23April2008
Posted by Ryan Sarver under: Mobile; Programming.
Today Twitter announced a very cool update to their APIs by adding the ability to update the “location” property of your user profile. It’s not documented yet (should be shortly) but the API is live and you can already work with it.
Location updates currently aren’t normalized or geocoded, but the ability to update it on the fly allows for some very cool possibilities when it comes to geo-based tweeting — especially in apps like Twinkle and Twittervision.
To update the location of the user, you simply make a standard, authenticated call to:
http://twitter.com/account/update_location.[json | xml]
and pass it a location parameter as a GET or POST. For example, from the command line a curl call would look like:
curl -u USERNAME:PASSWORD -d location="747 Howard St, San Francisco, CA" http://twitter.com/account/update_location.json
Check it out on my Twitter profile and stay tuned to MyLoki where it should be showing up soon.
23April2008
Posted by Ryan Sarver under: Events; Locationaware; Loki; Mobile; Skyhook Wireless.
I have posted the the slides from my session at Web 2.0 Expo called Adding “Where” to Mobile and Web Applications. Here is a direct link to it on slide share as well: http://www.slideshare.net/rsarver/adding-where-to-mobile-and-web-applications/
If you attended the session or have links to add, please put them in the comments so other visitors can view them. The links in the presentation should be clickable. Let me know if there are any links that aren’t clickable and I will repost. Thanks for attending the session and I look forward to your feedback. Also, if you are looking to get in contact with me you can reach me at rsarver /at/ skyhookwireless(com).
10April2008
Posted by Ryan Sarver under: Loki.
If you are a user of both Loki and Yahoo’s FireEagle then you can now use Loki on the My Location page to update your location.
Tom also let me know today that they launched the first version of their Application Gallery (you can find us there too) where you can find a number of applications that let you publish and use your location in various ways. Its great to see so much interest from the community around location-based applications.
Also, if you are a Loki user and need an invite code leave a comment and I will reach out to you to provide one.
9April2008
Posted by Ryan Sarver under: Technology.
Dave Troy just sent me a link to a new project with TwitterVision called TwitterVision Local. It prunes down all the public tweets based on a specific region like “Boston” and only slides the map around that area. Really, effing cool! Check it out:
http://twittervision.com/local/boston
1April2008
Posted by Ryan Sarver under: Events; Locationaware.
As Where 2.0 and WhereCamp approach I wanted to put out a quick update.
Where 2.0
I was recently selected to host a session on the LocationAware Working Group at Where. I’m psyched to be a part of it as its a great venue for talking about location APIs and shows the maturation of the concept. At last years Where 2.0 we held our first Birds of a Feather session to kick off the Working Group. So if you are planning on attending, be sure to check it out.
LocationAware: Standardizing a Geolocation API in the Browser
WhereCamp
As most of you know WhereCamp is going to be held the weekend after Where2.0 at the Googleplex. So if you are attending poker Where2.0 be sure to change your flight to leave on the afternoon of the 18th.
You can learn more about WhereCamp and register to attend by going to:
WhereCamp2008 Wiki
See you all there!
14March2008
Posted by Ryan Sarver under: Loki.
This came across my Facebook News Feed today. Mike is our VP of BD who is traveling in Asia for some meetings. Pretty cool to see Loki automatically checking Mike into Seoul.
12March2008
Posted by Ryan Sarver under: Loki.
I was waiting to announce it until the official press release came out but TechCrunch and Mashable both have coverage on the launch so I might as well post now.
In this launch we take MyLoki out of a private beta and open it up to anyone that wants to sign up and play with it. We also update Loki Toolbar to version 2.2 which adds MyLoki integration for automatic updates and new platform support. We now officially support Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows XP, Windows Vista and OS X. And Loki Mobile gets in on the update now and makes it officially to 1.0. We now support the same WiFi location goodiness on Windows Mobile 5 and Symbian S60.
For those of you who haven’t heard of or used MyLoki its a new service to go along with Loki Toolbar and Loki Mobile that allows you to easily share your current location with friends using things like RSS, Badges for your blog or email and Facebook. I use the Map badge in my sidebar so you can know exactly where I am at any time. I also have a Location Feed that uses GeoRSS and exports the current city I am in.
We are also really excited to work with the great team over at FireEagle, the new Yahoo geolocation brokering service. If you have Loki installed, you can use it to automatically set your location and we will eventually be working with them to help publish directly to their service.
So go check out MyLoki, download Loki and add the Loki Facebook app…
9March2008
Posted by Ryan Sarver under: Events; Loki; Skyhook Wireless; Technology.
Yesterday we did the location-based gaming panel, You Are Here: Gaming and User’s Geolocation in Web 2.0, here at SXSW. On the panel was a great set of location-based game builders from very different facets of the movement.
Jeremy Irish — CEO/Founder of Groundspeak and Geocaching.com
Dennis Crowley — Dodgeball / Pacmanhattan / Plundr
Will Carter — MobZombies
Michael Sharon — Socialight
We started off talking about how the iPhone SDK announcement will change the casual gaming landscape. While some believed that it will make some casual games more accessible, the lack of ability to have a service running in the background adds some constraints around they type of persistent, casual games. Still everyone is looking forward to what it means for educating the market about location and hope to see it leveraged in more applications.
Also discussed were the different types of location-based games that were possible from urban games like Conquest, relative positioning games like MobZombies and games based on true geolocation like Geocaching and Plundr.
We ended with resources for people that want to get involved in either building their own games or playing:
WhereIGo - http://www.wherigo.com/
Loki - http://loki.com
area/code - http://areacodeinc.com
If you attended and have feedback — please leave a comment or post to photos from the session.
UPDATED: The audio of the session has been posted as a podcast on the SXSW site. You can find it here
12February2008
Posted by Ryan Sarver under: Mobile; Technology.
Today Yahoo! announced a product called oneConnect at the MWC (formerly 3GSM).
oneConnect looks to be an interesting app that is part social aggregator and part unified messaging. Its a little frustrating however that another “launch” really only consists of a few screenshots and a description in a press release. It looks to be really promising but success is 90% about the execution and screenshots and a fancy press release don’t cut it.They also mention use of a user’s geolocation as context for connecting users, but they dont mention how they are managing those connections, accuracy, privacy, permissions, etc. Maybe FireEagle? … probably too early.
I like the guys over at the Yahoo! Connected Life group, so here is hoping that they can bring this to fruition and its not analogous to Ford demoing a great concept car only to launch the Ford Fusion when it comes time for production.
7February2008
Posted by Ryan Sarver under: Business.
Two interesting “local” stories today…
First, our good friends over at Loopt have teamed up with CBS to deliver geotargeted localized ads through their rich, buddy finding app running on Sprint’s and Boost’s networks. Highly targeted, localized ads are seen as the holy grail of advertising but to-date most of that money has remained offline and targeted at newspapers, yellow pages, local radio/tv music and coupons. Here’s hoping that advertisers are starting to wake up as the ability to geolocate a user is becoming more ubiquitous. Read more over on the deal and Location-based advertsing:
Secondly, Google announced local news aggregation as part of their current Google News site. It will be interesting to see how granular they end up geo-parsing and tagging the content — currently it looks like it is done, at most, at a city level. Is it safe to assume that local blog news is next?
