But the main reason for this blog post is that I want to share another interesting article I came across.
Kevin Dennehy of GPS World interviewed Mike Dobson who hit some very interesting things that help get a better understanding of the powers at play.

For those of you who don’t have the time to read the full article, here are what I think are the three most interesting sections:

[...] the week following the announcement, there were more than 1 million downloads of the app and data. [...]
[...] the top five countries downloading the new, free version of OVI maps were China, Italy (with the highest number of smart phone users in Europe), UK, Germany and Spain. The number of users of Google’s navigation applications in these same five countries is zero, [...].

Gartner’s recent analysis of the phone market says that Nokia leads the pack with 36.4 percent of the [global phone] market, based on selling nearly 441 million phones in 2009. This is followed by Samsung, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson (whose percentage was 4.5). Google’s Android, Apple, and Rim were included in the “others” category, whose members must have had percentages lower than Sony Ericsson, [...].
170 million smart phones were sold in 2009. Categorized by operating system, [Nokia's] Symbian was the leader (46.9 percent market share [81 million units]) followed by Research in Motion [34 million units], iPhone OS (14.4 percent [25 million units]) and Windows Mobile [15 million units] (which led Android Phone sales by almost 9 million units).

Google’s primary interest is not in selling Smartphones, or [...] Android [...]. Google has developed both initiatives as methods of forward integrating into a “distribution channel” that will help them sell geospatially-targeted advertising[...].

I hope you find the article and above quotes as interesting as I did.

In case you wonder what Nokia and NAVTEQ have to offer in terms of geospatially-targeted advertising, please visit NAVTEQ Media Solutions to find out more.

Since mobile phones found their way into the pockets and hand bags of everyday people the often heard questions when taking a call is: “Where are you?” followed by “What do you do?”. These are the things that most social network services revolve around. Up to the minute status messages have created a new neural network among friends, business partners and otherwise connected crowds. Mark Zuckerberg talks about “creating efficiency within society” and I agree.
And while it is good to see that “Melina has chocolate for breakfast”, “Martin is freezing in Chicago”, or “Jeff is returning from a conference in Berlin”, theses posts are of limited relevance when either enough time has passed between when they are posted and when they are read or simply thousands of miles are between poster and reader. Add in proximity filtering and alerting options and posting like the ones above can become a whole lot more relevant and actionable.

So let’s step back for a moment and have a look at the different usage scenarios of social location features today. There are a few basic differentiation possibilities:

1. Static location information
That’s an easy one. Post your home or business address and see a map of where other users are at home or doing business.

XING – a Germany based business network – allows you to see your contacts on a map. This is helpful when you have no idea where a contact’s home town or office location is, but it only puts a static location on a map. It’s not sharing a current location of a contact and hence doesn’t cater for ad-hoc meetings or location based information exchange. Please note that XING color-codes locations it can not geo-code exactly; so the point on the map and actual position of a contact’s business address to not match. That is because either the user has not entered his full address or doesn’t want to share the exact location with every other user – a good to see application of privacy rules.

XING Contacts Map

2. User posted activity and location information
This takes things a step further. These are often referred to as “Status Messages”. Users who post their current activity in combination with location information expose themselves voluntarily. They open an opportunity to connect with them based on their activity and location.

But that information is only of value as long as activity and location last. As soon as the window of opportunity closes without the user actively updating she is moving on, you may arriving at the bar where your friend is enjoying a drink only to find out she is not there anymore.
Some services give their users the option to enter future activities and locations and to time when the information is released. Plazes allows this and another good example is Dopplr,  a service for frequent travelers which lets their users share their trips and travel tips.

Plazes - Share Location and Activity

The advantage of this non-automated sharing is user have full control over what and when to share what they do and where they are with the outside world. They can do both, an activity update with location, e.g. “Jay is at Mobile World Barcelona, booth 1G45(1-0) with his jaw to the floor.” They can share only limited location information, e.g. “Jay is in Barcelona” (or pretend, because Jay is actually at home in Mesa, Arizona and watching TV). And of course there is no need to include location information at all, e.g. “Jay is at a congress seeing amazing things”.

As Status Messages are the most basic – and easiest to implement – form of sharing location you will see theses in nearly all social networking services.

Facebook News Feed

3. User posted events, enriched with automated location information
This is very similar to the status messages from above. But while users actively and manually use these services to post their current activities they don’t have to include the location into their status update manually; it’ll be added automatically based on their actual location.

There are various ways to do this: geo-IP, Geode, WiFi geo-location or GPS to just name a few. Depending on the device, technology used and the current location of the user this is more or less accurate.
The two essential privacy options needed when implementing this are; first, an option for users to decide whether they actually want their current location to be appended when posting an activity and second, a selection possibility for how accurately to share the location, e.g. city level or exact location.

There are various services out there like Brightkite or Yahoo! Fire Eagle and interestingly they are really strongly focusing on automating location with the possibility to optionally add on activity information rather than the other way around. I personally find this a bit odd because what is the point of sharing where you are without any context?

Brightkite User Update

But there is also challenge for these kind of services. They are only of value when they are able to create a network effect. It’s pretty pointless posting activity and location when no one listens or takes action upon the information.
Some social networks are open enough to let users tie in location and activities information into their status messaging. Facebook who is aiming to become a social aggregator is particularly good at this. Check out their Facebook Connect API.

Brightkite Update on Facebook

But location information can also be appended to other online activities. Google Mail has just added a new feature which allows users to automatically add their current location as part of an e-mail signature.

4. Real-time, automated location information
The location of vehicles, valuables, convicts or personalities have all been tracked for a long time already. So this is not really brand spanking new.
New is the ability for a broader audience to broadcast themselves and follow others without the need for very special equipment. A new window of possibilities has opened with the growing adoption of super-smart phones equipped with enough processing power and space to run location-aware application at all times in the background. Now users can feed and receive a constant stream of location information to social networks without lifting a finger.

With the right level of privacy controls in place this is probably the most comfortable and interesting option of the four discussed in this post. Throw in proximity based alerting options as a feedback channel to enable location based instant meetings and socializing. These proximity alerting options may not only be person based, they could also be place based.
So let’s say a user traveled to a meeting which got canceled. She now has three hours to kill before the next flight home. Setting her device into explore mode, she can follow the trails and tips of previous visitors or locals and go see places or meet industry peers in the area. And in case the user is more interested in finding a place with free WiFi and decent cup of coffee; there may be an offer just around the corner. In fact my colleagues at NAVTEQ Media Solutions have built a location based advertising network for advertisers to send message to selected customers based on their location and time of day through either their mobile device or in-vehicle navigation unit. Needless to say this is also based on real-time, automated location information and works both one-way and with a two-way connection that is standard on phones and soon on many navigation devices.

NAVTEQ Location Based Advertising Network

But let’s come back to social location and the super-smart phones and look at some figures and trends to see where this may take us.
Currently only about 5% of the 3.2 billion mobile phones in use worldwide are super smart phones, according to T-Mobile’s Hamid Akhavan. But there are two factors indicating a tremendous growth in the coming months and years. The growth of data traffic is surging worldwide – Western Europe is showing growth of 400% annually.
In many regions of the world people simply don’t own PCs or let alone have easy access to high speed internet to explore social location at home. But they do have a phone – and often having a fancy phone is both, a social status booster, and a piece of freedom and independence. And here is a story Mark Zuckerberg told in Davos: “People in the Middle East walk 2 miles to a cyber café to check out Facebook and then use the app on their phone.”
25 million users of the Facebook Mobile app proof that mobile is becoming an increasingly important factor for the success of social networks. (Note: comScore attested Facebook 200 mio. unique visitors for Nov. 2008 )

Several real-time location broadcasting services for mobile phones already exist and have been reviewed in depth.
So I would like to take a closer look at one new entrant: Google Latitude
Google Latitude can be used on compatible phones and on computers. It allows its user to constantly broadcast their location to their contacts. This of course only works well from phones – the desktop version has other advantages we will look at later. So the mobile application is what users should get.
But don’t expect a stand-alone application. Google has done a very, very clever thing here: they integrated Latitude into Google Maps Mobile. So not only new users download both functionalities at once, existing Google Maps Mobile users who update to version 3 can instantly tap into Latitude. And if you have an account with Google already, there is no need to sign up for a separate Latitude account. Google has enabled single sign-on – like with every other Google service out there – and hence removed another barrier of conversion.

Location detection in Google Maps Mobile and Latitude work either based on GSM localization or GPS. A flat rate data plan is recommended as Latitude will constantly stream a user’s location information, even in the background while others tasks are performed on the phone. Interestingly when shutting down the Google Maps on my Nokia it asks me whether I want to continue to share my location with Latitude.

If a user doesn’t have an existing Google account or wants to set up something with a separate user id, it’s easily done from the phone. An e-mail address and password is all that is needed. Once signed-in users can add or change their status message, profile picture, phone number and privacy settings. You can see the different universal setting in the screen shot below.

Google Latitude Privacy Settings

But it gets even better. Let’s say a user has set Latitude to automatically detect, update and share her location. Now she can also set the level of location accuracy and sharing individually per contact:
- Share best available location
- Share only city level location
- Hide location from this friend

Actually, when connecting with a new friend Latitude will ask users to select one of the three choices. This can be edited any time later. So a user can decide to share her best available location when she is comfortable doing so but can also switch ad hoc to not share or share the city level only anytime. This comes in handy when a user wants to escape the watching eyes of the boss, the spouse, the mother or whomever else the user accepted sharing her location with but now needs to give that a break.

Adding new contacts to Latitude is limited to entering a friend’s e-mail address manually or selecting from existing Google Mail contacts (if the user has an active Google Mail account). So there is no user directory or any possibility to see or connect to other, yet unknown users. As of now, there are also no tie-in possibilities into social networks.

As said Google Latitude for phones comes in combination with Google Maps Mobile. Once signed up and friends added, simply fire up Google Maps on the phone, select Latitude from the options to see your own and friends’ positions on the map or as a list.

Google Latitude Friends List

Because Latitude is part of Google Maps there are some clever integration options like getting directions to a friend or search something nearby a friend’s location. When the friend has added his mobile number, calling or sending a text is possible directly from Latitude as well. However, there is no direct friend messaging embedded within Latitude.

Another good addition is the possibility to use Latitude within iGoogle on a computer. You get the same options and friend viewing possibilities. Of course signing up and adding friends is much easier on the bigger screen. And because Latitude is run from Google’s servers every addition or change users make on their computer is instantly reflected on the phone as well.

Using the desktop version I was actually wondering whether Latitude might be a good entry level alternative for vehicle tracking for small businesses. Let’s say a cab, bike messenger or delivery company equips each of their pedal pushers with a proper phone and signs them up for Google Latitude. The dispatcher would then have a pretty good idea of where they are and possibly what their status is. This will lack many of the features of a professional industry solutions but maybe a good low cost entry for some.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article and as always I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Please get in touch!

Finally I would like to recommend reading WIRED Magazine’s “I Am Here: One Man’s Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle“, TechCrunch’s “The State of Location-Based Social Networking On The iPhone” and take a look at the comprehensive list of social location service by Claudio Schapsis.

The list of 10 is fairly US/Western world centric so I would not be surprised to learn more about applications that support some fairly exotic use cases. If you have interesting examples from the Middle East, Africa or Asia, please post them to the comments!

So let’s start with my personal expectations first. The ad promised to “localize your friends via mobile phone and find out where they hang out – easily and free”. So that sounded interesting.

After registering on a rather dry looking site and confirming by SMS I want to be located with NowHere, I was keen to find out how I can find or add friends. But the only option given to me was a search form. No way to access friends I’m already connected with on other social communities or even run a match with my address book. I also didn’t find out how to use the service on my mobile. Wasn’t the promise of the ad to localize friends via mobile phone? Or did they mean the localization happens utilizing my friends’ mobile phone, not necessarily me being able to localize them using my phone?? Oh well.

So I’m left with locating myself in front of my laptop. And while I do this the pin marker often appears miles from my actual location. So in terms of proximity the location is more on a city level than on a street level. Maybe NowHere should take a peak at how the guys at Google display the “My Location” pin on Goggle Maps Mobile and nicely manage the user expectation of how exact the location is.

And then, what do you do with a city level location? Is this suitable for a service targeted at a young, urban user base – who want to find out where their friends hang out? Or should NowHere think about targeting business users – who are more interested to find out who of their peers are in town today. (If the latter is the case, then move advertising from Facebook to LinkedIn or Xing!)

My view is that NowHere seems to got the technology side to work, but needs a better way of making this an actual marketable product. One first step might be to try and tightly integrate into existing social networks, so NowHere users are not required to built up yet another friends list.

With Nokia Sport Tracker you can keep track of training activities like running, cycling, skiing, and driving (of course!). First you need to register with the Nokia Sport Tracker site, set up your profile and download the Sports Tracker application for your phone. Sport Tracker basically works with all Nokia phones running the S60 software. See a full list of supported Nokia phones here. Then of course you need a GPS enabled phone. Either one that comes with GPS as a standard (e.g. the N95, N82, 6110 Navigator), or one you can pair with an external GPS receiver, like the nifty Nokia LD-4W.

Here is the route of my first go at using Sports Tracker. I did a quick drive around the area of my office. All you have to do is start the Sport Tracker application. Then select “new workout” from the menu und press “start”. Now the clock starts ticking and the tracking begins. It took a while for the N95 I used to pick up the GPS signal, but then everything was cool. The application started to record time, speed, elevation, and the route I was driving.

After I did my lap I simply pressed “stop” and then uploaded my workout to the portal straight from the phone.

Now back to the Sports Tracker web site where I can see the route I was driving and a nice graph of the speed and time it took me to get around my lap. I can’t wait to take this to a proper track next spring.

While I think this is a great demonstration of how to extend the physical Nokia phone products to the web, I wonder how many athletes will make use of Sports Tracker in the long run, literally.

So what I did was bookmarking or “map-marking” a couple of places on an online map.

View Larger Map

I annotated those map marks and so whenever I needed to orientate myself I could quickly open the mapping site on the web and have a look without typing in and looking up the same place (hotel, office) every time again.
I also updated the comments of my map-marks as I will probably visit Chicago again and want to remember where I went and how the experience was. Plus I can now share my personal map with colleagues or friends going to Chicago.

The only two things I was missing were these:

I’d love to have my personal map and map-marks on my mobile for on the go orientation. This could have been even an offline version, as all I want to do is quickly have a look at what I had set up already online. Of course I wouldn’t mind using the map online on my phone (i.e. over a data connection). But I somehow struggled to use my phone to go online and so and offline version would be a safe bet for such a service.

The other thing I’d love was to have an offline version on my laptop. My hotel had a steep rate for Internet access and although my company would probably pay for it, I was just to greedy to use it. So when returning back to the hotel after work I’d love to be able to check my map again and see where exactly to go for food and drinks I had researched before the trip.

One can argue that all hotels have some sort of free tourist guide and a map available at the concierge. However, those recommendations are often quite mainstream or biased by being paid for to be on that map.
Call me a punk or a chicken, but in today’s digital age I just don’t want to scribble around on a paper map and carry it around in my back pocket. Not to talk about unfolding it and letting everyone know that I’m a tourist.

I’d like to know if you have any experiences, tips and thoughts about what I just described. Are there better tools out there to set up and share map-marks?

It’s an easy Firefox add-on install and once the Minimap Sidebar is open, simply highlight an address you found on a website and drag and drop the address from the website into the Minimap Sidebar’s drop box. And voilà, the location is displayed on a Google Map.

It doesn’t stop there though. Addresses are listed in the box for later use. These can then be used for driving directions by selecting them from a drop down. You can also set a home address and start routing to and from there. The choice is yours whether you prefer Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps or Microsoft’s Live Local.
And last but not least you can also share the location by getting its coordinates, a link to the map page, e-mail the link or even get an embed code for your own site – and all that straight from a right-click context menu.
KML and GeoRSS are also supported and of course you can also manually type in an address. Once an address is located you can browse places with Tagzania, Platial, or Loc.alize.us flickr photos.

The Minimap Sidebar is developed by Tony Farndon. Go visit his site at http://firefox.spatialviews.com/ where you’ll find the download link as well.

Highlight address details on page and drag to drop zone in lower left corner.

The map view is updated with the address. Start routing or exploring.

Sprint, a US based mobile carrier has recently launched a location based product finder. The service is provided by Slifter, whose promise it is to find any product you are looking for at a local store near you.
Slifter can actually be used with any phone that has a web browser. Simply type in the product you’re looking for and the zip code of the area you want to search the product in and you get back a list of search results.
I was wondering who actually knows an area’s zip code away from home and so did Sprint. The trick with Sprint is that selected handsets are “GPS-enabled”, so you don’t have to type in a zip code. However I’m not sure what GPS-enabled means for Sprint as they had phones listed I wasn’t even aware of having a GPS chip, e.g. the LG 550, the RAZR V3m, or the Samsung M610. I had a look at the manufacturer websites and I couldn’t see a GPS chip on any of those phones’ specifications listings. (If I’m wrong, let me know!).

But let’s refocus on the service.
I gave it a shot and searched for a yummy “cheese cake” in the zip code area 10003, which is New York’s East Village where I once lived.
Unfortunately, the result that I got back was for a Jazz CD titled “Cheese Cake” at the online store Buy.com. Well, not really what I was looking for. It seems like local search is not a piece of cake for Slifter as a couple of other searches led to similar awkward results.

Another service I looked at was ShopLocal.
Since the beginning of August they also offer mobile local search in addition to their web search site. The mobile service was developed in partnership with uLocate Communications as a widget on the WHERE platform. The biggest difference here is that you can’t simply open your mobile phone’s browser, visit a mobile web page and do a search. You have to download a widget application first and install it on your phone – at US$ 2.99 a month the widget has a price. Is it worth it? I honestly don’t know because it only works with US carriers. Please let me know if you have experienced ShopLocal on your phone and share your thoughts.
I did a couple of ShopLocal searches using their website and yes, it found Cheese Cake in New York … at Amazon.com. That not really the localized search result I expected.

So I can only agree with Steve Smith, who asked “What The Hell is Mobile Search Anyway?” after a rather sponsored experience on his phone.
To me it seems like Slifter and ShopLocal are more or less an advertising platform and if the local store at the corner hasn’t bought into it, it won’t display in the search results. The expectation of local search though is a different one for consumers. You’d expect an unbiased truly local store search. When doing a local search on the go you don’t want e-commerce links, you want the address of the next nearby store that carries what you are looking for. Am I wrong?

BMW is meeting that expectation by offering Google Local Search on their onboard navigation systems in Germany.
Simply enter what you are looking for and Google delivers relevant search results right around your car’s current position. If you read about what Google is up to by paying freelancers to go from store to store and catalogue local business free for the stores’ owners then you might not be too surprised that they are clearly on the right track.
I think this is a nice step to make BMW Connected Drive the leader of the automotive pack. They have already introduced a “Send-to-Car” feature in early March. Look up a destination in Google Maps and send it to your BMW’s cellular-based Drive Assist navigation system.
Now let’s look at how Guinness is bridging the distribution channel divide in Tokyo.
Consumers thirsty for a pint of the Irish draught can easily locate a proper pub nearby using the mobile local search called Guinness Navi. They simply snap a picture of a Guinness QR code to pull open the Guinness Navi mobile search page. Of course the Guinness Navi URL can be entered manually too, but QR codes are so popular in Japan that this significantly lowers the barrier of usage vs. manually typing in a URL.

Once the Guinness Navi search page is accessed the consumers location is send to the service which then displays a map with the closest pubs serving Guinness. The consumer’s location is determined by using any of the localizing technologies available in Japan; antenna triangulation/cell ID, GPS, Wifi, and of course also manual address input.
You can see the desktop version of the map on the Guinness website.

Guinness Navi was developed by Naviblog a Tokyo-based mobile marketing firm and as no downloads, installs or updates are needed for using the service it’s really nice and slick.
Kampai!

Now why do I think this can be alternative to GPS? Because I’m a dreamer!
So here is what I was thinking:
With NFC you can transfer location coordinates from a transponder to a phone. As it works without the need for satellite reception it is perfect for urban street canyons or indoor use like subways, shopping malls, or conference centers. Yes, because of the short range there is a downside which is the need for tagging street corners or building corridors with transponders. And yes, NFC is still in its infancy. So let’s look at a field test I was able to sneak myself in – and my experiences so far.

Let me set the stage first.
My local public transportation services company is already offering a mobile phone ticketing solution – sans the need for NFC. Passengers can download an application to their mobile phones and use this to purchase paperless pay-per-ride tickets to use trains and buses. This works on almost every phone with Internet access.

Here is what you do to buy a ticket:
If you have bookmarked the application on your phone, it shouldn’t take more than 2 clicks to start it up. Another 2 clicks and you can type in the stop where you want to begin your journey. Then enter the stop’s name, which is not too trivial given many names are not included in the standard T9 dictionary. And then it’s only another six clicks before you can actually purchase the ticket.

Long story short: Not user friendly at all.
The hassle of digging for loose change is replaced by the hassle of too many clicks on your phone.

Enter NFC.
NFC is indented for mobile micro payments, e-tickets, access control and the like. No wonder a public transportation company is looking into testing it to make mobile ticketing easier. And it really does. Keep on reading to see how.

So about two weeks ago I received a Nokia 6131 NFC, provided to me at no charge by the public transportation company. As this is a field test and I’m a volunteer I can even keep the phone. (Thank you RMV!) After unpacking the phone I downloaded the software and installed it – and that was it. I was all set.

Well, not really all set, because all my contacts where still missing on the phone and I couldn’t get it synced with my Vaio at work nor with my MacBook at home. A little bit of tinkering finally resolved the issue (thank you Thierry) and I could easily transfer my address book from my Mac to the phone. Oh, I’d also like to thank Nokia for not even replying to my cry for help via their support center.
I’m sharing this hassle because you have to put yourself in the consumers’ shoes when rolling out a new technology that requires the replacement of a personal device such as a mobile phone.

But let’s look at how NFC has changed the ticket purchasing process.
When I approach a station, I simply flip open the phone and briefly hold it to a transponder tag attached to the ticket machine or stop sign post. The phone reads the embedded information of the tag which are the stop’s name, a unique ID, and the WAP address of the station’s schedule. This triggers the ticketing application on the phone to pop open, with the name of the stop already selected. Now it’s only one more click to choose a ticket type, confirm the purchase and you’re done.
One word: Easy!

What you have to know is, where I live there are no turnstiles like in New York’s Subway, London’s Tube or Paris’ Métro. You simply walk into the station, past the ticketing machines, down the stairs, and get on a train. Trams and buses don’t require you to show a valid ticket before or while you board or stamp it in the cars. It’s a very liberal system with very rare random ticket checks by teams of ticket inspectors. So the infrastructure really supports a mobile ticketing solution without the need for special changes to any hardware. Instead of a small paper ticket you simply show your digital ticket on the mobile phone to the inspectors – if you’re lucky enough to make that encounter.

But now let’s return to my question of whether NFC can be an alternative to GPS.
I think that if an NFC tag can tell my phone the name of a station and provide the URL of that station’s schedule, it might as well tell my phone the lat/long coordinates for a navigation application or simply the URL of a mapping site displaying the current location. Do you agree?

If this works NFC could be utilized for …

• well, mapping (not navigation),
• micro maps in shopping malls,
• guiding folks to their seats at events (and to the rest rooms!),
• telling you where you’ve parked your car in that monster parking garage at the airport,
• and whatever you can dream up (let me know!).

What I don’t know is …

• whether it’s less expensive to embed NFC into mobile phones than GPS,
• whether NFC will establish itself and by when,
• whether it will be adapted by location based services,
• whether you think I’m a crazy prankster.

So let me know your thoughts.

He was late the other day and took a cab to ride to work. What he encountered when he got in the cab was a small entertainment system displaying news, weather and clips.
How neat, I though … but then I took a closer look at the photo he took of the system’s screen.

On the top of the screen you can see a small “MAP” button on the interface. So I wonder what happens when you press that button.
A search led me to the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) Website where I found some more information. There are four different systems that are currently in beta testing. All systems are required by the TLC to feature the following:

• Trip sheet automation using vehicle locator technology – which may also be linked to a central system to support fleet owners with managing their vehicles and the end-of-shift settlements with the cabbies. Plus it offers real-time location data for each vehicle (sounds like crying for a Google Maps mash-up to me).
• A driver information monitor – it displays text messages when the vehicle is stopped. These provide updates to drivers to help avoid traffic congestions, return lost property, or to make them aware of fare opportunities e.g. large events.
• A passenger information monitor – this is the screen Sean took a photo off. It provides information and entertainment, facilitates credit and debit card payment of the fare, and it displays a map with the taxicab’s current location.

So next I was wondering which of the four systems tested might make the best use of providing location based information to the taxis’ passengers. Here is a quick overview of the four systems.

One system is provided by VeriFone, better know for card payment terminals at store checkouts or handheld devices used in restaurant. A video (WMF, 2MB) of their passenger facing device shows how the payment process works, not more. But on the VeriFone product page a paragraph briefly explains the following feature:
“Real-Time Automated Vehicle Location: Links directly to trip log information and the ability to locate vehicles in real-time. Also supports in-vehicle navigation and dispatch queuing activities.”

Another system in testing is made by Creative Mobile Technologies (CMT). While they seem to have focused more on the back-end integration for improved fleet management, their consumer facing interface offers two map views to the passenger. One view is a “street level” view identifying surrounding streets and the other is a “borough level” view where passengers can see more of an overview of their journey. Colored dots indicate the starting point, route traveled and current location.
Really unique is their information and entertainment offering which is provided by NBC’s NY10 “New York Taxi Entertainment Network” – but content doesn’t seem to be directly tied to the taxi’s location. However, due to the local and specially compiled content the advertising opportunities can be a good deal more targeted. You can read more about the NBC/CMT deal on New York Taxi News.

Digital Dispatch is not really providing a wealth of information about their SmartCab solution, but at least has a demo of their interface online. Unfortunately it is not fully functional, but you get the idea. Again, I can’t see any relation between location and content displayed on the passenger’s screen.

Last but not least, there is TaxiTech. Hidden in the copy on the various pages of their website, there is a glimpse of the future:
” Soon passengers will also be able to use the interactive map to find locations of interest, such as restaurants, cafes, movie theaters, ATM machines, tourist attractions and more.”

Given the small amount of information I was able to pull together I’d be really grateful for any New Yorker encountering one of these new devices to provide some additional insights. And of course anyone is invited to share thoughts!

(Photo of NYC taxi at full speed courtesy of TommyBass.)