Social media is overtaking one of the world’s most exciting races, as mobile phones and social networks will play major roles in the upcoming New York City Marathon. For this year’s big event, the Mobile Spectator App has expanded, allowing fans to follow runners throughout the event that will be held on Sunday, November 6. Read more
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
If you ever want to track kids, pets or even a fleet of vehicles, you might want to check out the PocketFinder 2 app. It works on on an iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. The app is free but there is a catch or, perhaps, a catch and a half.
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Pew Internet released summary information from a survey that tells us how adults in the U.S. use mobile and social location based services. The highlighted statistic, however, literally only tells part of the more complex story.
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Have you ever had that moment of panic when you realized your pet was missing? There are a variety of pet trackng products on the market. But, SnapTracs (a subsidiary of Qualcomm) hopes their Tagg Pet Tracker is a better solution for pet owners .
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How much do you know about the area you are at right now? If you are near your home or office, your answer is probably, “a lot!” That’s what I thought too until recently. We have, after all, Google Maps mashups, Augmented Reality browsers and hundreds if not thousands of other information tools to refer to. However, I learned how little I know about my own neighborhood after trying out this free iPhone (iPad) app:
SimpleGeo assembles publicly available data to give you a view both wide and deep about an area. There are three main information tabs plus an “About” tab.
- Context: This first tab provides a framework that defines the area around your current location: Government districts (including a map of the district(s)), weather, demographics (population density), street intersections and geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude).
- Places: This tab displays a map with pushpins representing businesses. I first tried it in a business area and saw what I expected: Many pushpins with the names of business in the area around me. However, when I ran SimpleGeo at home, I was somewhat surprised to see the same thing: Many pushpins with the names of businesses around me in a residential area.
- Storage: The third and final informational tab seems oddly named but is very useful and interesting. It lets you select from four “Layers” of information sources: Wikipedia (default selection), Project Noah, Geonames and Flickr. You can select any or all of the layers for use with the map. Each layer is assigned a particular color to help you select items by layer category on the map. You are probably familiar with all the sources with the possible execptin of Project Noah. Project Noah is a crowdsourced wildlife documentation project.
Combined the information collected by SimpleGeo is fascinating to look at. However, note that the geographical accuracy in my area is very low. Every beach park, for example, was shown as hundreds of yards inland from their actual location. Consider the locations provided as a general indication of the vicinity something is in rather than actual location information.
Via ReadWriteWeb: iPhone App From SimpleGeo Discovers the History, Politics & Wildlife Around You
INRIX provides real-time traffic information based on automated fleet vehicle reports, road sensors and crowd sourced information from individuals using their apps. Data from individuals’ apps are sent anonymously to provide traffic speed data for specific locations.
The INRIX Traffic for Windows Phone 7 app is getting a major version bump today to 2.0. It introduces three new features:
1. Traffic Forecasts: Look up to 8 hours ahead to see what you can expect when you hit the road. Nobody likes to be late and this feature helps drivers determine the best time to leave based on how traffic conditions are expected to impact travel times.
Forecasts are based on INRIX’s preditive algorithms that includes factors such as current traffic conditions, day of the week, season, holidays and related days, current and forecasted weather, accidents and road construction, as well as other events such as school schedules, major sporting events and concerts.
2. Quick Reporting: Report accidents and police activity along your route to help other drivers save time and travel safely.
3. Landscape Mode: For additional versatility based on viewing preference.
INRIX Traffic 2.0 for Windows Phone is a free app available from the Microsoft App Marketplace.
Wikitude Drive for Android is an intriguing looking app that provides turn-by-turn navigation in a graphical overlay of a real-world camera view on an Android phone’s display. It was, however, not available with U.S. maps and navigation until this week.
World’s first AR navigation app launches in the USA, Canada and Mexico!
Wikitude’s press release and blog item both state that the app is priced at $9.99. However, it is currently listed in the Android Market with a price of $14.06.
Wikitude lists the following Android phones and tablets as fully supported: Nexus One, Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Desire, Sony Ericsson X8, Sony Ericsson X10, Samsung Galaxy Tab. One phone is singled out as not supported: HTC Wildfire.
Video courtesy of Wikitude
Photos recorded using an iPhone or iPad have geo-location information embedded in each photo’s meta-data if Location is turned on when taking a photo. Howver, this data is generally not immediately accessible by a friend simply viewing your photos in, for example, a Facebook album. A recently released free app can help expose this information to your friends.
Photospots (iTunes App Store)
Photospots lets you mark the spot on a map where a photo was taken and then share it via email or to Facebook. The result is an image combining the photo with a map view of where the photo was recorded and text information which includes an approximate address and a time-date stamp. This seems like a good way to provide when, where and what for each photo you share from an iPhone or iPad.
Image courtesy of Google
During my recent trip around Lake Michigan I used Google Maps and Navigation to provide directions during my travels. Unfortunately, I encountered situations where Google Maps did not work because I did not have an Internet connection. Today Google released an update to Maps that shows progress towards providing offline maps, but unfortunately the feature has a limited amount of functionality.
One of the disadvantages of using a smartphone as a GPS is that most rely on an Internet connection to download map information as you are traveling. Most dedicated GPS devices have built-in maps or the ability to download entire states and freeway systems, and they don’t have a wireless connection to the Internet. The advantage of a dedicated GPS is that you don’t need to pay for a wireless Internet access and it works where wireless Internet is not available, but the disadvantage is that you have to download the maps to the device before you leave for your trip.
Some GPS devices are supported by online web sites that allow you to plan a trip, with stops along the way, and then download the map data to the device. Such devices usually can support trips across multiple states and do so by only downloading a fixed amount of distance, such as 20 miles in either direction, along the route. Ideally, Google Maps would provide this functionality both on the web site and on Android phones, but instead, the feature provided today only downloads a 10 mile square around a point that you pick on the map.
If you are traveling to a location that you know does not have Internet coverage, you can pick that location on that map and have Google Maps download the 10 mile map area to the phone. It is not clear to me whether there can only be one map area selection available on a phone at a time, or if you can select multiple map areas along a route to download to the phone. Obviously, manually downloading 10 mile blocks along a route can be pretty cumbersome.
The download map area feature is part of the Labs section of Google Maps, which means that it in testing and could change or be removed. I hope that Google improves this feature so that it can be useful for trips greater than ten miles.
