It was surprising to see so many 'LBS-interested' developers at the Geo/Mobile developers meetup held at Google HQ in London, (see Figures 2,3 & 4). On show were some of the latest location based technologies and also a conference on what could be expected in the future.

With an insight into FireEagle (www.http://fireeagle.yahoo.net/), the latest delivering from Yahoo, which acts as a location broker allowing users to update their location instantly on a number of different services and platforms. For example, Mr X can inform FireEagle that they would be on business in San Francisco on a certain date and when they arrive, FireEagle automatically updates their location status. Yahoo have stated that privacy is one of their main concerns and they have addressed some of those issues by allowing the user to define what and how much information they wish to share with the system and other services.

Despite this if I know Mr X and I know he lives alone and I see his location status has updated so that he is out of the country and his house is empty, what stopping me from breaking in?

There was also discussions on how location based advertising would open up rich revenue streams and how advertising companies should best maneuver content delivery to the mobile platform. 

See Professor Jonathan Raper’s thoughts on LBA.

The Geo/Mobile developers meetup @ Google HQ.

It’s safe to say that location based services have a very promising future although the extent to which is still fairly unknown. We can hope to see more services becoming available and them becoming much more integrated within both commercial and social environments.

Mobile giants Nokia have just realeased their first ever geo-location phone. The N97 offers “social location” a service where the phone understands exactly where it is via the onboard GPS and electronic compass. This permits users to update their location automatically on many social networks such as Facebook.  

With developments such as FireEagle, it’s apparent that large organisations are putting user privacy at the top of the agenda and are busy developing new algorisms and security architectures.

See Professor Jonathan Raper’s thoughts on what we can expect from location based services in the future.

However it’s clear that in order to develop user trust with location based services, they must be opt-in. This will then allow the user to choose what information they will share and with whom they are comfortable sharing it with. However with the commercial power that these services contain it is still to be seen whether providers abuse this new technology and blanket users with a range of unwanted services.