes.
Arte.Mov then moves on to Sao Paulo where Blast Theory will be presenting TRUCOLD & Other Works. Blast Theory artist Nick Tandavanitj will also be presenting a discussion on Blast Theory's work on November 27th from 7pm - 10 pm (BRST).
Location: LAB-MIS, AV, Europa, 158, Jardim Europa, Sao Paulo.

For more details:
www.artemov.net
www.canyouseemenow.co.uk
www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_trucold.html

Posted in Location-based |

by Jonathan Follett

There is a world of information that we can't immediately see in the streets we walk and drive in, and in the buildings in which we work, play and live. The great potential of the mobile web – whether it is delivered by smart phone, automobile navigation system, or other device – is to reveal this hidden world to us, by adding geospatial and timing data to the user experience. In this way, the mobile web is poised to become the delivery mechanism for a new generation of location-aware applications.

Geo-specific information will enable real connections between the digital world and the physical one, so that people can freely interact with virtual data in real spaces. An old friend from out of town is at the restaurant down the block right now; your dry cleaner is closing early due to the holiday, but he has your suit ready; and an apartment in the building you're passing by just went on the market. As location-based mobile products and services increase in popularity, all these pieces of data become immediately knowable and useable in real time.

Location-based data has the ability to not only enhance the communication, productivity, and entertainment applications for which we regularly use mobile devices, but also to create a new hybrid experience at the intersection of real and virtual worlds. This mobile geospatial web will allow the information and imagination that runs freely in cyberspace, to become increasingly available and integrated in our physical space – and with that comes both possibilities and problems.

Read more at the Vodafone Receiver Magazine.

Posted in Location-based |

Mobile games - they're an ongoing problem. I've been writing about them for ten years; longer, perhaps, than any other UK technology journalist. There have been some wonderful examples, up there with the better DS titles. But there has also been a lot of unforgivable s**t, contributing to a customer churn rate that would have a console games publishers in floods of uncontrollable tears. According to Nokia, 78% more phone users are downloading games than they were three years ago. But we're still looking at a tiny fraction of the Java phone userbase.

So anyway, I was at the Nokia Games Summit in Rome last week, and here's some of what I took away about the future of this much-maligned sector. (The joke around the summit was, if videogames are the new Hollywood, mobile games are the new porn industry - the slightly shadier, muckier step-brother to the real glamour player...)

Read more here.

Posted in Location-based |

By Tim Scannell

Just as in real estate, the mobile world is increasingly realizing the value of location, location, location. But while the housing market wrestles with woes stemming from the subprime mortgage implosion, vendors of location-based services (LBS) for messaging, marketing and advertising are struggling to overcome their own obstacles.

Chief among these is consumer privacy in a highly connected and always-available mobile environment. Wireless carriers already know, more or less, where their subscribers are. Now advertisers are getting the tools to easily piece together a profile based on mobile Web surfing and online activities from increasingly powerful Web-based phones. Not surprisingly, many consumers aren't thrilled at the prospect.

Read more here.

Posted in Location-based |

by Andrew Gil

Location in a mobile context is the Holy Grail for many people. The one item we carry with us almost all the time is uniquely positioned (pun intended) to be able to add location information to everything we do whilst mobile.

In theory, getting the current location of a mobile phone and working out an approximate location should not be that difficult. TV shows such as CSI and movies like Minority Report reflect an always-on society where information on a person’s whereabouts is instantly available. In practice however, location is quite difficult and expensive to deliver to a mass market audience.

From Vodafone Receiver Magazine.

Posted in Location-based |

Wednesday marks the release of the HTC Dream T-Mobile G1 featuring Google Android. If you're planning to pick one up, you're probably going to want to do something other than make calls and send texts. I mean it is a phone, for crying out loud.

On the same day, Zelfi will release a new software development and gaming platform for Google Android, called Joyity.

Once you have it installed, you'll be able to play a number of games designed for the platform. Joyity games are unique in that they are physically interactive and some require you to actually walk or run around your city in order to play.

more...

Posted in Location-based |

The spin-off company ?urban team? of the Center for Computing Technologies (TZI) has caused a furor with FastFoot-Challenge in the world of video games. The former computer scientists of the University of Bremen have brought together, what did not belong together before: the combination of sports and video games. In the action game FastFoot-Challenge, up to five players compete against each other with their mobile phones and GPS receivers and transform 2km of city, park, or forest into their playing field.

But GPS games are not only fun for the players, they are exciting for the audience, too. With FastFoot-Challenge LIVE, urban team now offers the players a virtual stadium. On the basis of the satellite maps of Google Earth, viewers from all over the world can follow the games live on the Internet. With the high level of detail of the live broadcast, the audience can excactly see the positions of the players and can get a picture of the players' strategies. Because FastFoot-Challenge is playable in most parts of the world, the viewers will be taken on a journey to a variety of locations. ?We want to establish GPS games and GPS sports as exciting live entertainment and provide the players with a broad audience.?, says Tom Nicolai of urban team.

The website www.fastfoot.mobi is the entry point for the live channel.

See full article

Posted in Location-based |

area/code says it is porting its location-based game Plundr to the Nintendo DS. Let?s hope that this is a sign of things-to-come for the DS here in the US!

(also, in case you haven?t checked out our Permissions page, you should know that several of the pictures on this site are used courtesy of area/code! Thanks area/code!) - Dan Sutko

Posted in Location-based |