Jun 23
What are the best mobiles for LBS? To answer this questions I have taken four phones from different manufactures and compared them. In my opinion following issues are important if you want to use a mobile for LBS applications:
- buid-in GPS
- large screen size and resolution
- fast internet connection
- good usability and operating system which allows to design own applciation easily
- battery life
- prize
Maybe there are some more criteria to rate phones for their LBS suitability.
Phones
|
HTC P3700
|
Nokia N96
|
Iphone 3G
|
SE Xpedia
|
| buid-in GPS |
A-GPS
|
A-GPS
|
A-GPS
|
A-GPS
|
| Screen Size |
2.8″, 640×480
|
2.8″, 240×320
|
3.5″, 480×320
|
3.0″, 800×480
|
| Internet. Conn. |
GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA/HSUDA
|
GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA
|
EDGE/HSDPA
|
GPRS/EDGE/HSDPA/HSUDA
|
| Prize (EUR) |
485
|
TBA |
TBA |
TBA |
| Size |
102×51x11.5
|
103×55x20
|
115×62x12.3
|
110×53x17
|
| Batery (sp/by) |
270min/385h
|
150min/200h
|
300min/300h
|
TBA
|
OS / HCI
|
Windows Mobile 6.1
|
Symbian S60
|
MacOS X
|
Windows Mobile 6.1
|
| Ranking |
2
|
4
|
1
|
2
|
I know this is a very limited evaluation. But for this four phones my winner is the iPhone 3G because of the great suitability and the mobile MacOS X SDK.
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
May 15
A slide deck of the Android Developer Challenge prize recipients is now available. The deck includes descriptions and screenshots of the 46 recipients who consented to sharing their information and is a great way to get a feel for the quality of apps submitted.
The judges, who has selected these applications come from various different companies, which are part of the Open Headset Alliance.
I’ve looked through the slides and it is interesting to see that 27 of 46 applications (~59%) have something to do with location or embed Google Maps. That’s amazing in my opinion.
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
Apr 27
Two students from Germany have worked on a project called Enkin. The have written this locational service on Google Andriod. Enkin allows to navigate in three differend modes:
- Classic Map
- 3D View
- Reality
Until now the hardware is a little bit cumbersomely but I hope this will change after the first real Android mobiles are on the market.
“Enkin” introduces a new handheld navigation concept. It displays location-based content in a unique way that bridges the gap between reality and classic map-like representations. It combines GPS, orientation sensors, 3D graphics, live video, several web services and a novel user interface into an intuitive and light navigation system for mobile devices. This project is a submission for the first round of the Google Android Developer Challenge and should not be considered a final product. If you want to learn about it in depth, please read our detailed documentation.
Link: http://www.enkin.net/
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
Apr 03
But the question which is mor interesting is: Will there ever be a mass market for LBS?
I agree on the author of
no.5 blog, with this realistic view (among other positive facts, listed in his post):
“Will location based services take off by the end of the year? I doubt it. Yes, I agree that GPS will be the “new camera” (and Nokia’s commitment to put GPS in every N-Series model is a definite indication that we’re going that way). But I’m afraid we can also interpret this as “everybody’s going to have one, but few people will actually use it on a regular basis”. To be honest, I believe that the average LBS will never be able to reach a mass audience. (Did I just say that out loud?) Yes, there’s going to be a handful of exceptions in the navigation and local search arena. But those are already positioned clearly and visibly on the market today. Apart from that? I don’t think there’s going to be any “big” mass market LBS in practice.”
I’m asking myself is this so bad? Is it not enough that LBS answer specific questions for a limited number of users? I think that’s good enough and therefore I’m interested in location based decision support (LBDS).
[via no.5 blog]
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
Mar 22
The portal swisstrains.ch is trying to provide real time train poistions on the internet. It is planned to record the locations of the trains via GPS and visualize the location on Google Maps.
Currently the site is in ALPHA-phase, we keep on developing. The current view is based on the Swiss traintimetable, and does not yet show the actual GPS-positions of the trains. But, as Swiss trains are almost always on time, most of the time the position is accurate.
In near Future this is a good tool especially if these can be visualized on your mobile phone. I think this is very usefull for Location Based Services (LBS) and Location Based Decision Support (LBDS).
[via www.swisstrains.ch]
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
