NY Tech StartUp Showcase: Lots of Location

So I had the pleasure of going by to check out the NY Tech MeetUp StartUp showcase held yesterday at the Fashion Institute of Technology. The hike down West 27th street was an eye opener... ever wondered where those guys who sell the knock off Lewwy Viton or the Burkin bags in midtown get their goods... well there is a pretty good chance it's from this lovely stretch of Manhattan. And the Fashion Institute of Technology? Well not much fashionable or technical about it as far as I could tell... reminded me more of PS 212... not that there is anything wrong with that.

But the technology on display from this group of start ups was pretty impressive, there were a number of companies focused on video and many tools for helping small publishers & bloggers with their trade. But there were also a surprising number of location oriented companies... some of the highlights:

Centrl - a mobile social networking app, that has one of the most slick user interfaces I've seen and is super simple to use. It seems Centrl is trying to integrate some of the best features from other mobile social networking apps while also making the barrier to entry as low as humanly possible... you don't even need a Centrl account you can just sign in using one of your favorite existing social networks like via Facebook Connect. Centrl includes some nice rich content layers like Yelp and Wikipedia, plugs into twitter, has gameplay elements ala FourSquare, and deal finding features which seems to be where Centrl's revenue may one day come in.

Xtify - Xtify is brought to us by Andrew Weinreich, the same guy that runs Meetmoi (another LBS company in the showcase). Xtify seems to be trying to simplify the process of allowing application developers to easily integrate location into their web products with all the nice bells and whistles and controls already baked in. Location is taken from a mobile device, by whatever means it can, stored by Xtify with things like timestamp/accuracy associated and then later used by an accompanying web applications for delivering location oriented content... that sort of thing. Presumably Andrew went through the painful process of trying to figure out how best to work with location data across myriad devices while building MeetMoi and decided to take his experience and learning and productize it for others in Xtify. It seemed to me to be an awful lot like the Yahoo fireeagle product, although according to their rep they are more 'end-to-end'... maybe something to dig deeper into in a future post.

Plott.me - Plott.me is focusing on creating a platform for the development and distribution of location aware tour guides for the iPhone and web. While the product wasn't available to play with first hand, it struck me as being quite similar to something being done by a U.K. company Node Explorer. The idea is essentially to allow individuals or another company, ideally those already with location oriented content to easily upload and organize video, audio and text that will be triggered when the phone is located in relevant geographic locations. The content and application would then be offered for sale or rental, ideal for tourist destinations, presumably with both the content provider and Plott getting a share of the application revenue.

Padmapper and Streeteasy were two service focused on the real estate market. Both trying to make heavy use of maps and more powerful yet easy to use filtering features to make it easier to connect you to your next apartment or home. I didn't have a chance to chat with the Streeteasy folks, but Padmapper seems to be primarily scraping the Craigslist real estate sections (no APIs) and then using a giant map as the interface... real estate IS all about location afterall. You can then easily filter the listings by all the typical aspects like features and price. On the downside they throw out all the listings that can't be resolved down to a street address... which in NYC at least is probably a lot, so it can't readily serve as a substitute to going directly to Craigslist. But I loved the maps orientation and they added some cool features like "filter by commute time" based on your place of work. Definitely worth playing with if you're in the market for a new pad.

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LBS Conference-palooza

While I only attended the Where2.0 conference virtually this year, vicariously through twitter, etc, it seemed like the event covered a lot of cool stuff… fortunately for both attendees and non attendees a bunch of the presentations are posted on the O’Reilly website. If you’re already thinking ahead to the next LBS conference, it looks like Metaplaces 09 being held in San Jose, Sept 22-23 is shaping up to be a good one, potentially with more media and advertising players and a focus on monetization to it (Placecast 1020 is its Gold Sponsor). They just updated the agenda… definitely worth at look
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3G = GPS, Government and Glitches

Ok so thank goodness I don't read many GAO (Government Accountability Office) reports, so I don't know how they normally read, but after reading a couple of stories about how GPS could start to fail starting next year, I sucked it up and tried to read through the whole government report on the subject to see what was up.

Unlike reading a corporate report, where bad things are often described as 'soft', 'sub optimal' and 'unfavorable', the GAO doesn't mess around with such niceties and refreshingly, yet starkley, tells it more like it is. The title says it all "GPS: Significant Challenges in Sustaining and Upgrading Widely Used Capabilities" and it only gets worse from there... some key thoughts:

- The US Govt recognizes GPS as "a key tool in an expanding array of public service and commercial applications" and "In light of the importance of GPS... GAO was asked to undertake a broad review of GPS." and what was found was well seemingly a mess, and a mess with potentially big consequences...

- The guys put in charge of GPS, the Air Force, are not sure they'll be able to get new satellites up to replace the old ones in time to ensure uninterrupted service. See the chart above showing the probabilities of having the full 24 satellite constellation. Depending on which and how many satellites fail without replacements, this would mean that not only could consumers not know to take a left in 1/4 mile, but also maybe our military's smart bombs could becoming dumb bombs as soon as next year.

- What seems to be the problem with getting the satellites up? Well the Air Force can't seem to stick to a budget and schedule... currently at three years late and at $1.6B...more than twice the original budget of $729 million... citing 'significant technical problems' and the lack of one central point of authority to guide the project... even with the admission that "GPS had already been 'done' before."

- contributing factor #1: too many cooks in the kitchen and different priorities between military folks and commercial oriented folks about requirements of the system

- contributing factor #2: its so hard to find good help these days. From cnet there were problems with mergers related to their GPS vendors"the aerospace and defense bits of Rockwell were acquired by Boeing shortly after it won a GPS contract. A year later, Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas. The work was moved again. Next Boeing acquired Hughes Electronics' space and communications business, which meant another move; all the while shedding "valuable workers and knowledge."

The net net here seems to be that there needs to be a government GPS czar who makes all the decisions and leads the project. Any takers?

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Yahoo WOO… Forward Thinking, Not a Yanw.

I am a regular reader of Silicon Alley Insider (SAI) and usually love their articles… they certainly play looser with the facts at times than say at the New York Times, and would rather be wrong and apologize later then to be boring, which is why I like them so much, because although they’re often not fully on track, at least they take a great college try at getting into details that other journalists don’t even come close to touching and can admit when they screwed it up and get it wrong.

The writers at SAI have been huge fans of Carol Bartz and the things she is doing in her newfound reign as the lead Yahoo, which is why I was surprised to see them take such a negative view on a recent interview given by the head of Yahoo Search Strategy Prabhakar Raghavan. You can see Prabhakar’s comments for yourself in his own words via the allthingsd video above, but after hearing all the journalists and pundits hammer Yahoo over its lack of innovation in search, I found the comments from Prabhakar to be as dead on accurate as anything I’ve heard in a long time in that industry, and was surprised to see it dismissed by SAI as essentially over-thinking something that is “stupid simple”.

What’s all the fuss about? Well essentially WOO stands for “web of objects”… and quickly and painlessly connecting Yahoo users with the “object” they’re searching for is the focus of much of Yahoo search development efforts according to Mr. Raghavan. The question then becomes what the heck kinda “object” are we talking about here, which is where the whole thing turns a little obtuse.

Well, no worries… the good news is that what IT IS isn’t as important as what IT ISN’T… which is yet another webpage (which in the spirit of Yahoo, we’ll abbreviate as Yanw).

The point being made here is that webpages are very often merely a proxy/replacement for something else, the real thing of interest, and in many instances what someone really wants is something more than yet another webpage. This “more than yet another webpage” is the “object” in question here and could be damn well near anything including digital things like movies or MP3s, or real world things like people, or items like bikes, computers and movie tickets, etc.

Yahoo is simply recognizing that a webpage is often a means to an end and not the end in itself, and is evangelizing its desire to take out the middleman and directly connect their users not with yet another webpage but instead directly with the item their users are really in search of.

When what is being searched for transcends out of the virtual world to the physical one, obviously location awareness of both the searcher and the “object” becomes a huge piece of the equation… and a key component of the future Yahoo search strategy.

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Glympse @ Where2.0 2009

So as Where2.0 gets up and rolling there are sure to be a number of new and interesting location aware applications getting their share of the spotlight this week. The first that I noticed was a company called Glympse, created by a bunch of ex Microsoft folks.

The idea of broadcasting out ones location is certainly nothing new and a number of folks have had offerings in this area for a while. For example you can let your social network know where you are on a variety of services like Loopt, Loki, Limbo or Google's Latitude... evidently if you start such a service, it's required that you give it a name beginning with the letter 'L'.

If you're a corporate type, you can make your employees use a mobile resource management system like Air-Trak to track via a phone or GPS Buddy to track via a personal navigation device. Meanwhile, Sprint has had its Friends and Family Locator and Verizon its Chaperone product for a number of years now.

But, the latest push seems to be more free, downloadable, off-deck services targeted to the mass market via Android and iPhone. With Android currently having the clear advantage for "tracking" applications by allowing applications to run in the background, spitting out GPS fixes without the phone user having to actively do anything for each location fix.

At first glance it seems that Glympse has done a good job of trying to understand how the general public will want to share location with others. with the core components being that people will want an easy improptu way to share their location... with as few steps as possible and without the recipient needing anything more than the ability to receive an email or text. It also seems to expect that people will generally want to share their location for a specific purpose or event, so tracking sessions are able to be turned on for only limited periods of time for up to four hours, so maybe you can help coordinate meeting up with a friend, or allow friends and family to monitor your progress on a trip to see if it looks like you'll be in home in time for dinner. If you're indoors and out of GPS coverage, no worries Glympse uses cell ID and wi-fi positioning systems as back up when GPS is not available.

I am sure 4 hours of continual tracking could become an issue for battery life which probably has everything to do with Glympse putting a four hour limit on the length of time the service will transmit location per session.

The service is currently only available on Android on T Mobile for the G1 so I haven't had a chance to play with it first hand, but its free and seems to make a lot more sense than some of the other attempts at similar services like PocketFinder which is trying to charge big money for a similar application on iPhone which can't transmit location in the background while the phone is used for other things.

If you don't have a G1 you can at least check out the video below!





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Navteq.com: Consumer Map Portal or Showcase Site?

I saw the screaming headline from TechRadar this week that Navteq had launched a beta site at navteq.com 'as a clear rival to Google Maps' and the All Points Blog folks going along with the corporate line that it seems to be more of a showcase site. Since Navteq had acquired Mapsolute/Map24 over a year and a half ago, this development wasn't totally out of left field, but it's interesting to think about what is potentially going on here.

Navteq positions the new service simply as a "showcase" for their products and services, which makes a lot of sense, specifically highlighting that it will contain the most fresh data available. As they layer on new and interesting data and capabilities into the database, a directly accessable web front end seems like a great sales tool to be able to actually demonstrate some of these things in action immediately.

For example... lets say Navteq Direct Access just sold in McDonalds and corporate bigwigs want to be able to SEE the result of the deal now? Great have em go on over to navteq.com and search for "McDonalds" to see what they got. The inability to 'look' at a database as well as the lagtime in how long it takes some of their clients to pick up and distribute the new data must have been a challenge.

But on the flip side, this tool appears to now have pretty much taken over as the purpose of the main navteq.com website, with the previous content shuffled off to corporate.navteq.com. That and the fact that they did of course buy into a consumer map portal with Map24 has to make you wonder.

I also found it interesting that they seem quite interested in asking for feedback on and presumably improving the features and capabilities of the online map application. And much of the veribiage like "Let Navteq find it for you." could be perceived as consumer oriented.

My guess is that they're trying to delicately put their big toe in the water... or maybe their whole foot at this point, since Map24 could have been considered the big toe... to start to play in the consumer map portal market. But today in the here and now there is more money to be made from selling data to other map portals versus running your own as the uber map portal.
But potentially Navteq sees the day when this will no longer be the case and is preparing for that day?

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A Second Look at NearbyNow

I am not normally much of a shopper... at all... in fact besides food and Christmas time, I probably purchase some thing from a retail store once a month at most. But for some reason I have a whopping three things I need to buy right now, a bike helmet for my five year old son who is way overdue to replace his baby froggie helmet that has lost its outer shell and now is missing its strap clasp; a new battery for my laptop which lasts a whopping 14 minutes on its existing battery when removed from the wall socket; and a protective case for my iPhone which gets dropped constantly thanks to 3 and 5 year old kids trying to fine tune their on iBowl-ing skills when I arrive home each night.

After hearing the wonders of NearbyNow on last weeks Placecast Location Based Advertsing Teleconference, I figured I'd give it another spin. For those not familiar with NearbyNow they promise the ability to find the products you're looking for in a retail store near you, from their website:

NearbyNow was founded to simplify shopping for today’s consumers who browse online but buy in stores. By allowing shoppers to find products, brands, or sales locally, and to scan the inventory at any given shopping center, we provide a convenient shopping experience for the consumer and an effective marketing tool for merchants looking to motivate local customers.

The last time I used NearbyNow was a year ago, when I found myself time afer time back at an e-commerce web site rather than a real nearby store for the items I was looking for, so I wasn't overly optimistic that things had improved but I gave it a try anyway...

I started with the bike helmet for my son... on Friday he took a nasty spill on his scooter on the way home from a special dad's trip to ickdonalds and he got a bad scrape on his face... luckily he was wearing his beat-up old frog helmet which generally did its job. However, I got nasty looks from the moms in the park all weekend, so I've decided that he simply can't have a big ol' scrape on his face AND a helmet with the outer plastic shell missing and the strap jury rigged together, or I may just have one of the moms call CPS on me.

So I went into NearbyNow in search of a cool kid bike/scooter helmet. I did find a virtual picture and price on a helmet that fit the bill, but when I went to check on its availability at first I was told that the store wasn't open right now and that the store would open at 9a... the problem is that it was already 11:25a local NYC time... so it seems that NearbyNow isn't adjusting store hours for the location of the user relative to the store, only relative to California... wait I thought NYC was the center of the universe, evidently in tech land the Bay Area would be the center.

The second problem is that the store in question has been closed for probably close to a year now, maybe two... but thankfully I received an email from NearbyNow apologizing for not being able to validate the items availability because the store is "extremely busy" (busy being closed for a year that is)! So just for fun, I decided to call the closed store with the number that NearbyNow had provide and got what I believed to be a pre recorded message in Spanish, without anything that I could tell having to do with sporting goods.

Next stop Amazon, I picked up a cool Ben 10 helmet that will be here on Thursday, I think I can convince him to stay off the scooter until then.

Next I tried NearbyNow for a laptop battery... with equally dissapointing results. Evidently there is nowhere in Manhattan to walk into a store and buy at laptop battery over the counter, instead I was diverted to a variety on online e-tailers. It is possible I suppose that this is entirely accurate... I've seen a lot of odd specialty stores these days including a napping store (MetroNaps), peanut butter and jelly shop and shave shop, but have never seen a laptop battery store, so maybe that one was legit.

Finally I seemed to have a little more luck getting a case for my iphone. There was a thin looking one from Case Mate called Barely There and two Radio Shacks a couple of blocks away allegedly carried it. After receiving another 'sorry they're not open yet' and the "sorry we can't check availability because the store is very busy" notice from NearbyNow I was beginning to wonder if the guy from NearbyNow whos jobs is to call the store on your behalf had found a MetroNaps store he liked and decided not to check out.

Rather that waiting for him to wake up from his nap and let me know if the item was in stock I ventured out to Radio Shack #1 to see what they had. En route I passed a number of other stores including a Staples and two or three mom and pop phone stores that likely had cases, but was determined to make it to Radio Shack. Well it turns out that Radio Shack #1 didn't exist, in its place was a GameStop. But fortunately the second Radio Shack was a mere two blocks away buried in the second floor of a mall... and voila as advertised they had both the blue and orange Case Mate Barely There cases for sale at the price I had seen on NearbyNow. In fact it was helpful that I knew what I was looking for because for some reason the store had the Case Mate products on the other side of the store at boot level, not displayed with the other two dozen or so phone accessory items and I had to ask the sales clerk if they had any other cases before being directed to what I was looking for. In case you were wondering the store was completely empty, except for the two store clerks staring into the mall out of boredome, so that "store is very busy" message from NearbyNow is still a mystery.

Overall NearbyNow wasn't a great experience, but it did come in handy and after some work I did find what I was looking for with one of my three items. I played around with a few other searches, for example for 'paper' within office products catgeory and was directed to Toys R Us and Sears 2-3 miles away, when there is a Staples directly across the street. So it seems that they have a limited number of retailers participating which makes it pretty hit and miss.

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