Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone
Location-Aware Computing with iPhone
If the iPhone has done anything, it's brought prominence to location-based computing. Where you compute has become as important as what you compute. A few months back, I helped out a TUAW reader by building a location application called Findme. It automatically fed the iPhone's location to Twitter, providing an emergency fallback in case the iPhone was lost or stolen.
How people started using Findme really took me by surprise. Read on to find out why.
I was taken aback when almost no one used Findme for its intended purpose, i.e. locating misplaced iPhones. Instead, people started using it to connect to their friends. As I improved the location algorithm, moving from Google to Skyhook, this became more and more pronounced. They tracked themselves on cross country trips. They created group maps to find their buddies. They played geocaching-style games. And so forth.
Findme became one of the biggest sources of Twitter spam both for public (as googled here) and private updates. Although I had set up Findme to run once or twice a day, some users started using it every 30 seconds.
The demand was clear. I was contacted by numerous third-party developers to use Findme in their own 1.1.4 applications. (OK, but for non-commercial use only.) With 2.0 firmware on the horizon, however, everything is about to change.
With Apple's announced Core Location support, the trend is only going to accelerate. A billion new location-aware startups have launched in the past few months. Fireeagle.com, outside.in, rummble.com, brightkite.com, and plazes.com, not to mention many many others are joining players like Flickr and Twitter, who already offer basic location support.
So why the big push? Laptops offer just as much pseudo-GPS ability as the iPhone ... but you don't really use them the same way. Yes, you can use your laptop in Starbucks or Panera, but how often do you pull out your MacBook while sitting on a barstool, deciding where to go for dinner?. Probably not often. The iPhone will soon let you check local restaurant reviews, movie showings, and events -- all based on your immediate location.
The iPhone is a platform that lives in your pocket. So you can pull it out, check your options and make some decisions without all the overhead associated with laptop use. It's this fundamental difference in the way we use the iPhone with "pants-based computing," with a device that travels with us and knows where we are, that powers this paradigm shift. We're sitting at the edge of a location-based computing revolution, and the iPhone is pulling us there. From our pockets.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
aptmunich said 4:39PM on 6-03-2008
Twinkle is an iPhone twitter client with built-in location support and I've "met" quite a few people from the hundreds of other twinkle-users nearby through it already.
And it's a fairly obscure app, running on a hacked device that not that many people have to begin with. These sorts of apps will be huge...
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robert said 5:29PM on 6-03-2008
I've been using Twinkle as my primary Twitter viewing client on the iPhone. Mostly I post updates via SMS, but I drop to Twinkle because I like the photo attachments. I got it because I wanted to see how the location stuff worked. I can't say that I've posted anything where it actually located me. It might be that Birmingham, AL and New Orleans, LA have really bad cellular positioning, but Google Maps never seems to have a problem.
jay said 4:52PM on 6-03-2008
So, will you be releasing this via the appStore when it launches?
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jay said 4:42PM on 6-03-2008
So, will you be releasing this via the appStore when it launches?
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Mark said 5:22PM on 6-03-2008
I'm very curious to know about this "track a lost or stolen iPhone" idea, since I was the victim of iPhone theft a few months ago. Has there been a documented case of using this method to track such an iPhone?
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Ian said 5:30PM on 6-03-2008
How does hacking an iphone to do what dozens of other phones have done for years signal the start of a revolution?
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Ed said 6:28PM on 6-03-2008
Hello, Mr. Ballmer. Didn't know you commented here.
Joe said 5:35PM on 6-03-2008
I totally agree that location apps for the iPhone could be huge. I am a little concerned about Apple decision to disallow the creation of "service" type apps that run in the background. Location apps could be even bigger if those were allowed.
I was meeting a friend for dinner, and he called me 4 or 5 times asking for directions from where he was to where I was. With the right services in place, he could pull up his map app, see both of our current locations, and leave me the hell alone :-)
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Sam said 7:26PM on 6-03-2008
Well, obviously you probably wouldn't want all your friends to be able to track your position at all times - a solution that would work just as well would be to send your position to a specific contact (or group of contacts). You'd go into Maps, let it locate you then press a button that'd bring up your contact list. Even better, if you're on a call then the person (or people) you're on a call with would be at the top of the list. With the right hooks into the handset's messaging software, the location data could be passed via SMS negating the need to register and getting your friends to register with a service. Patent Pending :-P
Sam
PS Oooh actually, ideally you would also be able to search for a place and have the app send a text for *that* location to someone else, and allowing them to save it for later. You could then plan to go to a specific place - and the idea is also good if you already know exactly where you are (as celltower positioning isn't always very specific, to the point of sometimes being downright inaccurate, or as good as).
PPS To take it further, you could arrange to meet people at a certain place, at a certain *time* and push out a combined calendar+location text. Recipients would then be able to have their phone calculate (starting from either their current location, a saved location or a location they enter) *when they have to leave* in order to get there on time, and add that to the calendar. For some places, you could even choose to take public transport and you'll be told what services to take!
Hardcore organisation nerds could location-organise their entire schedule, including automatically integrated travel time allowances (with padding to allow for the unforeseen), given just a starting point, as long as every event has location data associated with it.
PPPS Wow. I didn't mean for this to develop into an actual idea! Technically of course the bits that are done with SMS could be done over the internet, but an SMS gets pushed to the phone almost immediately whereas the same thing over the internet would require the data connection to be held open (using ridiculous amounts of precious battery power).
Ed said 6:05PM on 6-03-2008
Ian: Doing it and doing it well are not the same thing.
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Ian said 6:36PM on 6-03-2008
You do have a point there. Its still hardly a revolution. Iphone web apps are neat and have cool screen transitions. I don't think they have done anything new or better though. I still win with my blackberry when standing next to an iphone user trying to accomplish the same task. Maybe something great will happen with new location based apps like location based ads?
Don't sprint and Helio already have friend beacon? Anyone use it to hook up or change their worlds?
Whether I think its a revolution or not I am going to be buying the next gen iphone. Using my ipod touch the past couple months has got my typing speed up to multitap levels like the old days of nokia and thats good enough for me. I'm tired of having 2 bricks in my pocket.
tchblg said 6:32PM on 6-03-2008
Great post - I put together a list of three killer "pants-based computing" apps: http://tinyurl.com/6l4e5z
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Felix said 7:07PM on 6-03-2008
I wrote one too http://www.memapper.com
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Brad Knowles said 11:08PM on 6-03-2008
@Ian,
All those tests you've been running against iPhone users, I'm assuming they are for functions where Blackberry was designed to do well, right?
So, here's the deal. Today, the Blackberry makes a somewhat better business-oriented Blackberry-like device than the iPhone 1.x. However, the iPhone 1.x makes a much, much better consumer-oriented iPhone-like device than the Blackberry.
However, with iPhone 2.0, it's going to be getting much better at being a business-oriented Blackberry-like device, and a much better consumer-oriented iPhone-like than the iPhone 2.0.
RIM has nowhere to go. They're already boxed in, and there's no way in hell they can compete on the consumer side, while Apple will quickly eat their lunch on the business side. They're doomed.
Same for Palm -- if they'd woken up ten years ago, back when they owned this market, they'd be unbeatable. But the Giant slept for too long, and now the Zombie can't wake up no matter how hard it tries.
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Brad Knowles said 11:14PM on 6-03-2008
Uh, sorry. My bad. Make that:
However, with iPhone 2.0, it's going to be getting much better at being a business-oriented Blackberry-like device, and a much better consumer-oriented iPhone-like than the iPhone 1.x.
Emphasis on that last word element before the end of the sentence.
Henry said 1:31PM on 6-06-2008
What I would really like to see is a route-aware search. What's the cheapest gas between my house and office? Which bank location is the least out of the way? What good restaurants are on the way to my concert tonight?
Come to think of it, I'd like to see that on a website, as well as on my phone, since I don't know of any sites that do that.
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David Cizek said 5:41AM on 6-04-2008
Native geo-aware apps are great. But what if Apple would expose the LocationAPI to the Safari via JavaScript? So that web developer can create webapp with location in mind. That could cause a huge number of location-enhanced websites and many (I suppose unpredictable and exciting) apps. Like the Findme - great app cause more different ways of usage.
We are trying to do something like this for usual mobile phones with java: http://www.locify.com. It is free and open - LBS services can create anyone with the knowledge of xhtml. And people are asking us for iPhone version. We will be eager to offer it (but now we lack the iPhone developer). Because this is "enabler" we consider to release our java version (and maybe the future symbian/iPhone/android) version as a open-source.
I would like to ask you: do you like the concept?
And I would like to ask Erica - would it be interesting to you to help with enhancing Safari browser with location?
thanks, davidC
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mike farr said 11:04AM on 6-04-2008
I'm a cross country skiier and would love an app that let's me find my friends in a race or out on the trails. Often there's no cell signal but with GPS we'd be able to find each other. It's also be useful for heli skiing, bike riding, and hiking. I'll check out the companies listed earlier in comments but direct suggestions would be welcome.
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Zimmie said 12:36PM on 6-04-2008
Keep in mind that when there is no cell signal, there is no way for the phones to communicate their positions to one another.