Location-based Services

The announcements come from Google I/O, an event in San Francisco this week. The APIs are additions to Google's location services for Android. Fuse Location Provider enhances device location determination. It speeds up the process and makes the location accuracy higher. There's also a "location...

An innovative website allows people in the Coachella Valley and the Imperial Valley to report environmental hazards, channel their complaints to government agencies and track actions taken in response using online maps that flag each report with a colored dot. The website, called IVAN,...

An old feature of Foursquare that appeals to the datanerd in many tech users pops up information about location based behavior at check-in. So, after a few days of checking in at work you might learn it's the longest streak you've had of a daily check-in. This week, Foursquare upped the ante. Now...

Glass Navigation is pretty darn great. It prevents fumbling with devices and, unlike phones and some dedicated navigation devices, doesn’t require you take your eyes completely off the road in order to properly navigate. There are some obvious bugs to fix, but with a beta product they’re...

OpenSignal is the team that offers and app you run on your cell phone to crowdsource carrier coverage. Now it's launched WeatherSignal, which does the same thing, but for weather. Alas only the latest (Samsung Galaxy S4) phones have all the sensors the app can tap, but older ones can at least...

Facebook is in the final stages of a deal to buy Waze per Israeli publication Calcalist (Hebrew only).  The Next Web cites Assaf Gilad, describing Facebook is in "advanced talks" to buy Waze for about $1 billion. Facebook and Waze are partners. Wazers can share their drives via the social...

When asked what types of mobile/social advertising they currently employ, 97 percent of respondents said social media like YouTube™, Pinterest®, Twitter®, Facebook®, and Instagram®. Location-based promotions (Foursquare® check-in, etc.) came in a distant second at 17 percent, and text message...

Wayne Chen, whose company is based outside Boston, created Connect On Time, a free app for iPhones and iPads that provides maps of 42 global airports and more importantly calculates travel time to reach specific flight gates upon arrival. Abu Dhabi International, Honolulu International and...

  Sending an ad to a consumer based on their current location often isn’t as powerful as sending mobile ads based on the user’s lifestyle and behaviour that historical location data can reveal. In fact, our research has shown that there is no correlation between distance-to-store and...

The open-source mapping movement is bigger than you might think, burgeoning with underground tenacity and drive that feeds the user-generated machine. Digital map publishers, like Washington, D.C.-based startup MapBox, offer a more customizable alternative to mainstays like Google or Bing Maps...