The Praized Blog

Skyhook’s technology uses signals from WiFi hot spots to triangulate and find a person’s location, instead of using a chip that lets a mobile device communicate with the satellite-based Global Positioning System.Skyhook, founded in 2003 by Ted Morgan and Michael Shean, has gathered and catalogued the WiFi fingerprint of streets in thousands of US cities and towns by driving along roads and collecting the unique signatures of 23 million WiFi signals that flow out of houses, businesses, and public access points. The company uses that data to let WiFi-enabled devices know where they are. (…)The software upgrade that includes the new location feature - it’s available free on an iPhone and for $19.99 on an iPod Touch - allows people to simply press a button to see where they are.

A map displays a bull’s-eye that’s centered on the user’s location; Morgan said Skyhook’s technology typically is accurate up to about 165 feet. The technology builds in the likely margin of error and draws a circle on the map, taking into account the likely error of the location technology, so that the user will be within the radius 95 percent of the time.

(via Boston.com)

(flickr photo by tibopoix)

What it means: I believe Apple is betting that location-based services represent the future growth for their iPod line of product. During Apple’s Q1 2008 conference call, their execs called it potentially the “first mainstream Wi-Fi mobile platform, running all kinds of mobile applications”. With the upcoming release of the iPhone SDK, we should be monitoring the growing installed base of these devices.

Still a rumor at this point, Business Week says Apple will start offering software development kits for the iPhone beginning of 2008. According to the article, the delay was caused by Apple wanting to release his new OS Leopard before opening the iPhone to developers instead of the official statement related to “bugs from third-party software posing a threat to cellular networks”. But “concerns like that will probably lead Apple to be careful in selecting which programmers are given the tools to build iPhone software. It isn’t clear yet how Apple plans to go about vetting programmers or to what extent it will open the platform to them.”

Flickr photo by dylanparker.

Update: Sylvain Carle (in the comments) and the The Unofficial Apple Weblog report that the SDK will be available in February.

What it means: Apple has created a mini-revolution around the iPhone when it launched in the US last summer (it’s still not available officially in Canada). More than 1M units have been sold and this has created a very interesting installed base for third party applications (hundreds are already available and can be installed on a hacked, unlocked iPhone). If you operate in the local space, mobile is key and you should be looking at the iPhone as a potential platform for your local app.

“We have been testing the iPhone for two weeks, in multiple usage scenarios, in cities across the country. Our verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer.”

Walt Mossberg reviewing the iPhone in the Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal talks about the age of fragmentation in this article about the Copiepresse/Google case. I called that phenomenon “Atomization” in my 2007 predictions. Here’s my “atomized” version of this article…

TV:

For years, the implicit bargain underlying free TV was that consumers watched shows at certain times and accepted a certain number of commercials and promos for other shows on a given channel. That bargain was dented by VCRs, (…) DVRs fulfilled VCRs’ promise by making finding, recording and watching programs easy. (…) Increasingly, consumers don’t know or care when their favorite shows are on or what channel shows them — they find them through search interfaces and watch them whenever they wish. TV has the burden of being reworked from two directions at once — the other hammer blow is coming from sites that let consumers post video, such as Google’s YouTube.

Music:

For years, consumers bought albums to get a song or two they’d heard and liked. The handful of hit albums paid for the many albums that failed, as well as the cost of developing new bands, promoting existing bands, making recordings and mounting tours. But that implicit bargain had a flaw that would eventually prove fatal: Consumers liked songs better than albums. When digital technology broke albums into individual songs, consumers voted against the album by either stealing individual songs from peer-to-peer
networks or buying them from services such as iTunes.

Newspapers:

In moving online, newspapers have become collections of individual articles, each of which often stands on its own. Once, readers encountered articles by reading the paper a page at a time. Now, such readers are being supplanted by voracious online consumers who get their news in any number of unpredictable ways. Articles are emailed around, copied to blogs for commentary, grouped together with stories on the same subject from rival publications, and found by search engines and aggregator services.

What it means: if your business is not one of the three mentioned above, how is it being atomized by the web? Make sure you do the exercise and think strategically how things could evolve in the future for you. Learn from the TV, music and newspaper experience.

Via the Center for Media Research:

A new report by Media-Screen finds that, although more than 60 percent of U.S. broadband users currently own an Internet-enabled mobile device, only five percent of them, approximately five million, use the mobile Internet. The report concludes that they are reluctant to partake in online mobile activities due to extra fees and difficulties establishing and maintaining Internet connections.
(…)

Jean Durall, Media-Screen’s Director of Research Service, says “Broadband users… have historically driven innovation of online applications by being the first to adopt and embrace new services on the Internet… Understanding this group of influential consumers will help carriers, content providers and marketers develop new offerings.” (…) Over 50 percent of respondents say that the mobile Internet access does not “fit with their lifestyle.”

The study reports that the top mobile Internet activities are:

• Sending email 47%
• Playing games 27%
• Read the news 16%
• Watch TV programs 13%

More info can be found on the Adotas web site.

What it means: Wow. The way the market is buzzing about mobile Internet, you’d think everyone was using it. I’m still surprised that number is so low. But when I think about it, even I (an early adopter) is not using my mobile device for Internet needs. I’d love to be connected all the time and I’ve sent e-mails, played games and read the news on my mobile device before but I wasn’t too pleased with the experience. I think form factor is a definite issue. I still think we haven’t see the killer app in terms of device. I had high hopes for Apple’s iPhone but it’s unfortunately going to be built as a closed platform. I think WiFi/WiMax-enabled phones (to help reduce usage costs) and open platforms (to make your device more relevant for you) will speed up adoption in the future.

Meta-Praized is a collection of links & stories we’ve “dugg” on Digg.com in the last 7 days. Feel free to add us as a friend: PraizedDotCom

• “Computers could store entire life by 2026″ via The Daily Telegraph
• “Auditions Come to YouTube” via the Wall Street Journal
• Time’s Person of the Year is You! via Time Magazine
• “10 Reasons Why Microsoft Will Acquire Yahoo In 2007″ via ShoeMoney.com
• “RUMOR: Apple ‘iPhone’ may include JAJAH VoIP software” via MacDailyNews.com
• CraigsNumber: an auto-expiring, FREE anonymous phone number via the Voice 2.0 blog
• “New NYC taxis to have TV and tracking” via SiliconValley.com
• “Google teams up with NASA” via CNN.com
• “Ask X - New UI for Ask.com Secretly Launched” via Read/WriteWeb
• “2007 Web Predictions” by Read/WriteWeb
• “Google axes search API” via the Register
• “BBC moves to file-sharing sites” via BBC News