List of Location-Based Services

Update: This list was updated in a new post in April 2013, check out my new list.

Every couple weeks there are major changes to location-based service. Big players are out, new exciting apps come in, such as YWCA's Safety Siren and Swim Guide.

This month, it's the launch of Google+ Local (replacing Google Places). Lately, Banjo is also getting a heap of buzz. And it wasn't that long ago that Facebook bought Glancee.

Trying to keep track of these apps is rather futile under such conditions. But this list demonstrates the interesting ways location-based services (LBS) can be used and highlights their cool features, so I find it useful to keep updating it.

LBS are mobile device apps are able to able to determine users' physical location and then deliver content or experiences relevant to that location. The list below is categorized based on the application's leading purpose. However, many applications offer overlapping functionality.

The descriptions in quotation marks are taken from that application's website.

Coordination, Communication, and Safety

• Crowdmap - open-source hosted solution to present location-specific crowdsourced info whether for activism, crises, or community projects
• Glympse - share your location with your contacts and specify the duration of visit
• Groundcrew - "coordinates on-the-ground action with your people. Use location, availability, and skills to mobilize in realtime."
• Guardly - "When an emergency occurs, your personal safety network will always know where you're located....we can pin-point your exact GPS location and provide you with valuable information about what's located around you, and how it can aid your situation."
• Moby - family member tracking and coordination
• Swim Guide - find nearby beaches, their safety status, and historical info
• YWCA Safety Siren - sends geolocation to emergency contacts, maps and directions to women's health clinics & resources, etc.

Commerce and Marketing

• MapDing- hyperlocal classifieds
• Placecast - service provider for brands to create geolocative mobile apps
• Priority Moments - proximity-based promotions & deals (only in London, UK)
• Realtor.ca - allows a user to search and receive info and pix on properties for sale in their vicinity or across Canada. Also offers proximity-based new listings and open houses (Rightmove has this for London, UK)
• Shopkick - "gives you rewards and offers simply for walking into stores, for scanning products, and for signing up friends"
• Shopcatch - location-based deals (Canadian company)
• Sociallight - service provider of geolocative apps
• Where - proximity-based promotions and deals
• YellowPages - detects your location or enter one to retrieve nearby businesses or people

Geoannotation

• Flickr - upload & search for georeferenced photos (also the ZoneTag tool from Yahoo appears to facilitate this)
• Geoloqi - "securely shar[e] location data, with features such as Geonotes, proximal notification, and sharing real-time GPS maps with friends."
• Historypin - enables users to add old photographs and text narratives to locations
• Instagram - popular photo-sharing app that allows georeferencing & sharing with foursquare
• Murmur - recorded oral histories of place, uses old cellphone tech as users see plaque and call specific number to hear targetted message
• Tagwhat - a "mobile encyclopedia of where you are... learn all about the world around you through interactive stories, videos, and photos"
• urbantag - tag and share lists of places with friends

Geosocial Networking

• Banjo - geosocial discovery - helps you find friends and people with similar interests near you
• BuzzE - proxmity friend finding and networking
• CheckIn+ - "all-in-one check-in app with augmented reality"
• Citysense - "real-time nightlife discovery and social navigation"
• Find My Friends - Apple-based friend finder
• Glassmap - friend tracking
• Google Latitude - "see where your friends are right now"
• Grindr and Blendr gay and straight friend and dating finder
• GyPsii - claims to be the world's largest geosocial network
• Highlight - "if your friends are nearby, it will notify you. If someone interesting crosses your path, it will tell you more about them"
• Hurricane Party - "helps friends find, share, and create spontaneous parties"
• Locle - geo-based friend finder
• Plazes - proxmity friend finding
• Skout -"find interesting singles close-by, strike up a conversation, maybe grab a drink or share a cup of coffee"

Local Discovery and Hyperlocal Information

• Around Me - find business near your location by biz type (similar for gas is GasBuddy)
• EveryTrail - "find and follow trips from other travelers"
• Geopedia - geotargetted Wikipedia entries - as also offered by WikiMe
• Google+ Local - combines Google's old Places listings with Zagat content and their Google+ social network features
• Junaio - AR-based vicinity info search, including business and attractions
• Layar - augmented reality browser
• Local Books by Library Thing "It shows you local bookstores, libraries and bookish events wherever you are or plan to be."
• Nearest Wiki - "AR view, with a synopsis against points of interest near you. Tapping on the place you wish to learn more about will give you more in-depth information on the location with images" content from Wikipedia
• Poynt - local search with proximity based reviews and mapping
• Star Chart- not exactly local, but uses your position and AR view to offer info on the heavens (Google offers similar functionality with their Google Sky Map service)
• Trover - "log remarkable places and things by snapping a photo and adding a quick note. When your friends and others pass by in the future they, too, can experience your discovery. Track the paths of friends and other interesting folks using our "follow" mode"
• Twitter Places - search for tweets within a specified area or tag places in your tweets
• Zeitag - historical photographs

Location-based Games

• Booyah - variety of games, including MyTown and Nightclub City
• My Town - "built around your local shops, restaurants, and hangouts. Level-up, unlock items, and earn cash to buy your favorite real-life locations."
• SCVNGR - "share where you are & what you're up to with your friends. Do challenges to earn points and unlock badges & real-world rewards."
• TapCity - "play with friends as you build and defend your very own city made up of your favorite places in the real world."

Navigation and Transportation

• BlackBerry Traffic by RIM uses GPS and customized maps to "establish your estimated time of arrival, find out if a road is closed, or decide to take a faster, alternate route"
• MyCar Park - "capture your parking location on a map, add a photo, and comments... Then built in maps direct you to your car from your current location."
• Nearest Subway - locates nearest subway station for New York, Chicago, Tokyo, Paris, Madrid, etc.
• Red Rocket - Toronto transit maps, routes, schedules, and nearest stop
• SitOrSquat - find nearby bathrooms with user reviews of their cleanliness by Charmin (genius marketing effort and I must say the most useful LBS to come along in ages!)
• Waze - "free, community-based traffic & navigation app"

Personal Efficiency and Organization

• Siri's Location Services - directions, recommendations, and personal efficiency services based on your location
• Task Ave - "location-aware reminders. Magically get alerts when you're nearby a task."
• Voxora - "voicemail for places", integrates with foursquare
Social Recommendation and Navigation


• DeHood - tap into neighbourhood buzz to find local businesses
• DontEat.at - foursquare-based and only in NYC it sends "a text message when you check into a NYC restaurant that is at risk of being closed for health code violations"
• Goby - suggests "fun things to do" based on your location or category (US only)
• Localmind - get answers about a specific place & real-time events by people who are there
• Urbanspoon - location and shaking based restaurant recommendations
• Urbantag - customize a list of favourite places and share with friends
• Wikitude - offers A.R., map, or list view of various types of proximal content (reviews, deals, and Wikipedia entries)
• Yelp and Citysearch - user-generated local reviews combined with local search engine

Travel and Place Guides

• Ask a Nomad - answered on your travel questions from fellow travellers
• Compass by Lonely Planet - "plot itineraries on dynamic, GPS-enabled map. Grab practical information and useful tips using our augmented reality camera view"
• Gogobot - travel tips from friends & other users
• MobilyTrip - social networking travel diary app
• mTrip - "automatically customizes your trip itinerary...guides you to each tourist attraction with directions, uses augmented reality to display tourist attractions in your area, and allows you to share your trip with personalized e-postcards"
• Ski & Snow Report - detailed ski info snow amounts, traffic volume, weather, lift times, etc)
• Ski Tracks - a GPS-enabled ski log of your routes, velocity, etc. with ability to geotag your pix
• TimeOut - travel guide apps for various tourist hot-spots
• TripAdvisor - get TripAdvisor's content on your mobile with proximity search option
• Tripbirds - travel tips from friends
• Trippy - get trip advice from your social network

Early and/or Deceased LBS:

• Brightkite, Centrl, Loopt, Rally Up, and Gowalla - pioneers in place check-ins(Facebook Places also tried this market and then soon closed)
• Dodgeball - SMS, pre-cursor to foursquare bought by Google and eventually shut down (see CNET eulogy)
• Dopplr - social travel planning (bought by Nokia and withered)
• Flook - offered user-generated geolocated information
• Glancee - friend finder based on proximity and social and personal commonalities (started in 2010, bought by Facebookand shut down)
• GeoSpot - started in 2005 and offered location-based information and search products
• Hidden Park - "iPhone adventure game created especially for young families...lead(s) children into a fantasy world of trolls, fairies and tree genies - right in their local park"
• Fire Eagle and Friends on Fire - location sharing platform and API, by Yahoo
• Magitti - local recommendation, from PARC (see ReadWriteWeb article)
• Mscape - location-based gaming platform by HP
• Whrrl - users joined interest and brand based groups to get recommendations, tips, and deals

Please let me know of any corrections or ones you recommend be added to this list.

Help Making Location Based Services Relevant

I've been reviewing the recent literature related to location based services and locative media and came across an incredibly useful article for those building or refining such apps. The article, Criteria of geographic relevance: An experimental study, will be published soon in the International Journal of Geographical Information Science (but is freely available in a pre-print version). The authors, Stefano De Sabbata and Tumasch Reichenbacher are experts in geographic relevance, mobile information retrieval, and location based services.

It's worth reading their entire article, but they include a summary table that lists all the types of information relevance and ones specifically applicable to mobile, geolocative functionality. Relevance, in this sense, refers to the degree to which information returned by a digital service satisfies various user needs and desires. (Read more about information relevance on Wikipedia).

In my efforts to keep updated on location based services, I've noticed that many apps focus on the relevance criterion of proximity to the neglect of all other (possibly more pertinent) factors. De Sabbata and Reichenbacher offer an invaluable list of other factors that developers should consider for more effective and engaging user experiences. Even better, their work is based on actual user studies.

Here is their table of relevance criteria, based on the classes of: properties (of the object), geography, information, and presentation (of the end result, to the user).

Properties	Geography	Information	Presentation
topicality	spatial proximity	specificity	accessibility
appropriateness	temporal proximity	availability	clarity
coverage	spatio-temporal    proximity	accuracy	tangibility
novelty	directionality	currency	dynamism
	visibility	reliability	presentation quality
	anchor-point   proximity	verification
	hierarchy	affectiveness
	cluster	curiosity
	co-location	familiarity
	association rules	variety

For details on a particular concept, the article has useful explanations.

Although location based services are, by definition, preoccupied with location (i.e. spatial proximity) this list offers guidance on other criteria to add that would greatly improve current locative apps.

This list seems definitive to me, but if anyone has a criteria to add or refine, I'd love to hear it below.

Locative Media and Geosocial Networking - Overview Presentation

Yesterday, I presented on Locative Media and Geosocial Networking for one of Canada's major mobile carriers.

It is a broad overview, but offers the various components of this emerging area.

To read my speaker notes, click the options button on presentation toolbar.

 (If the presentation doesn't load in this window, view the presentation on Google Docs.)

Location-based Services On the Road

Test Driving GPS Navigation Devices
I don't own or often even use a car, so I haven't had the opportunity to use in-car GPS navigation devices. As my research focuses on location-based services, it's easy to focus on the hype generated by mobile apps, and forget the popular workhouse of the LBS industry.

So on a recent trip to Hawaii and wanting to explore more of the islands than feasible with public transit or tour buses, I was eager to try out GPS devices when I rented a car.  I figured it would be a great way to try out this tech and make my travels easier. I sure got to know  more about the tech, but I think the GPS device resulted in more problems than help. Although I used the same product, from what I've read and encountered, it sounds like my experience is not atypical.

What I liked about the GPS navigation device:

• basic functionality is easy to use
• accuracy of positioning and its map interface
• we also got some unrequested but appreciated information on attractions near us that gave historical and cultural commentary (although we didn't want it again when we passed by it on the return trip)

What I didn't like:

• told us to turn the wrong way down one-way street and drive into an active volcano
• doesn't recognize unofficial roads (e.g. national parks, mall parking lots, etc)
• voice is often indecipherable
• directions not given in enough advance (e.g. tells us to turn while almost parallel to the road)
• not offer enough detail if zoom out (e.g. place names and roads)
• doesn't remember destination if turn device off (e.g. to get something to eat)
• can't add sub-destinations (e.g. post office, restaurant)
• location finder very limited and many attractions and long-term businesses not listed
• ultimately it was wrong or bizarre so many times that I just couldn't trust it

Some of these problems could be rectified by gaining familiarity with the interface and features of the device or possibly with another product.

Overall, I was disappointed with GPS navigation device for two main reasons: 1) it doesn't replace trip planning and way finding with print maps and 2) it isn't easy to use enough to use that a driver could safely do it on their own.

We had similar problems with other sources of automated way-finding on the trip. We also printed off AAA/CAA customized maps and detailed driving directions ("Triptiks") from their website. The TripTiks seemed like they would get one from point A to point B but they took bizarre and difficult routes. Without any explanations provided for why a seemingly odd route was chosen or even if there was a reason, their routes seemed unnecessary complicated and longer.

I've also encountered the same problem with Google Maps. For example, when trying to get directions to my place, it has one going blocks out of the way to avoid a left turn (perfectly legal and easy).

So my hopes of an automated solution to replace the dreaded navigation seems a ways off.

Smartphone LBS On the Road
I did find it enjoyable and useful to use LBS on my smartphone while on my travels. I've always feared the roaming charges of my mobile carrier plan, so I've never used Foursquare (my LBS of choice) outside of my home town.

I checked into a bunch of different places and looked up reviews and deals in various places. I also posted my location and comments from foursquare to my Facebook account.

It was great to share the main sites and my experiences - more so since the places were so new and different (it also helped me get a bunch of badges, not that I care about such gimmicks - okay, I kinda do).  Looking back on my check-ins, it was a great travel log.

I decided to experiment this trip and pay the costs to try things out, but my bill hasn't yet come, so my fondness may soon enough turn sour.

Benefits of Geotargetted Information

Location-based services (LBS) and locative media have garnered a lot of attention - not least of which will be the focus of my dissertation. But the possible benefits beyond increased marketing opportunities has rarely been discussed or studied. Here's some of what I've come up with so far:

Recent studies are showing societal benefits for place-related information accessed via mobile devices (i.e. geotargetted information). In a Pew study, How mobile devices are changing community information environments, 65% of survey respondents with a mobile device feel it is now easier to keep up with local, community information compared with 47% for non-mobile users.

Pew also found people who accessed local news via their mobile were more likely than other adults to feel they can have a substantial impact on their community (35% vs. 27%). According to a Microsoft survey, Location Based Services Usage and Perceptions, in US, UK, Canada, Germany, and Japan, 50% of smartphone users are using LBS. The leading uses were found to be information seeking, specifically for navigation and way-finding and geotargetted weather forecasts and local news. The survey also found 94% of respondents said they find LBS to be a valuable aid.

It is my belief that geotargetted information can improve our familiarity with places and foster a positive sense of place. Sense of place has been studied in various ways in various disciplines and found to have numerous benefits. From a social perspective, sense has been found to lead to place attachment (Morgan, 2010; Williamson & Roberts, 2010). Place attachment is seen as not only central to one’s identity (Morgan, 2010) but it also assists in the formation of a sense of community (Williams, Kitchen, DeMiglio, Eyles, et al., 2010) and aids people in caring for and protecting their urban environment (Jacobs, 1992). A better understanding of how people form sense of place and the role of  LBS is useful in numerous academic and applied contexts.

From a design perspective, human-computer interaction researchers are beginning to examine the role of SOP and mobile technology (Lentini & Decortis, 2010) and offer tentative interface and interaction recommendations. Tourism and recreation scholars and practitioners can benefit from understanding how visitors come to know and experience travel destinations and their use of LBS so as to improve marketing efforts and visitor satisfaction. This area is also of interest in the fields of urban studies, architecture, and geography to create more responsive land use, buildings, and civic spaces and improve communication resources.. Museologists can benefit from learning how LBS can be used to improve interpretation efforts, patron experience, and conservation efforts.

For librarians, understanding the value of geographically relevant information can be a means of demonstrating the importance of adding georeferenced metadata or mechanisms to collections. Local studies librarianship, the field of study that addresses collecting, preserving, and providing access to the local history and news within the vicinity of a given library branch, can also benefit from this research. Reid & Macafee (2007) believe new technology can move local studies librarianship beyond traditional notions of offering clippings of local newspapers and history discussions to extending their services to new and larger audiences and more effectively engage the community.

There are additional implications to examining LBS as a method of communication and identity performance (Phillips, 201). Finally, there are policy considerations (Phillips, 2011) pertaining to privacy and accessibility that can best be addressed through a deeper understanding of the underlying user behaviour and technology.

I've only begun to look at this and would appreciate any thoughts or publications on this topic...


References:

• Jacobs, J. (1992). The death and life of great American cities. New York, NY: Vintage.
• Lentini, L., & Decortis, F. (2010). Space and places: When interacting with and in physical space becomes a meaningful experience. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 14, 407-415. 
• Morgan, P. (2010). Towards a developmental theory of place attachment. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 30(1), 11-22. 
• Phillips, D. (2009). Ubiquitous computing, spatiality, and the construction of identity: Directions for policy response. In C. Lucock & I. Kerr (Eds.), Lessons from the identity trail: Anonymity, privacy and identity in a networked society. Oxford University Press.
• Phillips, D. (2011). Identity and surveillance play in hybrid space. In M. Christensen, A. Jansson, & C. Christensen (Eds.), Online territories: Globalization, mediated practice and social space. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
• Reid, P. H., & Macafee, C. (2007). The philosophy of local studies in the interactive age. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 39(3), 126 -141. 
• Williams, A., Kitchen, P., DeMiglio, L., Eyles, J., Newbold, B., & Streiner, D. (2010). Sense of Place in Hamilton, Ontario: Empirical results of a neighborhood-based survey. Urban Geography, 31(7), 905-931. 
• Williamson, K., & Roberts, J. (2010). Developing and sustaining a sense of place: The role of social information. Library & Information Science Research, 32(4), 281-287. 

List of Location-Based Services

Update: This list was updated in a new post in April 2013, check out my new list.

Location-based Mobile Apps

I've updated this posting substantially, it's now reposted as List of Location-Based Services

Pondering Effects of foursquare

Over the last year, I have been researching and contemplating usage of the location-based mobile application foursquare. A one-time avid user, my own usage has lessened significantly over the last few months. This is due to the loss of novelty for me, a lack of critical mass of my friends using it, almost non-existent financial incentives, and foursquare's interface limitations.

My interest has perked up recently, however, when I got my first real-world reward for using it (a free, yumlicious gelato from Toronto's Hotel Gelato). I believe in the potential of the location-based services are great and will continue to watch them.

So I was intrigued when I was recently contacted by a fellow PhD student, Leighton Evans, who is also studying location-based services.

Leighton describes his research:

I'm interested in the effects of using location-based services and mobile phones as navigational devices. Traditional maps imposed one kind of spatial and cognitive orientation with regards to physical space, my research asks questions of whether mobile devices are offering a new type of reasoning of this kind, and what the implications of any change might be for the future.

I was similarly drawn to foursquare as I believe it has the power (if yet, often unrealized) to help citizens define and annotate their space for themselves, so I find his work to augur at the profound changes that will results from location-based changes.

Leighton is looking for foursquare users to be interviewed via email. If you are interested in participating or want more information please contact him.

Here are his questions with my corresponding answers.

Question #1: How has using foursquare (or any other location based service) made you aware of, or more aware of, the places around you?

Answer #1: foursquare was the first location-based service I used or had experience with, so initially I found it very useful to discover new places around me particularly restaurants. foursquare's interface is not well suited to specific searches by type of place or even for nearby venues (seems to get proximity wrong a lot and miss tons of key places), so when I heard about the YellowPages app, I switched to that for finding businesses and associated contact info.

I was hoping that foursquare would provide richer understanding of places I am in. Other than finding a hidden washroom at a subway station I frequent, this generally has not happened. Most of the comments on place are quite superficial, well-known, or narcissistic.

Question #2. Do you feel that in using your location services through your mobile device, that device has in effect become a tool for navigating your way through the world? If so, would being denied that tool affect your ability or desire to explore new places?

Answer #2: I would like to say that LBS has significantly affected my wayfinding or relationship to place - and I think it has the potential to. Other than finding businesses in a geotargetted fashion, however, LBS has not done this. That said, when I was recently on a personal vacation to Chicago (see my blog post), I was impressed at how much the city was embracing foursquare and using it as a tourism tool. Due to the exorbitant roaming charges by my carrier, I wasn't able to make use of this. But I constantly felt that there was so much that my mobile could do to greatly enhance my visit there.

Question #3: Do you have any experiences of using the tips left by other users and them actively being involved in the choices you make, either visiting a place or checking-in to a place?

Answer #3: Yes, I tried a restaurant that I had not previously heard of based on seeing various check-ins for it on foursquare. Also, at a restaurant I have chosen a menu item based on a prior customer's tip. I really appreciate this feature but have found that as foursquare grows the amount of noise and the lack of ability to sift through this has made finding valuable info like this very difficult and not worth the effort as other sites do this better (e.g. OurFaves).

Question #4: Has using foursquare (and using GPS) changed the importance of your mobile device compared to other phones or PDAs you used in the past? Does the device feel more integral to your everyday life than previously?

Answer #4: Location based services have been a nice-to-have functionality of my mobile and I think will eventually become integral functionality for me. Currently, however, it has not provided completely new, crucial functionality for me. I can get the same functionality through other, often easier, means.

Question #5: How aware are you of your check-ins and activity on foursquare being a means of providing information and feedback to the application and software itself? Does any such awareness influence your usage and choices with the software?

Answer #5: I have ambivalent feelings towards user-generated services that make their money on the free labour of their users (I like how an author referred to this as "loser generated content"). But services such as foursquare and Facebook do provide the infrastructure that offer me significant value such that I don't mind this potential exploitation. Regarding privacy, I have no concerns about the application knowing my whereabouts - I am not overly concerned with privacy and generally don't check-in anywhere that I would not be willing for anyone in the entire world to know.

Question #6: Given that foursquare is a social application, and social networks involve a measure of impression management, are you someone that checks-in to places with an awareness of how that contributes to an image your online friends have of you or that you are trying to create?

Answer #6: I have been acutely aware of how foursquare helps project identity. I noticed that many people only check in at hip, high-status locations or their work. I have never seen a check-in with anyone I know at a big box store or fast-food chain. Because of this I found it fun to deliberately check into Burger King and Walmart, for example, to make a point. Everyone goes to these types of places but why the reluctance to check in there? This trendiness that foursquare seems to provoke appears superficial and contrived to me. I am guilty of this as well as I am definitely more apt to check into a place that I - and my friends - perceive as interesting or cool.

Question #7: How has using location services changed your perception of the world?

Answer #7: There were a couple moments when foursquare strongly affected my relationship to space and others in it. The first one was when Toronto had its worst earthquake in over a hundred years. It wasn't a big one, but it was an odd, bewildering experience. I turned on my mobile and noticed that others had been checking into the earthquake (the location was the entire city). I felt much more connected to my fellow city inhabitants somehow through that. I also watched virtually the locations and people of Toronto's G20 protests. Even though these were extensively covered by the media, using foursquare somehow made it feel more real and nearby opposed to TV that feels distant and foreign even when it is local coverage. In general, foursquare does allow one (i.e. me) to leave my imprint on a place that does connect one more tangibly to a place. This feeling is magnified when one gets a "mayor" title, which I admit at first was quite rewarding to get. I feel these feelings less so now that I've been using foursquare for almost a year, so perhaps novelty was a key factor in this.

Please share your feelings towards foursquare here.

How Foursquare Is Used

I've completed gathering data for my Foursquare study, so now I'm trying to find some interesting conclusions.

From this research, I have put together a list of various activities that users are doing on Foursquare.

(The list is in alphabetical order as I did not want to imply any sort of hierarchy or frequency.)

1. Achieve sense of vindication or justice
2. Advise or warn others
3. Communicate or coordinate with friends
4. Compare socially (to friends and/or to community)
5. Compete against friends and/or strangers
6. Connect with new people
7. Entertain or distract self
8. Express thoughts or experiences
9. Find deals
10. Find location by type (e.g. a suitable restaurant)
11. Find specific location
12. Find specific location details
13. Inform decision-making / Receive recommendations
14. Learn about people or places
15. Maintain relationships
16. Mine data for business
17. Project status / Perform identity
18. Promote business or self
19. Receive recognition
20. Record personal history
21. Satisfy curiosity
22. Speak out or advocate (e.g. for an issue)
23. Understand the application (for novelty or business)

This list is not complete, so please feel free to add any others.