Motive to Make Locative Media Better

If you've read more than one post here you would quickly come to the the conclusion that I love locative media (a.k.a. location-based services).

However, you'd be a bit wrong. I love the potential of these apps, but too often it is just potential. Existing apps are scratching the surface of possible interactions and experiences that mobile media can facilitate between people and their physical world. To give a cinematic analogy - if locative media were films, it would still be the silent era.

There are a lot of elements that need to be in place to build a killer locative media app. In addition to the standard user experience and technical proficiency factors, locative media developers need to be able to create interactions with a device's geopositioning abilities, incorporate online maps, and access or create a library of geocoded content. In my experience and in talking to developers, they spend a lot of development time working on getting these last elements working.

Having worked in digital media for many years now, I have found that when technical development is difficult or overly laborious, it often results in an organization's energies being focused on that - opposed to front-end elements such as creating an intuitive and pleasing user experience, offering sophisticated narrative or informational structures, promoting organizational or branding goals effectively, or differentiating itself from similar services, among other issues. Alternatively, technical hurdles can scare people off and prevent people from even trying their ideas.

I was contacted this summer by a company, RocketChicken Interactive, that is addressing the challenges locative media developers face. Naturally, my interest was instantly piqued. All the more so when I learned the company is based on Canada. Over the past couple months, I have had the chance to talk to company founder and president Ryan Chapman and senior executive Peter Wittig.

Their company has created several location-based games, such as the popular Code Runner. The game was a hit. But it was during their lengthy development process that the founders realized that there could be an easier way to do this. So they created Motive.

Motive offers a platform service for people to build and launch locative media applications from games to guides - without needing to know much code. This offers organizations the new ability to not only launch products more quickly, but ideally to focus their energies on innovating, differentiating themselves, and making killer new apps.

As Ryan states:

People are reinventing the wheel in the development of locative apps. They are struggling with the same technical obstacles and having to build everything from scratch. Motive gives you the programming mechanics so that you can focus on the story and the user experience. You can create a compelling experience without writing a lot of code. 

Through a web-based, authoring tool, Motive allows people to choose the types of interactions desired to build an app. You plug into an existing dataset of geocoded content, such as OpenStreetMaps or Foursquare, or use your own. Then, through Motive's visual interface, you choose from menu items to enable interactions with specific places or types of places in proximity to a user. So one could choose a piece of content to display when a user is near a specific restaurant, any restaurant, or a type of restaurant (Indian vs. Italian). Scenarios can be prioritized with conditional responses added in accordingly. Developers can also choose whether to make their app online or offline (and thereby avoid incurring roaming costs).

Another challenge that Motive addresses for organizations is that it can help reduce the silos between back-end and front-end. Ryan summarizes the problem:

Content producers are still kept at arm's length. For example, it could take a week to update a few words, but with Motive, the writers or graphic designers can work in parallel to the developers. We are injecting content into the pipeline using Motive's tools - content can be updated on the fly and be live instantly. 

As with a content management system, Motive can enable one's apps to be updated via their hosted web-based tool. Clients can upload their digital assets (e.g., design elements, images, music, videos) and content and update it as they wish without having to request a programmer to do it for them.

Although Motive was developed based on a location-based game, the notion of interacting with place is not confined to gamers. Museums, historic sites, tourist attractions, theme parks, and schools, among other businesses, may want to offer an app to direct, guide, or encourage play between their customers and their places.

Currently, the service does require some programming effort to launch an application, but Ryan notes,

The vision of Motive is for someone to be able to sit down and launch a locative app without writing a single line of code. If you are creative, then you won't be hamstrung by all that - you don't have to solve the problems over again and over again. Just take this and run with it. With that, I think there will be an explosion of apps. 

It is this vision that is so engaging. By opening up the sphere to those otherwise unable to code and overcoming herculean tech hurdles, more people and a more diverse variety of people will be able to try something out. To make this vision more of a reality, the company is working on offering a series of templates targeted to various types of businesses with associated interactions further facilitated.

Through their beta and alpha testing with Motive, Ryan has been surprised by some of the new things people are doing, as their testers have built options into their apps that he hadn't envisioned. The initial crop of locative media apps offered a lot of novelty, but check-ins, friend finding, and place reviews are rather limited forms of interacting with our world. I am excited at the possibility of seeing really sophisticated and innovative projects in this area. As Blogger did for blogs, I think Motive has the possibility to facilitate and spur some amazing developments in the locative media field.

Digital Help for Visitors to Toronto

With the Pan Am & Parapan Games officially starting tomorrow, a large number of tourists have already begun arriving in Toronto.  As one a specialist in mobile apps with a focus on apps that help people find their way around and learn more about their places, I  put together a list of my favourite Toronto mobile websites and apps.

All the the apps and websites below offer crucial information for getting around Toronto and most include geolocative maps that pinpoint your mobile location to offer customized help and directions. There are sources below to help you find your way to and around Toronto whether by public transit, car, foot, or bike. I have also included some of my favourite sources for finding out more about our city - from restaurants and restrooms to history and hijinks.

Note: I have tested all the desktop and mobile websites but not all the apps.

Pan & Parapan Am Games - Official Source

Desktop Website	Mobile App	Mobile Website
Pan Am Games official website is comprehensive and has all info on the games and cultural events. You can also buy tickets and merchandise. (including Pachi stuffies) Key Info: * Sports, schedules, venues, countries participating, events, transportation, and news Pointing Your Way: * Interactive map of sporting & cultural venues * Venue pages have maps and links to directions * Interactive trip planner provides driving or public transit directions	The app appears to have all info and features of desktop website. It has interactive, locative maps of sporting and cultural venues. Available on: Android and Apple.	Mobile website is similar to desktop website and has been mostly optimized for viewing on a mobile. Key info and functionality present, including their trip planner. But no links found to interactive maps - instead links to Travelinx for transit directions.

Transportation

Desktop Website	Mobile App	Mobile Website
Regional Public Transit
Triplinx - combines info on transit systems for Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas - specifically Brampton, Milton, Burlington, Mississauga, Oakville, York Region, and the regional GO Transit services. Key Info: * Schedules by route, fares, maps, and paratransit services Pointing Your Way: * Stop Finder - get nearest transit system by entering address * Interactive Trip Planner - enter address or venue for directions for transit, car, or bike	No app appears to exist (but none needed as mobile website works well - see note to right)	Mobile website is fully optimized. Mobile website has full content and functionality as desktop website.
Toronto Public Transit
Toronto Transit Commission (known as TTC) is Toronto's only public transit system. TTC serves downtown Toronto as well as Scarborough, North York, East York, and Etobicoke. Key Info: * Fares, alerts, schedules, day passes, airport routes, maps,etc. * You can now buy day passes online! Pointing Your Way: * Interactive Trip Planner - enter starting and ending points for routes	TTC's official app just launched this July. TTCconnect is only for buying tickets via Android or Apple I use TTC Tracker. It's easy to use and hasn't let me down. TTC Tracker gives schedules for buses & streetcars (subways come about every 6-8 minutes) by route or stop.	Mobile website is fully optimized. It has all essential info, including maps and interactive Trip Planner.
Airport
Pearson Airport is the airport most visitors to Toronto use. (There's a little airport on Toronto Island mostly for small flights). Pearson is in nearby Mississauga. Key Info: * Arrival and departure updates, parking guide, and free wifi info. Pointing Your Way: * Interactive terminal maps showing gates and showing amenities, food, and services	The app appears to have all info and maps of website. Available on:Android, Apple, and BlackBerry.	Mobile website is fully optimized. It has all essential info, including interactive terminal maps and customized directions to airport.
Parking
Green P Parking is owned by City of Toronto. They provide many of the parking spots here (160 lots containing about 20K spaces). Prices are reasonable (not cheap) and they don't jack up rates during special events (as some lots will). Key Info: * Rates per lot, monthly permits, pay tickets online Pointing Your Way: * Find Parking function map out nearest lots by address, venue, or intersection entered or by browsing a map - sort by distance or price * Each lot has a webpage with its location plotted on Google Maps and rates	The app has same features as desktop website, but with additional functionality of paying via your device, setting expiry reminders, and extending meter time. Note: The app just launched and paying via app is not yet possible at all locations. Available on: Android and Apple	Only partially available via mobile browser. In a near-sighted decision, the mobile website only promotes the app. The helpful info provided on desktop website is not available, nor is their parking finder. But payment functionality is available to members via a browser or text messaging.
Taxis
Gata Hub - Now that Hailo is gone from North America, a local company offers service to hail official taxis via mobiles. Rather than having to know the specific name of a cab company, this service allows you to request a taxi pick-up in Toronto. Note: * I haven't used this service * You can't hail a cab from website	GataHub's app allows one to request a taxi pick-up, estimate a fare, track taxi locations, and get arrival times. Available on: Android and Apple	Mobile website is optimized, but one cannot hail or view taxis from website.
Uber Toronto - links riders with private (unofficial) cars. Taxis in Toronto are regulated but Uber drivers aren't, which can result in cheaper rates than taxis. However, Uber rates can fluctuate based on demand (unlike official Toronto taxis). Note: * I haven't used this service * UberX service is in legal disputes here * You can't hail a cab from website.	Uber's app allows one to estimate a fare, split bills with friends, view driver profiles, pay with your mobile, and order a pick-up even if you don't know your address. Available on: Android, Windows Phone, and Apple	Mobile website is optimized, but one cannot hail or view cars from website. Mobile website does have a Fare Estimator.
Bicycling
BikeShare - Toronto has various bicycles stationed in docks in the downtown of the city to rent for short term travel and return it to any of the stations. Key Info: * Info on signing up, rates, and overall program Pointing Your Way: * Station Map plots the location of bike depots on a map with real-time updates on bikes and docks available Note: * I haven't used this service * There are also a few other places to rent bikes in Toronto, but here's a list.	No official app, but various third party apps - search your app store for "bike share Toronto"	Mobile website is optimized and offers same functionality as desktop website.
Bike Parking - Toronto is not a bike-friendly city in various ways. One way is that there aren't many (official) places to lock them. The City has some bike parking spots, but they are not always easy to find. A Toronto developer has built a service to address this. Key Info: * Find the address of spots or suggest a location for one Pointing Your Way: * Enter an address or browse a map of Toronto to see nearest bike parking spots	No app	Website works well on mobile browser, but it isn't fully optimized. Mobile website appears to have full content and functionality as desktop website.

Services and Amenities

Business Directories
Desktop Website	Mobile App	Mobile Website
Yellow Pages is the leader in local businesses listings across Canada. They have extensive listing for Ontario including Toronto Key Info: * Search for contact information and addresses of a specific business / organization or browse categories via directories. * Filter results by rating, neighbourhood, etc Pointing Your Way: * View businesses by category on a map or view a specific business' address on a map with directions	The app has same features as website, but with additional ability to search for individuals and well as businesses. Works well on my Android. Available On: Android, BlackBerry, Windows, and Apple	Mobile website is fully optimized. It allows one to search for businesses or individuals and view results plotted on a map.
Bathrooms
SitOrSquat Restroom Finder - addresses persistent problems of finding available (let alone decent) washrooms when you need one. Listings aren't the most up-to-date or comprehensive, but if you're a newcomer and you gotta go, it's better than the alternatives! Key Info: * Search for washrooms and filter results by accessibility, changing tables, family bathrooms, * Add a life-saver to the list and rate as good (sit) or bad (squat) and attach a photo (of the washroom, no selfies please) Pointing Your Way: * See the nearest bathroom to you on a map or enter a location	The app has same features as desktop website. Works well on my Android. Available On: Android and Apple	Does not work on mobile browser.
Shopping
Finding your way around Toronto's many malls (we love to shop in climate-controlled comfort here) can be difficult. Rather than download various apps, a leading owner of malls here built one app for all theirs. No website available for content, but here's a useful article of the Top 10 shopping malls in Toronto.	CF SHOP app has directories, maps, events, and promos. They have an interactive map feature "mark your location in the mall, get directions to your favourite store and even pinpoint your parking spot". Note: I haven't tested this. App includes local malls Eaton Centre, Sherway Gardens, Shops at Don Mills, Promenade Centre, Fairview Mall, Markville Shopping Centre and others. Available On: Android and Apple	Mobile website only promotes the app.

City Guides and Tourist Info

Desktop Website	Mobile App	Mobile Website
See Toronto Now is Toronto's official tourist office website with everything visitors needs to know (although the design could be better). It includes info for the Greater Toronto Area. Key Info: * Sites, shopping, events, food, lodging, and promotions * Onscreen and PDF maps Pointing Your Way: * Choose type of attraction or point of interest you are seeking and filter by neighbourhood * Attractions, events, food, and hotel search result pages list address and plot location on a map	The app has all key content of website, but also allows one to find sites by proximity and locative maps. Also gives distance to sites and directions. Available On: Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Apple	Mobile website is fully optimized. Mobile website has full content and functionality as desktop website.
TripAdvisor - likely the best source of user reviews of hotels, restaurants, and attractions (although some reviews are clearly fake) all ranked by users. Key Info: * User reviews, guides, and a Q&A forum * Search for sights, nature, shopping, hotels, museums, food and drink, etc. Pointing Your Way: * Maps of every location	TripAdvisor's app Toronto City Guide app offers city content from desktop website but works in offline mode. Offers maps, directions, and itineraries. Available On: Android and Apple	Mobile website is fully optimized. Mobile website has full content and functionality as desktop website. It also offers directions to sites from device's location.
Bloor St. Culture Corridor - Bloor Street from Yonge Street to Spadina (comprising neighbourhoods of Yorkville and The Annex) is a main area for museums, shopping, bars, and restaurants. Key Info: * Find out about area stores, cultural sites, restaurants & bars, and hotels with descriptions and contact details * Lists of cultural events Pointing Your Way: * View map of locations by type and click on items to find out more	The app has same features as desktop website. In addition, one can search locations by proximity and view results in a list or by map. Available On: Android and Apple	The mobile website is usable and has all the same info as desktop website, but is not fully optimized and using the full map is difficult but possible (just click on it a few times to view entire map).

Food and Drink

Desktop Website	Mobile App	Mobile Website
Toronto Patio Guide - summers are too brief here, but we make up for it by celebrating the good times with gusto and patios are the best way to do so. Key Info: * Definitive guide with reviews of patios including contact info, opening hours, type of patio (rooftop, side walk, backyard, etc.) * Search for bars, restaurants, or nightclubs by name or location (but not cafes stupidly!) Pointing Your Way: * Find patios on a map or search by neighbourhood	The app has the same features as website, but in addition one can search by proximity, view results in a list or by map, and get a recommendation by shaking your device. Available On: Android and Apple	Mobile website is fully optimized. Mobile website has full content and functionality as desktop website.
Toronto Food Trucks - portable and convenient food and in increasing diversity. Info Available: * Guide of food offerings and truck locations with schedules Pointing Your Way: * View food trucks on a map	The app has the same features as desktop website, but in addition one can view trucks in a list or by map. Available On: Android and Apple	Mobile website is fully optimized. Mobile website has full content and functionality as desktop website.
Foursquare Toronto - It is not as much fun as it used to be, but it does do well in recommending nearby and trending restaurants, clubs, and bars. Foursquare has content on most cities in Ontario. Key Info: * Members see visits and recommendations from friends * Filter results by price, specials, open now, etc. Pointing Your Way: * Search for food, nightlife, shopping, or"fun" and refine search by address, neighbourhood, or your location	The app has same features as desktop website. Works well on my Android. Available On: Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Apple	Does not allow one to load their website on a mobile.

Historical Information

Desktop Website	Mobile App	Mobile Website
Toronto in Time - offers more than 150 site histories are told through text and images. Key Info: * View items by theme (e.g., sport & leisure, law & order, industry, roots, arts & entertainment, fighting, etc.), neighbourhood, suggested routes * Search sites by keywords (try "Rolling Stones") Pointing Your Way: * See points of interest on a map	The app has same features as desktop website. In addition, one can search locations by proximity and view results in a list or by map. Works well on my Android. Available On: Android and Apple.	Mobile website is not optimized and is so hard to use on a mobile that it is essentially inoperable.
First Story - chronicles history of Toronto's First Nations people. Key Info: * Blog of history and events related to indigenous people in Toronto The website does not offer locative or map features. The app is essential for this.	First Story app let's one view aboriginal history points of interest via map or by proximity. Works well on my Android. Available On: Android and Apple.	Not optimized for mobiles and does not offer mapped content. App is essential.
Queerstory - chronicles history of Toronto's LGBTQ people. Key Info: * Multimedia (text, photos, or videos) histories tied to 37 locations in downtown Toronto. Pointing Your Way: * View location history by category or by map	The app offers same functionality as desktop website. Works well on my Android. Available On: Android and Apple.	Mobile website is optimized. Mobile website has full content and functionality as desktop website.
Findery - offers people's stories and perspectives on their places. Users upload notes and photos about locations. The result is eclectic and personal glimpses into places as other people experience it. Key Info: * Populated by user-generated content so notes are on any and every topic * Add a note about your experience here Pointing Your Way: * View notes by map, satellite, or grid view * Search for notes about or near address, neighbourhood, or business name	The app offers same functionality as desktop website. Works well on my Android. Available On: Android and Apple	Mobile website is optimized, but does not offer mapped content or search function. Get the app!

Did I miss one of your favourites? Please let me know of other great sources.

Lost Forever - Remembering Location Based Services Now Gone

In preparing for my prior blog post listing location based services and mobile apps with a prominent locative functionality, I noticed that many of the apps from my prior list (in 2013) were out of business. An even greater number of apps were still "live," but had been abandoned by their creators and not updated in a year, or two, or four.

But I think it's important to remember these apps. Not only are they part of our social and technological history, but many of these apps created new directions and charted paths for future technological innovations. So this post is in honour of the trailblazers now lost forever.

List of deceased location based services:

• Benefon - released in 1999, possibly the first friend finder feature
• Brightkite - place check-ins and geosocial networking
• Booyah - make of location based games MyTown and Nightclub City
• Carrr Matey - pirate-themed parking finder
• Centrl - geosocial networking
• CheckIn+ - augmented reality check-in app
• Citysense - nightlife discovery and social navigation
• DeHood - tap into neighbourhood buzz to find local businesses
• Ding Dong - ring your friends with your location
• Dodgeball - SMS, pre-cursor to foursquare bought by Google and shut down (see CNET eulogy)
• Dopplr - social travel planning (bought by Nokia and withered)
• EveryTrail - user-generated trip recommendations
• Fire Eagle and Friends on Fire - location sharing platform and API, by Yahoo
• Flook - user-generated geolocated information
• Glancee - friend finder based on proximity and social and personal commonalities (started in 2010, bought by Facebook and shut down)
• Geoloqi - bought by Esri and shut down, their apps including DinoDeals - proximal alerts of deals, Geotracks - real-time friend tracking, and Geonotes - leave geotagged notes or subscribe to location-based info 
• Geopedia - geotargetted Wikipedia entries - as also offered by WikiMe
• GeoSpot - started in 2005, offered location-based information and search products
• Google Latitude - real-time friend tracking (merged into Google+)
• Google Local - proximal recommendations (merged into Google Maps)
• Google Sky Map - identify the stars near you (open sourced & mothballed)
• Glassmap - friend tracking app by Groupon (merged into Groupon Now)
• Goby - suggested fun activities based on your location 
• Gowalla -  place check-ins and geosocial networking
• Groundcrew - place centered coordination and mobilization
• GyPsii - European company that claimed to have the world's largest geosocial network
• Hidden Park - location based game where fantasy creatures are found in the parks around you
• HipGeo - geosocial networking and user generated place recommendations
• Historypin - enabled users to add old photographs and text narratives to locations (website still running, but apps mothballed)
• Hurricane Party - helps friends find, share, and create spontaneous parties
• Junaio - augmented reality vicinity info search
• Local Books - proximal search for book stores and literary events
• Localmind - get answers about a specific place & real-time events by people who are there
• Locatio - by Seiko, possibly world's first LBS, launched in 1999 it included locative mapping, wayfinding, geo-targetted weather forecasts, and proximal restaurants, hotels, and sights
• Loopt - geosocial networking
• Magitti - local recommendation, from PARC (see ReadWriteWeb article)
• Mscape - location-based gaming platform by HP
• Moby- family member tracking and coordination
• Nearest Subway - locates nearest subway station in various cities
• Nearest Wiki - content from Wikipedia overlaid on places via A.R.
• Neer -  geosocial networking
• Plazes - an early geo-social networking app, bought by Nokia (read eulogy)
• PinDrop
• Poynt - local search with proximity based reviews and mapping
• Rally Up - geosocial networking
• Red Rocket - pioneering Toronto-based transit app
• SCVNGR - pioneer in location based commerically oriented gaming
• Sitegeist - aggregator of locative info, including census data
• Sonar - ambient friend finding
• Task Ave - location-aware reminders
• Tripbirds- travel tips from friends
• Trippy - trip advice from your social network
• urbantag - tag and share lists of places with friends
• Voxora - voicemail for places
• Where - proximity-based promotions and deals, by PayPal
• Whrrl -  brand based groups for recommendations, tips, and deals
• Zeitag - historical photographs overlaid of users locations

Let me know if I missed one of your dearly departed. Also, if you're interested in location based services, I'm conducting a study soon on this topic and would love to hear from you. Check out my study at my research website.

List of Location Based Services

I'll soon be starting a study on location-based services. I'll be studying the field rather broadly - any mobile application or mobile website that deliver geotargetted content.

Over the years, I've maintained a list of location based services on this blog.  I had to stop updating the list as it was changing too quickly to keep up. More and more apps were offering a locative functionality as part of their features.  On the other side, other apps were going out of business with equal rapidity.

For my study, I'm open to talking to people who use any sort of locative functionality on their mobiles. This can take the form of:

• using Foursquare or Yelp for restaurant recommendations in your area
• reading nearby news or gossip with Yik Yak or Twitter
• playing location based games such as Ingress or geocaching
• finding someone to hooking up with via Grindr or Skout
• learning more about a place with Findery or Flickr

Below is a list of some of the popular mobile apps with locative elements categorized by their primary offering.

Art

• Flickr - upload and view georeferenced photos
• Instagram - upload and view georeferencing photos

Coordination, Communication, and Safety

• Glympse - share location with contacts and specify visit duration
• Guardly - personal emergency system, alerts authorities and close contacts with user’s location in an emergency
• Swim Guide - find nearby beaches, their safety status, and historical info
• Ushahidi -  crowdsourced mapping and place-based storytelling
• Yik Yak - anonymous, nearby gab and gossip
• YWCA Safety Siren - sends location to emergency contacts; maps of women's health clinics & resources

Commerce and Marketing

• Groupon - proximity based and general shopping deals
• Geotrigger - service provider for brands to create geolocative mobile apps by Esri
• Lovely - proximal apartment rental information (U.S. only)
• Placecast - service provider for location-based business intelligence and geotargetted ads
• Realtor.ca - search and receive info on properties for sale in your vicinity
• Shopkick - proximal promotions and customer loyalty programs
• YellowPages - uses location to identify and search for nearby businesses

Geosocial Networking

• Facebook - location sharing and encourages place commentary
• Swarm - check-ins and friend tracking by Foursquare
• Find My Friends - friend tracking by Apple
• Google+ - share your location with customized groups
• Grindr, Blendr, and Tinder - date finder apps
• Skout - reputedly the world's largest network for friend and date finding

Health and Fitness

• MapMyWalk - map and share your walking/cycling routes along with other fitness features - similar apps are Endomondo and Moves
• PulsePoint - apps to locate volunteers trained in CPR for emergencies and another for defibrillators
• WebMD Allergy App - geotargetted allergy forecasts, tips,and customizable alerts

Local Discovery and Hyperlocal Information

• Around Me - find business near your location by biz type
• Banjo - delivers trending news and events near you
• Field Trip - runs in background, when users get to interesting places (e.g. business, sight) a pop-up appears with details (I'm not sure how "interesting" is defined however)
• Findery - place annotations and photos to encourage exploration
• Google Maps -  comprehensive maps plus proximal business search and recommendations
• Star Chart - identifies user position to view astronomical information via augmented reality view
• Tagwhat - hyperlocal info about nearby places
• Twitter - tweet or search for tweets within a specified area or by hashtag
• Weather Channel - geotargetted weather forecasts

Location-based Games

• Friendly Fire - military themed game using own's hometown as battle headquarters
• Geocaching - use your mobile device to uncover hidden caches - c:geo is a free, open-source equivalent
• Ingress - physical world as site of collaborative science fiction competition
• Parallel Kingdom - massive multiplayer online game that uses real world as setting for fantasy game
• Tiny Tycoons - claim real places to compete for game riches/li>

Navigation and Transportation

• Gata Hub - taxi-hailing app; uses positioning to identify pick up location and near cabs - similar to Hailo
• SitOrSquat - find nearby bathrooms with user reviews of their cleanliness by Charmin (genius marketing effort and I must say the most useful apps!)
• Uber - find a private driver, arrange pick-up spot, and track the car's location
• Waze - community-based traffic and navigation app

Personal Efficiency and Organization

• Checkmark 2 - proximal task reminder service (Apple only)
• Matchbook - facilitates bookmarking and viewing businesses one wants to visit (Apple only)

Social Recommendation and Navigation

• Foursquare - proximal business recommendations & reviews from friends and others users (check-in feature now moved to Swarm)
• Yelp - user-generated local reviews combined with local search engine
• Zomato (formerly Urbanspoon) - location based restaurant recommendations

Travel and Place Guides

• Gogobot - travel tips from friends & other users
• TouristEye - travel planning, destination tips, and nearby search from Lonely Planet
• LiveTrekker - aggregate, share and map your digital media
• RoadTripper - a travel guide for off-the-beaten path explorers
• TimeOut - travel guide apps for major cities and tourist hot-spots with proximal recommendations
• Trover - geotagged travel photos and stories
• TripAdvisor - get the leading travel website's user generated content on your mobile with proximity search

Let me know if I missed one of your favourites. And consider helping me out with my study. Read more participating in the study on my research site.

Returning to Toronto's Tech Centre for Mobile HCI Conference

I spent much of this week at a tech conference at the Hyatt hotel on Toronto's King Street near Toronto. I haven't been to this hotel for many years, since the height of the dot.com era. The hotel was a Holiday Inn back then. There wasn't much else of note in this area except parking lots and a few restaurants. Back then this former "fashion district" was increasingly populated by tech startups filling the old smallrise buildings left by banished furriers.

The first two jobs I had in the tech sector were within a few blocks of the hotel so we had all-staff meetings at the hotel a few times. Where TIFF is now was a parking lot that I shortcutted through to work.

A business association formed in this area, called SpadinaBus, to foster the nascent Internet sector companies and workers. Pre dot.bomb there were big events and great tech work being done within about 10 blocks of this area. SpadinaBus reached its last stop in the early 2000s along with the Internet crash. Since then Toronto's tech sector (and Canada even) has become decentralized (and less extravagant in their parties).

Now I'm back here for an international tech conference and it was both strange and nostalgic.

The conference was Mobile HCI, an ACM conference about front-end mobile innovation. I volunteered at the conference so I didn't get to attend many sessions, but there were some excellent work. It was the best organized (and cattered) academic conference I have ever attended (which made conference volunteering actually a pleasant experience for the first time).

As with many academic conferences, the presenters are not the most engaging (to put it mildly and politely). I would also have liked to see more of an emphasis on the human dimensions of innovations presented - i.e. more "H" of "HCI". I also think that there needs to be a better mix of methodology - more qualatative data would have helped demonstrated the value and dimensions of the innovations presented.

The conference papers are made available freely for a year. Here are the proceedings.

There was an insipring keynote, Collective Mobile Interaction in Urban Spaces,  by Amahl Hazelton of Moment Factory from Quebec, outlining his organization work of digital, multimedia art and entertainment installations.

Here are my favourite work presented at the conference (with a link to the paper).

• Identity, Identification & Identifiability: The Language of Self-presentation on a Location-based Mobile Dating App by Birnholtz, Fitzpatrick, Handel & Brubaker


• Understanding Localness of Knowledge Sharing: A Study of Naver KiN 'Here'
  by Park, Kim, Lee, & Ackerman


• Was It Worth the Hassle?: Ten Years of Mobile HCI Research Discussions on Lab and Field Evaluations by Kjeldskov & Skov


• ReviewCollage: A Mobile Interface for Direct Comparison Using Online Reviews by Jin, Sakai, & Yatani
• Polly: "Being There" Through the Parrot & a Guide by Kratz, Kimber, Su, Gordon, & Severns
• Narratives: Geolocative Cinema Application by Nagler, Hicks, Hackett, & Zachkarko

The highlight for me, however, was the workshop lead by Martha Ladly on locative mapping and geo-targetted storytelling - as I covered in my blog post, Putting Toronto on the Locative Map, earlier this week.

It was great to hear about some inspiring work happening in my field and returning to the site where my tech career began.

Foursquare Loses Me

After hearing awhile ago that one of my favourite mobile apps, Foursquare, would me splitting into two I was not eager for the changes.  I'm not normally one who hates all changes to their favourite apps. (Every time Facebook makes any change I can anticipate the tiresome complaints from the regular suspects.)

I was an early adopter and continual user of Foursquare and blogged a lot about them. For those not familiar with Foursquare - or who checked it out when it launched and then forgot about it - Foursquare is a leader in location-based services and geosocial networking.  Since its launch, people could virtually indicate their presence at a physically location through the service. Users could also add associated public reviews or share status updates for one's friends.  The app made it easy to see where your friends were and to find nearby places and business of interest.

Earlier this month, Foursquare announced they would be splitting these services into two apps. A new app, Swarm, would be launched for geosocial networking and the Foursquare app would maintain social recommendation features.

I acknowledge that many of the gaming and title features that initially drove usage through novelty - the mayorships of places and humourous badges based on check-ins - were no longer compelling. There were occasional real-world benefits - in my years of using Foursquare I got a free gelato and a 10% discount on concessions from my local cinema. Ben Heyman addresses Foursquare and other app's challenges with pointless gamification, Foursquare Committed Suicide, Signaling the End of the Gamification Fad.

But it wasn't all about that. And, I still believe Foursquare had unique value

It's great as a place diary. I enjoying recording and sharing with my friends any interesting places I was at or any interesting commentary I had. Not everything merits publishing on Facebook or Twitter.

I also liked the ability to explore the world around me. It's great to find out if there are businesses near to me that my friends or other users like. But I enjoy the social and unofficial histories of normal and special places that Foursquare offered. Foursquare also had lists that enabled social, place-based curation that was also great. Granted, the app Findery is doing this better, but they have only recently launched an app (iPhone only) and it has not hit a critical mass that gives it vitality or stickiness.

I liked how Foursquare had all these features in one place. I loved how it was an app where the central feature is place. This allows a different view of the world than other apps entail. It grounds us to our place, while opening up our world to our social network.

I understood why Foursquare needed to change to keep their massive number of users, however. Matthew Panzarino wrote an excellent article on this for TechCrunch, Foursquare’s Swarm And The Rise Of The Invisible App. He argues that as smartphone media have become more mature we have transitioned from replicated prior technology to multi-purpose apps that offerred a plethora of features (such as Foursquare). In the era of people ever-increasing number of apps and ever-dwindling free time, we are now seeing a new era of apps,

These ‘invisible apps’ are less about the way they look or how many features they cram in and more about maximizing their usefulness to you without monopolizing your attention.... A confluence of factors have made these kinds of context-aware apps possible at this point in time. Increasing power efficiency in physical memory and device processors has led to better battery life

 Today, I tried out the new app Swarm and a sneak-peak of the new Foursquare (the old interface is being grandfathered out).

Swarm is definitely easy-to-use and seems great at what it does - geosocial networking. Swarm has features Foursquare didn't have, such as social coordination tools (helps you plan a semi-spontaneous events with your circle), auto check-in options, and better friend geo-tracking displays. The ability to set Swarm to check you into places automatically is key to its utility as Wired has identified. There are also some "sticker" features that I seem like glorified emoticons. But the place check-in is central to the app, as it was with Foursquare. One can check into a place manually in the same way as one did before on Foursquare. Once checked into a place Swarm is linking to Foursquare for friends' and other users' reviews.

Swarm is cool, but aimed at the party crowd (which I am not one any more - okay I never was).  There are (or rather were) many apps that did this. Perhaps, Foursquare's large number or users and slick interface will help it succeed where others have failed.

Downloading Swarm is super quick and easy. Foursquare is automatically porting user's data to Swarm. It makes transferring to the new app easy.  So from that standpoint the split is handled well, but some people might not like their data ported to another app without their permission (or knowledge).

The old Foursquare app will become essentially just a social and proximity recommendation app for businesses and sites pretty much just like Yelp or Yellow Pages' app. With the geosocial networking features largely removed from Foursquare, it seems like the only reason to use it would be when one wants to get a recommendation for a nearby business or site with one's friends reviews getting special status. Foursquare long ago buried their lists features to the point that it is impossible to find other users lists.

So now Foursquare becomes a passive tool for searching for proximal info. I get that local search and advertising is a potentially lucrative market for much-needed revenue for the company. It's definitely a useful feature, which I will no doubt use occasionally. But unless I'm travelling, I don't visit very many new areas. And when I do go somewhere new and special, I am not going to use two apps. Foursquare used to be the app that made place a single, pivotal focus. By splitting its focus, it adds up to less than the sum of its original parts.

Social Georeferencing - Bring Content Into the Field

I recently presented at the conference Handheld Librarian 9. (No, the conference is not about lilliputian librarians who you carry around to help your daily information-seeking needs with obligatory hushing panache - it's about the use of mobile devices in public and academic libraries).

I presented on social georeferencing - a term I may have coined years ago - to denote online, collaborative efforts to identify relevant location(s) contained in information objects. It would be tremendously useful if more content was not available via mobile devices, but also accessible via location-based services as I will discuss.

Summary:
My survey and ethnographic research has shown people value geographically relevant information. Yet the current mechanisms of libraries to georeference information through automation or manual effort are often not sufficient. Current projects, however, provide a model of online, collaborative tools to allow average people to georeference material. This crowdsourcing model of social georeferencing is not only scalable but also allows people to determine the places of information that they find meaningful.

My short presentation introduces core concepts and presents examples of existing social georeferencing. Recommendations and caveats to launch such projects are offerred. The goal is to engage the public in helping make existing digital information available in the field.

Slide deck:



Geographic relevance and location-based services
Locative functionality is the killer app of smartphones and tablets. According to a Pew 2012 study, ¾ of Americans have used a location-based service (LBS). Location-based services, (a term sometimes used interchangeably with locative media) are mobile apps that deliver content and customizes user experience based on a user’s physical location. (For more definitions of key terms, see my post on geo-terminology.)

The concept of geographic relevance is crucial as it is the ability of mobile devices to provide this that delivers the value proposition of LBS. Geographic relevance is a type of information relevance. There are various types of geographic relevance, but the one that users really care about is proximity - that is the degree to which the locations referenced in the information objects match the physical location of the user. Generally, but not always, the more precise the match, the better.


Over the past couple years, I've conducted two studies – a survey and an ethnography – on people's use of LBS. In the survey, I found many respondents (86%) reported using their device to access at least one locative functionality in the past month. The results are dated now, so I expect these figures would be higher. At the high end, 84% reported finding proximal businesses or services, reading local news (74%), finding nearby sites (67%), reading information about their location (66%), and 20% reading the history of the location they were in. Overall, I found that users appreciated the geographically relevant info they could get via LBS but wanted more information and more types of it.

To achieve this though, there are several challenges. Digitizing content and licensing is not the least of them. So assuming the content is digitized and available via mobiles, it needs to have geographic metadata indicating its target location – normally done by providing longitude and latitude coordinates. (There are fields for geographic metadata in the Marc and Dublin Core standards).

Georeferencing
When you create content in an LBS, such as Foursquare, Waze or Google Local, the location coordinates are automatically appended. But for non-native info, it needs to have the geographic coordinates added to be able to be positioned via an LBS. From my experience, the geographic metadata available in a lot of library records refers to the source geography – such as the publisher's location – or has classifications often at a country or region level, which is too broad for LBS.

I use the term georeference to refer to the practice of adding geographic metadata to information objects, whether the objects are visual (e.g., maps, photographs) or text. I use the term geotagging to refer to users applying a folksonomy tag to an information object – which I'll talk about later. Others use these terms in different ways, however.

Coming from a city with a notorious mayor who has been less than supportive of public libraries, I'm aware of the financial pressures on libraries, so proposing any project requiring significant labour costs is not a great idea. There has been some excellent work on creating automated solutions to georeferencing textual content ( see research on the topic. I'm not convinced, however, that machines can not only detect locations in text with all its associated challenges of resolving place ambiguity (which Springfield, U.S.A.?), homographs (e.g. mobile device vs. Mobile, Alabama), and fuzzy boundaries (where precisely is "downtown" in any city), but more importantly determine which locations mentioned are used in a meaningful or relevant manner. For this, there really is no substitute for human involvement as people are best able to determine meaning.

I believe social georeferencing can provide a suitable and scalable method to achieve this goal.

Social georeferencing
Googling the term "social georeferencing", I didn't find any other websites using the term. I realize that the tech industry doesn't need yet another neologism, but in this case I think it does offer a new way to think of an emerging practice. I define social georeferencing as collaborative efforts using digital media methods to identify the pertinent locations contained within information objects. It is a form of social media and shares a focus on users creating digital content.

I'm aware of two main ways people can currently georeference information online: 1) geotagging or 2) plotting on map. The photo website Flickr provides an example of both map plotting and tags (links go to my photo collections).

Geotagging
As I mentioned earlier, I use the term geotagging to mean the practice of users adding place-specific tags, which are user-generated keywords or short phrases that describe or summarize content. Geotags may better capture the place-names people actually use when searching for information. Tags, however are not without problems as I have previously written about issues related to folksonomies.

Plotting on a map involves either pinning a digital object onto a map or indicating boundary lines via an online map interface. An example of this type of project was recently conducted by the British Library. They asked the public to contribute by georeferencing some of their collections of old maps. (When maps are digitized they are just an image file, they need to have coordinates identified.) The British Library used an online tool developed by Klokan wherein users correlated parts of the historic maps with points on an online map. In seven weeks ending January 2014, a round of the project was completed with 2700 maps georeferenced. The library elaborates on the project:

Through georeferencing, the selected map images were spatially enabled, making them geographically searchable and able to be visualised using geospatial tools and combined with other maps online. All georeferenced maps are added to the portal Old Maps Online, which uses a geographic search interface to identify and view historic maps from numerous collections online. The output of this work may also be viewed using the BL Georeferencer interactive map and directly from the Online Gallery map pages.

Determining and discussing locations
I encountered another online way of involving the public in georeferencing with the OurOntario project. OurOntario was a collaborative project with libraries and museums across Ontario. It helped organizations digitize and share local history collections. Each information object (such as a photograph, newspaper article, or artifact) has their own webpage, which enables the public to add their comments. I saw users on this site using the comments to discern the specific location of old, historic photographs (often not an easy task). Once a location has been established via the public, the administrators could then add the geographic metadata to the record.

Integration with existing online interfaces
Providing a method for the public to directly edit the online catalogues may not be viable or recommended. But there are ways to combine the public's efforts with existing catalogues as has been done with user data created from user of the book website LibraryThing. LibraryThing is example of easy-to-use, social tool people use to describe, tag, rate, and share information.  Existing projects have successfully combined LibraryThing’s user-generated content with library catalogues - see LibraryThing for Libraries page.
Caveats

• Quality and accuracy of public’s work
• Malicious hijacking
• Exploitation of free labour
• Creating and managing an online, collaborative system is time-consuming 
• Maintaining public (and internal) interest in project

Encouraging Participation

• Offer incentives and prizes
• Determine and reward “super users” (i.e. normally a handful of users who create the bulk of content)
• Give credit for contributions
• Promote with social media
• Engaging user experience (including gamification) 

Conclusion
Naturally, with any such projects there are costs and concerns related to the setting-up and maintaining the necessary infrastructure and to overseeing and encouraging people's efforts. The benefits of social georeferencing include providing an affordable and scalable solution, resolving toponym problems related to accuracy or ambiguity, and it provides a social, viral project to engage one's community. Once completed, such efforts will help make static information accessible in the field where and when it is relevant and useful to people.

Key Literature on Locative Media & Location-Based Services

In the last few months, there has been a lot more academic literature published on locative media. There used to be so little academic, trade, or popular literature on the topic that it was easy to keep a handle on everything. But as the field matures, the volume of coverage grows.

Over the past two weeks, I've been updating my literature review on the topic. My focus is the content, user-experience, and adoption. I made a timeline of the key literature (below) to get a sense of the key scholars and when the concept has entered various domains (e.g. popular magazines, conferences, encyclopedias, dissertations, specialized journals, etc.). I've thrown in my articles to get some attention to my neglected work.

Bibliography of early, key, and my literature on locative media. The list is chronological order by year then by author surname:

1999
Finnish Phone Maker Intros GPS/GSM Navigation Phone. (1999). Global Positioning & Navigation News, 9(21), 1.

Russell, B. (1999). Headmap Manifesto. Retrieved from http://tecfa.unige.ch/~nova/headmap-manifesto.pdf

Tanikawa, M. (1999, July 26). A high-tech wonder that helps you wander. Time. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/ASIANOW/time/asia/travel_watch/990726.html

2002
Cohn, M. (2002). It’s all about location. Internet World, 8(6), 44–46.

Hodes, T. D. (2002). Discovery and adaptation for location-based services (Doctoral dissertation). University of California, Berkeley.


2003
Adams, P. M., Ashwell, G. W. B., & Baxter, R. (2003). Location-based services - An overview of the standards. BT Technology Journal, 21(1), 34–43.

Cuff, D. (2003). Immanent domain: Pervasive computing and the public realm. Journal of Architectural Education, 57(1), 43–49.

Kaasinen, E. (2003). User needs for location-aware mobile services. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 7(1), 70–79.

O’Donovan, C. (2003). Murmurings: An interview with members of the [murmur] collective. Year Zero One Forum, (12). Retrieved from http://www.year01.com/archive/forum/issue12/caitlin.html

Rao, B., & Minakakis, L. (2003). Evolution of mobile location-based services. Communications of the ACM, 46(12), 61.


2004
Gibbs, M. (2004). Locative media. Art Monthly, (280), 40–40.

Hemment, D. (2004, January 4). The locative dystopia. nettime.org. Retrieved from http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/30831

Lima, P. (2004, September 2). It’s all about location, location, location. Backbone Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.backbonemag.com/Magazine/New_Developments_07060609.asp

Tuters, M. (2004). Locative media as the digital production of nomadic space. Geography, 89(1), 78–82.


2005
Küpper, A. (2005). Location-based services: Fundamentals and operation. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.


2006
Chang, M., & Goodman, E. (2006). Asphalt games: Enacting place through locative media. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 14(3-4). Retrieved from http://www.leoalmanac.org/leonardo-electronic-almanac-volume-14-no-3-4-june-july-2006/

Galloway, A., & Ward, M. (2006). Locative media as socialising and spatializing practice. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 14(3-4). 

Hemment, D. (2006). Locative media. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 14(3-4). Retrieved from http://www.leoalmanac.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Guest-Editorial-by-Drew-Hemment-Leonardo-Electronic-Almanac.pdf

Kraan, A. (2006). To act in public through geo-annotation social encounters through locative media art. Open, 11. Retrieved from http://www.skor.nl/article-2883-en.html

Manovich, L. (2006). The poetics of augmented space. Visual Communication, 5(2), 219–240.

Mccullough, M. (2006). On urban markup: Frames of reference in location models for participatory urbanism. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 14(3-4).

Shirvanee, L. (2006). Locative viscosity: Traces of social histories in public space. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 14(3-4).

Townsend, A. (2006). Locative-media artists in the contested-aware city. Leonardo, 39(4), 345–347.

Tuters, M., & Varnelis, K. (2006). Beyond locative media: Giving shape to the Internet of Things. Leonardo, 39(4), 357–363. doi:10.1162/leon.2006.39.4.357

Tuters, M., & Varnelis, K. (2006). Beyond locative media. In Networked Publics. Retrieved from http://networkedpublics.org/locative_media/beyond_locative_media

Wang, J., & Canny, J. (2006). End-user place annotation on mobile devices. In CHI ’06 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (p. 1493). Montréal, PQ.


2007
Blume, H. (2007, August 19). Q&A with William Gibson. The Boston Globe. Retrieved from http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/19/qa_with_william_gibson/

Crang, M., & Graham, S. (2007). Sentient cities: Ambient intelligence and the politics of urban space. Information, Communication & Society, 10(6), 789.

Ludford, P. J., Priedhorsky, R., Reily, K., & Terveen, L. (2007). Capturing, sharing, and using local place information. In Proc. of the SIGCHI Conf. on Human Factors in Comp. Systems (pp. 1235–1244). New York, NY, ACM.

May, A., Bayer, S. H., & Ross, T. (2007). A survey of “young social” and “professional” users of location-based services in the UK. Journal of Location Based Services, 1(2), 112–132.

Paay, J., & Kjeldskov, J. (2007). A gestalt theoretic perspective on the user experience of LBS. In Proc. of the 2007 Australasian Comp.-Human Interaction Conf. (pp. 283–290). Adelaide, Australia.

Raper, J., Gartner, G., Karimi, H., & Rizos, C. (2007). Applications of LBS: A selected review. Journal of Location Based Services, 1(2), 89.

Raper, J., Gartner, G., Karimi, H., & Rizos, C. (2007). A critical evaluation of LBS and their potential. Journal of Location Based Services, 1(1), 5–45.

Vollrath, C. (2007). The uncanny impulse of locative media. In International Communication Association.


2008
Barkhuus, L., Brown, B., Bell, M., Sherwood, S., Hall, M., & Chalmers, M. (2008). From awareness to repartee: Sharing location within social groups. In Proceedings of the 26th Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 497–506). New York, NY: ACM.

Bridwell, S. (2008). Location-based services (LBS). In (K.Kemp, Ed.) Encyclopedia of geographic information science. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Erickson, I. M. (2008). On location: Socio-locative broadcasting as situated rhetorical action (Doctoral dissertation). Stanford University, CA.

Ladly, M. J. (2008). Designing for mobile: A walk in the park. Canadian Journal of Communication, 33(3).

Licoppe, C., & Inada, Y. (2008). Geolocalized technologies, location-aware communities, and personal territories: The Mogi case. Journal of Urban Technology, 15(3), 5.

Rizopoulos, C., Charitos, D., Kousompolis, D., & Kaimakamis, N. (2008). Towards a theoretical model of communication via locative media use. 2008 IET 4th International Conference on Intelligent Environments, 1–8.

Veronesi, F.,& Gemeinboeck, P. (2009). Mapping footprints: A sonic walkthrough of landscapes and cultures. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 15(3), 359–369.

Wilde, E., & Kofahl, M. (2008). The locative web. In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Location and the Web (pp. 1–8). Beijing, China.


2009
Brimicombe, A.,& Li, C. (2009). Location-based services and geo-information engineering. Chichester, UK: Wiley.

Edwardes, A. J. (2009). Geographical perspectives on location for location based services. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Location and the Web (pp. 1–4). Boston, MA.

Farman, J. (2009). Locative life: Geocaching, mobile gaming, and embodiment. In Proceedings of the Digital Arts and Culture.

Gay, G. (2009). Context-aware mobile computing: Affordances of space, social awareness, and social influence. Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics, 2(1), 1–62. 

Harrison, B., & Dey, A. (2009). What have you done with location-based services lately? IEEE Pervasive Computing, 8(4), 66–70.

Prehofer, C. (2009). Real-world experiences with indoor location based services. In Proceedings of the 2009 international conference on Pervasive services (p. 143). London, UK. 


2010
Beaumont, C. (2010, June 4). Foursquare blocked in China. The Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/7802992/Foursquare-blocked-in-China.html

Berry, M., & Hamilton, M. (2010). Mobile computing applications: Bluetooth for local voices. Journal of Urban Technology, 17(2), 37.

de Souza e Silva, A., & Frith, J. (2010). Locative mobile social networks: mapping communication and location in urban spaces. Mobilities, 5(4), 485–505.

de Souza e Silva, A.,& Frith, J. (2010). Locational privacy in public spaces: Media discourses on location-aware mobile technologies. Communication, Culture & Critique, 3(4), 503–525.

Lemos, A. (2010). Post-mass media functions, locative media, and informational territories: New ways of thinking about territory, place, and mobility in contemporary society. Space & Culture, 13(4), 403–420.

Levy, S. (2010, August). A sense of place. Wired, 18(8), 60.

Schwarzer, M. (2010, June 8). Sense of place, a world of augmented reality. Design Observer Group. Retrieved from http://places.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=13618

Speed, C. (2010). Developing a sense of place with locative media: An “underview effect.” Leonardo, 43(2), 169–174.

Van Lammeren, R., & Goossen, M. (2010). Interactive location-based services: problems and perspectives on the example of a cultural site. Journal of Location Based Services, 4(2), 105. 

Zickuhr, K., & Smith, A. (2010). 4% of online Americans use location-based services. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Location-based-services.aspx



2011
Cornelio, G. S., & Ardévol, E. (2011). Practices of place-making through locative media artworks. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 36(3), 313–333.

Cramer, H., Rost, M., & Holmquist, L. E. (2011). Performing a check-in: Emerging practices, norms and “conflicts” in location-sharing using foursquare. In Proceedings of the 13th Intl. Conf. on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (pp. 57–66). New York, NY: ACM.

Evans, L. (2011). Location-based services: Transformation of the experience of space. Journal of Location Based Services, 1–19.

Farrelly, G. (February 28, 2011). Pondering effects of Foursquare. Backbone Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.backbonemag.com/Backblog/pondering-effects-of-foursquare.aspx

de Souza e Silva, A., & Sutko, D. (2011). Theorizing locative technologies through philosophies of the virtual. Communication Theory, 21(1), 23–42.

Gazzard, A. (2011). Location, location, location: Collecting space and place in mobile media. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 17(4), 405–417.

Gemeinboeck, P. (2011). Urban fictions: a critical reflection on locative art and performative geographies. Digital Creativity, 22(3), 160–173.

Greenspan, B. (2011). The new place of reading: Locative media and the future of narrative. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 5(3). Retrieved from http://digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/5/3/000103/000103.html

Humphreys, L., & Liao, T. (2011). Mobile geotagging: Reexamining our interactions with urban space. Journal of Computer‐Mediated Communication, 16(3), 407–423. 

Lapenta, F. (2011). Geomedia: On location-based media, the changing status of collective image production and the emergence of social navigation systems. Visual Studies, 26(1), 14–24.

Les liens invisibles. (2011, April 24). Invisible pink unicorn: Art overtakes faith in imagination. Retrieved from http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org

Lindqvist, J., Cranshaw, J., Wiese, J., Hong, J., &  Zimmerman, J. (2011). I’m the mayor of my house. In Proceedings of the Conf. on Human Factors in Comp. Systems (p. 2409). Vancouver, BC: ACM.

Lovlie, A. S. (2011). Annotative locative media and G-P-S: Granularity, participation, and serendipity. Computers and Composition, 28(3), 246–254.

Microsoft. (2011). Location based services usage and perceptions survey presentation. Retrieved from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=0e52758c-3ab8-49b6-9d84-20cc53c2c308#QuickDetails

Mountain, D. (2011). From LBS to location-based learning: Challenges and opportunities for higher education. In D. Unwin, N. Tate, K. Foote, & D. DiBiase (Eds.), Teaching Geographic Information Science & Technology in Higher Education (p. 327–). Wiley

Schwartz, M. (2011, April). It’s good to be the mayor. MIT Technology Review. Retrieved from http://www.technologyreview.com/web/32403

Sutko, D., & de Souza e Silva, A. (2011). Location-aware mobile media and urban sociability. New Media & Society, 13(5), 807–823.

Zickuhr, K., & Smith, A. (2011). 28% of American adults use mobile and social location-based services. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Location.aspx


2012
Bilandzic, M. (2012). A review of locative media, mobile and embodied spatial interaction. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 70(1), 66–71.

Farman, J. (2012). Mobile interface theory: Embodied space and locative media. New York, NY: Routledge.

Farrelly, G. (2012). The role of location-based services in shaping sense of place. In Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 49(1), 1–3.

Frith, J. H. (2012). Constructing location, one check-in at a time: Examining the practices of Foursquare users (Doctoral dissertation). North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC.

Oie, K. V. (2012). Sensing the news: User experiences when reading locative news. Future Internet, 4(1), 161–178.

Smith, C. E. (2012). Checking in: A phenomenological study of active users of geolocational tagging services. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 49(1), 1–5.

Southern, J. (2012). Comobility: How proximity and distance travel together in locative media. Canadian Journal of Communication, 37(1), 75–91.

TNS. (2012). Two thirds of world’s mobile users signal they want to be found. London, UK. Retrieved from http://www.tnsglobal.com/press-release/two-thirds-world%E2%80%99s-mobile-users-signal-they-want-be-found

Tan, C.., Khan, M. S. Z., Silvadorai, T., Anwar, T., & Ramadass, S. (2012). A glimpse into the Research Space of LBS. Journal of Advances in Information Technology, 3(2), 91–106.

Tussyadiah, I. P., &  Zach, F. J. (2012). The role of geo-based technology in place experiences. Annals of Tourism Research, 39(2), 780–800.

Vasconcelos, M. A., Ricci, S., Almeida, J., Benevenuto, F., & Almeida, V. (2012). Tips, dones and todos: uncovering user profiles in Foursquare. In Proceedings of the 5th ACM Itnl. Conf. on Web Search & Data Mining (pp. 653–662). New York, NY: ACM.

Wilken, R., & Goggin, G. (Eds.). (2012). Mobile Technology and Place. New York, NY: Routledge.

Zeffiro, A. (2012). location of one’s own: A genealogy of locative media, A. Convergence, 18(3), 249–266.

Zickuhr, K. (2012). Three-quarters of smartphone owners use location-based services. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Location-based-services.aspx


2013
Boulton, A. (2013, January 1). Locative media, augmented realities and the ordinary American landscape (Doctoral dissertation). University of Kentucky, Lexington. Retrieved from http://uknowledge.uky.edu/geography_etds/5

Boulton, A., & Zook, M. (2013). Landscape, locative media, and the duplicity of code. In N. C. Johnson, R. H. Schein, & J. Winders (Eds.), The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Cultural Geography (pp. 437–451). Wiley.

Evans, L. (2013, March). Revealing place in the sprawl: A phenomenological investigation into location-based social networking (Doctoral dissertation). Swansea University, UK.

Farrelly, G. (2013). Putting locative technology in its sense of place. In 2013 IEEE International Symposium on Technology &Society, (pp. 237–242).

Frith, J. (2013). Turning life into a game: Foursquare, gamification, and personal mobility. Mobile Media & Communication, 1(2), 248–262.

Graaf, S. van der, & Vanobberghen, W. (2013). At home in Brussels: Professional mobility as a service. First Monday, 18(11). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4951

Humphreys, L., & Liao, T. (2013). Foursquare and the parochialization of public space. First Monday, 18(11).

Lodi, S. (2013). Spatial art: An eruption of the digital into the physical. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 19(2). Retrieved from http://www.leoalmanac.org/vol19-no2-spatial-art

Nitins, T., &; Collis, C. (2013). “Grounding the internet”: Categorising the geographies of locative media. Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy, (146), 69+.

Pinder, D. (2013). Dis-locative arts: mobile media and the politics of global positioning. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 27(4), 523–541.

Schianchi, A. (2013). Location-based virtual interventions: transcending space through mobile augmented reality as a field for artistic creation. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 19(2), 112–124.

Sharples, M., FitzGerald, E., Mulholland, P., & Jones, R. (2013). Weaving location and narrative for mobile guides. In C. Schrøder & K. Drotner (Eds.), Museum Communication & Social Media: The Connected Museum (pp. 177–196). New York, NY: Routledge. 

Zickuhr, K. (2013). Location-based services. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2013/Location/Overview/Main-findings.aspx


2014
Evans, L. (2014). Being-towards the social: Mood and orientation to location-based social media, computational things and applications. New Media & Society.

Farrelly, G. Irreplaceable: The role of geotargetted place information in a location based service. Journal of Location Based Services.

Hjorth, L., & Pink, S. (2014). New visualities and the digital wayfarer: Reconceptualizing camera phone photography and locative media. Mobile Media & Communication, 2(1), 40–57.

Please let me know if I missed a key work...

Creating Counter Maps & Shared Geographies with Locative Media

Three months ago, I switched my PhD advisor and with it comes a new direction in my work.  My focus is still on locative media and sense of place (as with my prior research and publishing on this topic). But now I'm looking at how people are using the features of locative media (a.k.a location-based services) to define their own place, share this with others (i.e. friends or the public) and thereby shape their sense of place.

As this is a new angle on the topic, I'd love to hear people's feedback. Below is a summary of the major strands in my current work:

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Having a relationship to the places we encounter and inhabit is considered a foundational human experience (Heidegger, 1996). As we interact and learn about places, we bestow meaning on such places, forming the mental concept of a sense of place (Tuan, 1976; Relph, 1977). Scholars have examined how various factors, such as individual attitudes, memories, values, interests and aesthetic sensibility shape how individuals form a sense of place (Steele, 1981). Sense of place is more than merely perception of physical stimuli and a conception of place as a meaningful location; it can be an embodied and metaphysical experience, shaping our notions of existence in the world.

For over forty years, scholars have discussed the conditions of modern life that make establishing or maintaining a positive sense of place difficult. Two of the main threats are considered to be contemporary urban planning and architecture (Jacobs, 1992; Relph, 1976) and international and domestic migrations (Connerton, 2009). Connerton (2009) and Farham (2012) argue that a deeper knowing of a place assists in forming a sense of place, yet various forces have resulted in people either forgetting or never knowing information about places that would aid in forming sense of place.

Humans have created and used information about places since prehistory, whether in the form of crude maps drawn in the sand or cave drawings of hunting grounds, to guide their experiences and knowledge of the world (Garfield, 2012; Jacob, 2006). Yet the information about locations that are readily available has often been hegemonic (Bidwell & Winschiers-Theosphilus, 2012; Farham, 2012; Thompson, 2007). The production and distribution of geographic information has been restricted for centuries as a means to control the masses (Crampton, 2008; Harley, 2001; Monmonier, 1996). In addition, map-making has traditionally been a professional activity, dominated by an elite with specialized training and credentials and access to necessary software and data (Tulloch, 2007)

Social critics such as Debord have been critical of such hegemonic control over place information and representation, noting that officials create a false notion amongst the public that the places they encounter are void of meaning: “On this spot nothing will ever happen, and nothing ever has” (Debord, 1983, p. 177). Debord asserts that forces of power attempt to create apathy in citizens by denuding spaces of their meaning. Debord and the psychogeographic movement he founded in the 1960s have staged interventions to counter these forces (in the forms of dérives and détournements, see Debord, 1956a and Debord, 1956a). More recently, critical geography scholars have cried for more open and egalitarian access to the power to define our spaces, such as Harvey’s notion of the “the right to the city” (2008), Soja’s “spatial justice” concept (2010), or Kitchen, Linehan, O’Callaghan, and Lawton’s “public geographies” (2013).

Concurrent to hegemonic geographical information, people have continued to produce and share their own accounts and interpretations of places through various means. The advent of open-access geographic data and mapping software (such as Google Earth or OpenStreetMaps) combined with distributed access to the Internet (this suite of resources is often called the “geoweb”, see Corbett, 2013) have made it more feasible for people to create and share their own geographic information. This practice, whether conducted on a desktop computer or a mobile device, can take the form of participatory mapping (Corbett, 2013; Tulloch, 2007) or participatory geographic information systems (Dunn, 2007; Elwood, 2006; Young, 2013). Such participatory efforts can consists not only of adding locations or descriptive data to a map or GIS software, but can also apply to place information, and can take the form of narratives, personal reflections, or imagery related to a given place.

One form of participatory mapping is counter mapping. Counter mapping was inspired by Bunge’s work in the 1970s. Bunge mapped urban poverty in the United States. Scholars using counter mapping took Bunge’s social justice objectives to help marginalized groups argue for territorial or socio-political claims (Rundstrom, 2009). The method involves specialists in cartography, geographic information systems, and/or place-based narratives (e.g. anthropologists, geographers, cartographers) working with groups to define and map their places and routes and to describe their associations and relationships with these places (Rundstrom, 2009). Counter mapping has frequently been conducted to support indigenous people’s land rights claims (e.g., Cooke, 2003; Corbett, 2013; Harrison, 2011; Hodgson, 2002; Peluso, 1995). Recent studies have extended counter mapping to new groups and locales, such as minority children in ghettoized urban locations (Taylor, 2013) and conservation efforts in protected, wilderness areas (Harris, & Hazen, 2006). Taylor’s study appears to be one of the first studies to use mobile devices with GPS in the creation of counter maps.

Conceptually similar to counter maps, but with differing objectives is the concept of shared geographies. The term “shared geographies”, although not a standard term, is used in human geography studies to denote groups sharing and collectively creating information and representations of place (e.g., Barker & Pickerill, 2012; Gatrell, 2002; Taylor, 2009). The degree of sharing and openness can be seen as within a continuum from fully public to privately shared geographies. Barkhuus, Brown, Bell, Sherwood, Hall & Chalmers (2008) elaborate: “Private geographies are the mutual sense of different places that a social group share and which differentiate that group from others. The private geography allows members of a group to draw upon ‘shared in-common’ senses of different places, and what those places mean for the group”. As with Taylor’s study, Barkhuus et al. appear to be one of the first studies to examine how people are using locative technology to create shared geographies.

Geoweb technologies combined with emerging mobile, locative technology are increasingly helping people to capture and preserve a diverse range of information on place, virtually tie it to that place, and broadcast it to others. Although locative media is not without precedent amongst other media forms in this ability, recent scholarship is beginning to identify the unique aspects of locative media. The defining aspect of locative media is its ability to recognize its physical location and customize user experiences and content accordingly (Brimicombe & Li, 2009). Locative media also offers the possibility of a multiplicity of content and of ubiquity of access (Farham, 2013). Schianchi in her work with locative media (2013) identifies two of its unique qualities: 1) its ability to subvert physical laws, such as gravity and portability, and 2) its ability to subvert property laws, such as copyright, territory, and access. Farham has examined how locative media by brining the virtual and physical together for people has created a new form of embodied sense of place (2013). Despite the increasing growth in the use of mobile locative media (Zickuhr, 2012), the role of this technology may have upon our relationships to place has not been fully studied.

Locative media has been shown to provoke new interpretations and relationships with place through creative and playful interaction with place (Hjorth, 2011; Lemos, 2011; McGarrigle, 2010) as well as artistic interventions (Lodi, 2013; Schianchi, 2013). It is also increasingly being seen as a means to counter hegemonic representations (de Souza & Hjorth, 2009, Gazzard, 2011; Hjorth, 2011; Farham, 2012; Lapenta, 2011; Shirvanee, 2006).

Through the creation of shared geographies and counter maps via locative media people are able to create and share their own information and representations of their spaces in powerful and meaningful ways. Such acts may have the potential to shape a person’s relationship to their places and ultimately their sense of place.

This leads to my research questions:

1. How do people use locative media to create counter-maps and shared geographies?
2. How, and in what ways, does such use of locative media affect an individual’s sense of place?

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As I mentioned, I'd love to hear people's reaction to this topic and to get any suggestions for useful literature or groups using locative media in this way.


*****
References

Barker, A. J., & Pickerill, J. (2012). Radicalizing relationships to and through shared geographies: Why anarchists need to understand indigenous connections to land and place. Antipode, 44(5), 1705–1725.

Barkhuus, L., Brown, B., Bell, M., Sherwood, S., Hall, M. & Chalmers, M. (2008). From awareness to repartee: Sharing location within social groups. In Proceedings of the Twenty-sixth Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 497–506). New York, NY: ACM.

Bidwell, N. J., & Winshiers-Theophilus, H. (2012). Extending connections between land and people digitally: Designing with rural Herero communities in Namibia. In E. Giaccardi (Ed.), Heritage and social media: Understanding heritage in a participatory culture (pp. 197–216). New York, NY: Routledge.
Brimicombe, A., & Li, C. (2009). Location-based services and geo-information engineering. Chichester, UK: Wiley.
Connerton, P. (2009). How modernity forgets. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Cooke, F. M. (2003). Maps and counter-maps: Globalised imaginings and local realities of Sarawakʼs plantation agriculture. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 34(2), 265–284.
Corbett, J. (2013). “I don’t come from anywhere”: Exploring the role of the geoweb and volunteered geographic information in rediscovering a sense of place in a dispersed aboriginal community. In D. Sui, S. Elwood, & M. Goodchild (Eds.), Crowdsourcing Geographic Knowledge (pp. 223–241). New York, NY: Springer.
Crampton, J. W. (2008). Will peasants map? Hyperlinks, map mashups, and the future of information. In J. Turow & L. Tsui (Eds.), The hyperlinked society: Questioning connections in the digital age (pp. 206–226). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Debord, G. (1956a). Theory of the dérive. (K. Knabb, Trans.) Situationist International Online. Retrieved from http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/theory.html
Debord, G. (1956b). User’s guide to détournement, a. (K. Knabb, Trans.) Situationist International Online. Retrieved from http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/presitu/usersguide.html
Debord, G. (1983). The society of the spectacle. Detroit, MI: Black and Red.
De Souza e Silva, A., & Hjorth, L. (2009). Playful urban spaces. Simulation & Gaming, 40(5), 602 –625.
Dunn, C. E. (2007). Participatory GIS -- a people’s GIS? Progress in Human Geography, 31(5), 616–637.
Elwood, S. (2006). Critical issues in participatory GIS: Deconstructions, reconstructions, and new research directions. Transactions in GIS, 10(5), 693–708.

Elwood, S. (2010). Geographic information science: Emerging research on the societal implications of the geospatial web. Progress in Human Geography, 34(3), 349–357.

Farman, J. (2012). Mobile interface theory: Embodied space and locative media. New York, NY: Routledge.
Garfield, S. (2012). On the map: A mind-expanding exploration of the way the world looks. New York,  NY: Penguin.
Gatrell, J. D. (2002). Policy spaces: Applying Lefebvrian politics in neo-institutional spaces. Space and Polity, 6(3), 327–342.
Gazzard, A. (2011). Location, location, location: Collecting space and place in mobile media. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 17(4), 405–417.
Harley, J. B. (2001). The new nature of maps : Essays in the history of cartography. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Harrison, R. (2011). “Counter-mapping” heritage, communities and places in Australia and the UK. In J. Schofield & R. Szymanski (Eds.), Local Heritage, Global Context: Cultural Perspectives on Sense of Place (pp. 79–98). Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
Harris, L., & Hazen, H. D. (2006). Power of maps: (Counter)-mapping for conservation. ACME: An International e-Journal for Critical Geographies, 4(1), 99–130.

Harvey, D. (2008). The right to the city. New Left Review, (53), 23–40.

Heidegger, M. (1996). Being and time. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Hjorth, L. (2013).  The place of the emplaced mobile: A case study into gendered locative media practices. Mobile Media & Communication, 1(1), 110–115.

Hodgson, D. L. (2002). Dilemmas of counter-mapping community resources in Tanzania. Development and Change, 33(1), 79–100.
Jacob, C. (2006). The sovereign map. University of Chicago Press.
Jacobs, J. (1992). The death and life of great American cities. New York, NY: Vintage.

Kitchin, R., Linehan, D., O’Callaghan, C., & Lawton, P. (2013). Public geographies through social media. Dialogues in Human Geography, 3(1), 56–72.

Lapenta, F. (2011). Geomedia: On location-based media, the changing status of collective image production and the emergence of social navigation systems. Visual Studies, 26(1), 14–24.

Lemos, A. (2011). Pervasive computer games and processes of spatialization: Informational territories and mobile technologies. Canadian Journal of Communication, 36(2), 277–294.

Lodi, S. (2013). Spatial art: An eruption of the digital into the physical. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 19(2). Retrieved from http://www.leoalmanac.org/vol19-no2-spatial-art/

McGarrigle, C. (2010). The construction of locative situations: Locative media and the Situationist International, recuperation or redux?. Digital Creativity, 21(1), 55–62.

Monmonier, M. S. (1996). How to lie with maps (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Peluso, N. L. (1995). Whose woods are these? Counter-mapping forest territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Antipode, 27(4), 383–406.

Rundstrom, R. (2009). Counter-mapping. In (R. Kitchin & N. Thrift, Eds.) International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Oxford, UK: Elsevier.

Relph, E.  (1976). Place and placelessness. London, UK: Pion.

Taylor, K. (2013). Counter-mapping the neighborhood on bicycles: Mobilizing youth to reimagine the city. Technology, Knowledge and Learning, 18(1-2), 65–93.

Thompson, C. (2007). Smile when you’re lying: Confessions of a rogue travel writer. Ney York, NY: Holt.

Tulloch, D. L. (2007). Many, many maps: Empowerment and online participatory mapping. First Monday, 12(2). Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1620/1535

Schianchi, A. (2013). Location-based virtual interventions: transcending space through mobile augmented reality as a field for artistic creation. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 19(2). Retrieved from http://www.leoalmanac.org/vol19-no2location-based-virtual-interventions/

Shirvanee, L. (2006). Locative viscosity: Traces of social histories in public space. Leonardo Electronic Almanac, 14(3-4). Retrieved from http://www.leoalmanac.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Locative-Viscosity-Traces-Of-Social-Histories-In-Public-Space-Mapping-The-Emerging-Urban-Landscape-Vol-14-No-3-July-2006-Leonardo-Electronic-Almanac.pdf

Soja, E. W. (2010). Seeking spatial justice. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Steele, F. (1981). The sense of place. Boston, MA: CBI Pub.

Taylor, B. (2009). “Place” as prepolitical grounds of democracy: An Appalachian case study in class conflict, forest politics, and civic networks. American Behavioral Scientist, 52(6), 826–845.

Tuan, Y. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Veronesi, F., & Gemeinboeck, P. (2009). Mapping footprints: A sonic walkthrough of landscapes and cultures. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 15(3), 359–369.

Young, J. C. (2013). The spatial politics of affect and emotion in participatory GIS. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(4), 808–823.

Zickuhr, K. (2012). Three-quarters of smartphone owners use location-based services. Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Location-based-services.aspx