Technology

Journalism / Location Services / Technology — No Comments
13
May 10

The Power of the Placename

At the recent Local Business Summit in Amsterdam I spoke about my work at the BBC on location services and mapping and tried to make the point that, as far as our users/consumers are concerned, the place name is all-powerful when it comes to identifying location.

Other means of identifying location (grid references, postcodes, lat/long coordinates) can be very useful for certain applications, particularly when dealing with single sets of data which associate themselves closely to a certain type of identifier, but are not really that useful when displaying location to a user.

The majority of us talk about our local area using the names of the town, road, river, pub, street, or even colloquial terms that would be completely un-familiar to someone who isn’t from the area.

Photo by Flickr user: Eric Kilby

The pagoda roundabout in Birmingham is actually the Holloway Circus roundabout but I’ve only ever heard people refer to it as the former.

The problem with place names is that they are very rarely unique and, unlike more formally defined identifiers, they do not fit nicely with the world of mathematics and software engineering which expects each component to be defined very specifically.

Gary Gale (@vicchi) recently posted an article on the perils of disambiguation which gets to the heart of the problem where geo-tagging is concerned.

A comment from John Fagan on this article suggests that “20% of UK places share the same name”.

Photo by Flickr user: Tim Green aka atoach

Gary also touched on the requirement to identify the concept of ‘place’ in the first, er, place.

For example, within a piece of text, does the word ‘bath’ refer to the place in the West Country or the item of furniture usually found in the bathroom?

We should be able to assume that if content is manually created then human knowledge will differentiate between various types of information and tag accordingly (assuming the tagging/meta-data process is manual).

We should also be able to assume that a user looking for content is very much aware of whether they are looking for ‘Bath’ the place or ‘bath’ the household object.

(An aside – luckily for me ‘Nuneaton’ is unique enough in location terms and in general language to make my latest website, the Nuneaton Guide, fairly easy to pull together using automated methods.)

But in reality, and in a web2.0 world, how many services exist that have this human editorial oversight from production right through to delivery?

At this point most people working in the web world will start talking about the semantic web, a greater understanding of meaning, and how the future web will be able to filter, aggregate, define, and ultimately solve problems such as this.


Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

But what if the semantic web isn’t the answer?

This is too big an opportunity to leave to chance and I believe we need to start thinking now about how we are going to bring some order and some meaning to the definition and concept of ‘place’.

Geonames have made a good start and, in the UK at least, the free-ing up of Ordnance Survey data surely presents some possibilities.

But what next?

I don’t have the answer but I know that place names are the most powerful tool we have to deliver a sense of localness to our audience and turning the world wide web into a location aware service would be quite incredible.

At the very least we need a world where I can easily find stuff from the BBC about Morecambe the seaside town and, quite separately, content about the late, great comedian Eric Morecambe, without getting this page.

Conferences / Location Services / Mapping / Technology — 3 Comments
29
Apr 10

Location Business Summit – Day 2

No blogging this morning as I was busy presenting a view of location services at the BBC and then speaking on a panel discussion.

Thoroughly enjoyable, and the best panel discussion yet according to @uphamb.

Follow #locbiz f you want a rundown of events so far.

Now back to sitting, watching, listening and blogging.

Joel Grossman from Wavemarket is talking about location aggregation, with particular reference to mobile phones.

Family Locator, a successful 2005 downloadable mobile application although plenty of difficulties and challenges.

Version 2 launched in 2006 and migrated the interface to the web which resulted in exponential growth over the initial 3 months.

Apparently there are 600 billion SMS per year in the US that ask “where are you?”.

Add to this the fact that 100% of phones use SMS but only 15% are smartphones with access to location API and there appears a great opportunity.

Not for the first time at this conference we’re talking about how to obtain metrics on the success of mobile advertising to convert an advert view into a visit to the store.

I’m not the first to mention this, but why not focus on selling the product directly via the mobile rather than trying to force consumers from a mobile advert to a real-world store – surely that would be easier?  And measurable.

Motti Kushner from Telmap is now going to talk about a winning strategy for successful location based services.

  1. Ensure location capability on every device
  2. Make it local, relevant and valuable – understand the consumer/audience needs
  3. Then monetize – and this needs more thought than simply adopting a standard advertising approach

Good emphasis on the second point on how users behaviour differs depending on their social/local profile and location.

Importantly, the services/tools people use for local tasks (e.g. finding a restaurant) are different in countries across the world.

On the monetization front, a strong view that the answer lies with the mobile operator.

Pillars for success

  • An open LBS platform
  • Local content and services relevant to the location
  • Active widgets library integrating products and tools
  • A rich location companion on the client side with location based advertising

Tony Jebara from Sense Networks talks about the old view of LBS data – obtaining the single point reference to the nearest Starbucks for a potential customer.

The new view consists of a building a location data history to enable better understanding of the individual user, and therefore offer more personalisation.

Sense Networks have a couple of applications that are built on this analysis of historic data as well as using the present, real time location information.

CitySense – Real-time density of users on every street corner in San Francisco captured every ten minutes.

CabSense – Tracking 13,000 New York City taxis to help people find the best location to hail a taxi.  Also captures data by day and time to allow views of best places to get cabs at specific times of the day and week.

CitySense will not just show you where lots of people are, it will show you where lots of people like you are.

This is achieved by a user segmentation model derived by analysing mobile phone data, GPS trails, etc and tracking the places each individual user lives, eats, drinks, and spends their time.

Mathematical models then work out the probability of user x being of a certain age, wealth, life status, and so on.

Lots of fantastic network models and diagrams – who is like who, who drinks with who, which people are similar to others, and so on.

The data model is updated approx once a week and the analytics API is due to be released this summer which will allow everyone to tap into this user data.

Next it’s Claire Boonstra, from Layar, with some great examples of augmented reality in action.

In making a good case for AR as a powerful new tool it’s clear that it is interesting, entertaining, clever and enjoyable to look at.  But what about the consumer need or, more to the point, the business model?

Layar is the world’s largest AR community with over 1.6m users, 3000+ developers, 500+ layers published, and 2000+ layers currently in testing.

Layar.com/create if you want to get involved.

Layar positioning is derived from GPS and in-phone compass so only really works outdoors in areas of good GPS visibility.

The final session before lunch is a panel discussion on destination content and travel services that users are prepared to pay for.

A familiar, trusted editorial voice and brand is the added value over a search based information service say those speaking for Rough Guide and WCity.

Interesting comparison between editorially produced and edited guides and services such as Yelp which gives a sense of place based on user opinion.

Discussion in the room suggests that most people would prefer to pay for trusted, valuable content where relevant, rather than rely on possibly less-trustworthy user generated content, even when free.

I’m reminded of recent discussions in the UK over local journalism in print and on the web, will paywalls work around news, and so on.

I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that the purchase of a trusted travel guide is always a relatively small additional cost in comparison to the cost of the overall trip, however cheap.

A free UGC based where user opinion is valuable such as a restaurant review might be a good supplement to a straightforward history of Buckingham Palace for example.

The afternoon kicks off with a panel discussion on the topic of “The threat and opportunity of ‘free’ services” involving Philip Gontier from Multiplied Media, Joel Grossman from Wavemarket and Nick Black from CloudMade.

Initial consensus that ‘free’ has driven awareness and consumer take-up of location services which has allowed non-free models to develop due to the increased user basis.

‘Freemium’ is a word that I’ve never heard before, but seems to refer to a model whereby developers get a bunch of code for free, but then pay for more functionality.  I think.

Another question, is it realistic for free mobile applications to deliver enough in advertising revenue to make it worthwhile from a business point of view.

An example of an app that had 500,000 downloads but only generated about £2,000 over 6 months.

Sounds obvious but the point is made that it’s better to have less users on a more focused, relevant app than large numbers of downloads that doesn’t translate into users.

Plenty more discussion about business models and advantages and disadvantages of free services in the market dominated the rest of the afternoon.

Around mapping it was suggested, and pretty much agreed, that base layer mapping would become free (following the model of OpenStreetMap for example) and the ‘free-ness’ would start drifting up through the chain with more and more location based data becoming available for nothing.

David Gordon, from Intel, summed up the strategic view quite nicely.

“Free is inevitable”, he said, it’s just matter of which services become free first and how businesses and individuals move around to find areas that have revenue potential.

Potentially threatening from a business point of view but genuinely exciting from an industry perspective – a world with free data, free tools, free location awareness, and free connectivity… but when?

Conferences / Location Services / Mapping / Technology — 1 Comment
28
Apr 10

The Location Business Summit, #locbiz – Day 1, 28th April 2010, Amsterdam

Some highlights from day one of The Location Business Summit in Amsterdam.

Annette Zimmermann from Gartner began the conference with some analysis and survey results on the usage of location services.

Unsurprisingly it is expected by 2014 that a third of mobile phones in use will be smartphones – i.e. phones capable of delivering location awareness.

Symbian is the dominant operating platform but the gap with others is narrowing, a predicted 35% share in 2013 in comparison to the android platform which is on the rise and predicted to have a 20% market share by 2013.

An interesting slide on who will influence various aspects of the location business in the coming years.

In summary, Nokia and Aloqa/Foursquare are the biggest influencers on location technology;  Nokia, Facebook and Google when it comes to a significant user base; and Apple on device integration and payment solutions.

Finally, some golden rules on the delivery of location services.

Do not:

  • duplicate anything that is already available
  • rely solely on location
  • require users to sign up on the website to use a mobile application
  • wait for the user to search for information
  • connect the user to others without their permission

David Gordon, from Intel, continued the theme of research and analysis on the current state and predictions for the future.

From a study conducted into users perspective of how much location privacy is worth (with 74 respondents) on average they would allow a mobile device to query their location every few minutes for every minute of every day for about £27 p/month.

Next up, Ed Parsons from Google with “It’s all about data, stupid!”.

First the question, Are we there yet?

Well, Ed thinks that we might be given that:

  • Data plans have improved dramatically and are, almost, simple and cheap
  • Mobile browsers have moved on from WAP and now deliver a web like experience
  • Devices are improving with smartphones now becoming common

Another indication of progress is  that the availability of GPS technology within mobile devices has increased 92% since 2009.

GPS has followed in the footsteps of the addition of cameras to mobile phones – the biggest camera manufacturer in the world is now Nokia, not Canon or Nikon.

Crucial to the success of map based services is the innovation of tools to build better base maps – gone are the days when centralised organisations with high levels of resource required long timelines to build an accurate view of the world around us.

OpenStreetMap led the way but Ed suggests this is “geeky data and not necessarily usable for commercial applications”.

Google Maps enables anyone to add new information to the base map data which is then usable via the standard API.

It also allows users to report a problem and notify the Google maps database of any changes to the underlying base map – i.e. when a bridge collapses or a new road is built.

Place = Point of Interest + Person

Essentially, “for a place to be important, people have to say that the place is important”.  An important link between the location in it’s pure form and the value of that location as derived from social means.

I’m not sure this applies to the attribution of value to every location, for example,  the place where I was born is of interest to me regardless of what others think, but it is good to see the social element recognised alongside the value of location information.

Gary Gale (@vicchi) from Yahoo! is next on stage to present “Hyperlocal or Hype (and Local)?”

Anyone that’s heard my thoughts on this subject before will know how much I dislike the phrase ‘hyperlocal’ so I’m looking forward to this.

Great set of introductory slides on the history of location that starts with smoke signals, through homing pigeons in 1000 BC, and into 1600 and detailed maps of the world.

1960 brought early GPS, 2000 the arrival of the smartphone, and now where next?

A hyperlocal service is something that:

  • is built on entities and events defined by a community
  • is intended for local people and visitors
  • is normally created by a resident or visitor

Different genres of hyperlocal:

  • Classic hyperlocal:  Traditional media delivered through hyperlocal services
  • Corporate hyperlocal: e.g. “15th avenue coffee and tea” is a re-branded Starbucks.  Or the  Tesco iPhone app that tells me where my nearest Tesco store is.
  • Social hyperlocal:  Applications such as Foursquare that create services around people sharing information.

There are different levels of localness (local, hyperlocal, microlocal) but several elephants in the room.

First, a user’s IP address is not hyperlocal and not accurate enough right now.

Second, the issue of ‘hyperlocal fakery’ where users can claim ownership over local services or claim local knowledge without any authentication or guarantee of their claim.

Third, different standards and a variety of services leading the way means different reference values to the same location.

I think this means, how can we share information across the Geoweb when we are defining the same place in different ways?

Hyperlocal or Hype (and Local)?

View more presentations from Gary Gale.

Frank Albert Coates talks through the recent advancements from Google in local mobile advertising and also mentions last week’s launch of Google’s free route navigation service to the UK.

Then an extended panel discussion on how mobile location and advertising could start delivering significant revenue streams for the industry.

Top line seems to be that there is plenty of opportunity in the mobile market, with the growth of smartphones in particular, to deliver focused local advertising that translates into real money – either in the real world or through the increasing number of transactions taking place on the mobile platform.

Scott Seaborn, Ogilvy Group, is keen to stress that too many business are looking to build iPhone apps when only 5% of businesses have a mobile version of their website.

He also talked about a book store that was losing between 12-20% of revenue from people walking into the store and buying a book from Amazon via their mobile phone.

The reason?  Discovery doesn’t happen on-line.  Recommendations and profile-based suggestions are targeted promotions.

Only in the real world can you truly discover something interesting in a ‘random’ fashion.

Apparently, in Japan, 87% of all flights are purchased on a mobile device, says Paul Lyonette from Microsoft Advertising.  Presumably that means on mobile web services rather than simply making a phone call from a mobile.

Attention turns away from talk of money and advertising to community with Henk Hoff, board member of the Open Street Map Foundation.

He defines ‘community as fun, not work. It’s about reward, not profit.  It’s about us, not me.

This illustrates the difference between community mapping in the model of OpenStreetMap and other technologies that gather user content and usage data to improve a service.

Responding to Ed Parson’s earlier “geeky” comments, Henk uses the example of the block of streets where he lives to ‘prove’ that ‘commercial’ maps are not that good with roads missing and incorrectly placed.

The point is,  “geeky data” can also be useful data.

240,000 registered users  have created an account to add and edit the OpenStreetMap map data – this number has doubled from the level of users last year.

Some interesting information on a forthcoming change of licensing model for organisations that use OSM maps.

Currently all use of OpenStreetMap takes place under a Creative Commons attribution and share alike license.

This has put off some companies that want to use OpenStreetMap with copyrighted datasets but don’t want, or aren’t able, to make the final product shareable in this way.

The new model – coming soon – is an open database license which allows any map produced from OSM and other datasets to be kept under full copyright if it has been implemented in the correct way.

The correct way means keeping the databases separate and implementing the different data sets as layers onto the map.

However, if a derivative database is created which augments OpenStreetMap data with an organisation’s own data, before this is implemented on the map, then this new derivative database should be made available as a data set under an equivalent free license.

At least, I hope that is correct!

Finally, ending on a massive positive, Henk showed how OpenStreetMap was used to respond very quickly to help emergency services direct the aid effort in Haiti after the recent earthquake.

And a fascinating map of the Kibera slum in Kenya where detail has been added to show the locations of places of worship and locations of water supplies.

An area that is simply a large, blank space on any other map.

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10
Nov 09

Thoughts on Local Social Summit 2009

Last week I attended the first Local Social Summit in London – a day aimed at exploring the space where local content meets social media with attendees from a range of start-ups, directories, media companies, advertisers and media owners.

If you’re interested in any of this type of stuff then all of the days presentations are available on SlideShare.

The two most insightful keynotes of the day were on a related theme – the impact and usage of social networking sites in comparison to how people, particularly the young, conduct their social lives in the ‘real world’.

The first, ‘Decoding Friends: A Generation Y View’ by Robert Barnard was a research based piece with some interesting numbers:

  • 15-29 year olds have an average of 43 online ‘friends’ based on recent research in UK, US and Canada.
  • Only 12% have more than 70 online friends
  • Numbers of face-to-face and online friends varies through different stages in life, whereas ‘phone friends’ remains fairly constant.
LSS’09 Keynote Decoding Friends

Following this, Bernie Hogan, a PhD from University of Oxford, presented ‘Making Sense of the Networked Audience: The Case of Facebook’ which provided some different numbers but similar conclusions:

  • A list of 12 reasons why someone might become an online friend with another individual
  • “Nearness is now a social property as much as a spatial one”
LSS’09 Keynote Making Sense Of The Networked Audience, Dr B Hogan

There was plenty of interesting discussion throughout the day and a chance to hear how a diverse range of companies are all moving into the local/social space looking for new revenue stream.

Some particular points of interest from the day:

  • “Obama had the same percentage of votes from young people as Bill Clinton – don’t overestimate social media”
  • Heavy social network users are more likely to use newspapers and are more interested in local news than international.
  • MapZen – a free iPhone app coming soon from CloudMade that allows users to easily add points of interest to openstreetmap.
  • Yellix – a mobile app to help phone calls, e.g. Live directory look-up of unknown caller numbers so no more unknown callers.

And if you haven’t heard about Flutter then you should take a look now:

My input involved a 5 slide presentation on the BBC’s local services, a reflection that BBC Local Radio started doing local-social over 40 years ago, and then a lively panel debate on how local do you need to be to be effective and finding the right balance between content providers and content aggregators.

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02
Nov 09

The Perfect local Media Company in 2014

Tomorrow’s Local Social Summit ’09 in London promises to be an interesting and thought provoking day.

I’m speaking in a panel discussion on Local Content & Monetisation although coming from the BBC angle my focus will be more on local content and social opportunities rather than commercial monetisation.

Some key questions I’d like to discuss include:

  • How local is local? What level of localness is most effective?
  • How will the market find the right balance between content providers and content aggregators?
  • The web makes the whole world social, so when does local matter?

The final item of the day will be hosted by Praized’s Seb Provencher and is titled, What does the Perfect Local Media Company Look Like in 5 Years Time.

The slides make for an interesting read and ask some really good questions… I’m looking forward to the session.

The Perfect Local Media Company Sebastien Provencher Lss 09 Presentation November 2009 Final
View more presentations from Media Viking.
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10
Jul 09

Birmingham Local Blogs Wire

Following my recent post on Will Perrin’s Talk About Local initiative, Jon Bounds has pushed ahead and created a Birmingham Local Blogs Wire by feeding a selection of blogs about Birmingham through Yahoo! Pipes.

You can read all about the thinking behind the Birmingham Blog Wire here.

Robin Hamman (@cybersoc) and I spent many an hour talking through this type of aggregation during his time at the BBC, primarily as method for BBC Local journalists across the UK to work more effectively with the local bloggers and active websites within their patch.

Sadly we never got past the talking part which is why it’s really great to see something like this finally come alive, hooray!

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