Apple vs. Google Maps Battle Revs Up Local Search Options
by Jonathan Blum and Alex Dalenberg

In a move meant to compete directly with Google Maps, Apple is expected to come out with its own mobile maps application this fall. This means big changes are in store for how customers will find and learn about your business.

Tech giants are turning maps into location-based experience services. Apple is already bragging that its new maps app will be “the most beautiful, powerful mapping service ever.” It will feature what the company claims will be a new approach to how maps are rendered, including turn–by–turn directions and “Flyover” functions that will blend Google Earth-like capabilities, including 3-D images, with maps.

The expectation is that these tools will become extensions of local search options that smaller firms rely on to be found. Here’s our road map for what to expect from the new mobile maps revolution:

Details Here

first published week of:   09/03/2012

Apple wants to sync iPhone and in-car GPS
by Karen Haslam

If you are frustrated by the inability of your iPhone’s in-built GPS to lock onto satellites and reveal your location accurately, you will be pleased to hear that Apple has been investigating ways to allows your iPhone to sync with your car and use your car’s built in GPS (should it have it).

Apple filed a patent related to syncing an iPhone with a car with the US Patent and Trademark Office in May 2012. The patent refers to sharing location information between the car and iPhone so that features like turn-by-turn navigation can be utilised. It includes the option of tracking your location using the vehicle’s GPS.

The address book information in your iPhone could also be synced with your car, making it easier to program in your destination.

Details Here

first published week of:   09/10/2012

AT&T debuts location–based services application with Digby

When customers walk into one of Maurices’ 800+ stores to check out the latest fashion trends, they can now also check in with their smart phones. The retailer has introduced a new branded mobile app to help them enhance their customer’s in–store shopping experience.

The app, introduced by AT&T and developed using Digby’s Localpoint Mobile Platform, allows the retailer to set virtual perimeters around their stores. Once a customer has the app on their smartphone, and accepts the use of location information, Maurices can send the shopper timely messages and offers via a push notification, alerting the user to noteworthy news about the specific store location as soon as they enter the store. Shoppers can also use the app to scan product barcodes in the store, allowing them to read product descriptions and ratings.

The Maurices app is just one way the retail chain is communicating through their customers’ smartphones. The company has also introduced a new optimized mobile website, making it easier for customers to search, browse and buy via the retailer’s website, on their mobile phones.

Details Here

first published week of:   04/23/2012

BAE Systems’ Navsop navigation system rivals GPS
by Katia Moskvitch, technology reporter, BBC News

A new positioning system has been developed to complement or even replace current technologies such as GPS.

Made by UK defense firm BAE Systems, it relies on the same signals used by mobile phones, TVs, radios and wi-fi rather than navigation satellites.

The firm says Navsop could help find victims inside buildings during a fire and locate stolen vehicles hidden in underground car parks.

It could also be used in a war if the sat–nav system were turned off.

For now, the prototype is a big box-like piece of hardware placed in the back of one of BAE's cars, which sports a radio antenna on the roof.

But once out on the market, it will be as tiny as a GPS dongle is today - a bit bigger than a coin - says Ramsey Faragher, principal scientist at the BAE Advanced Technology Centre in Chelmsford, about 40 miles (60km) north-east of London.

"Let's be clear - for Navsop to start learning, you have to have a GPS signal, to know where you are on the face of the Earth," he says, sitting in the back of the car as it drives along Chelmsford's streets.

"The more the system is used the less it relies on GPS for further learning, and reaches the point where it doesn't need GPS at all to function or to carry on learning about new signals.

"So if the GPS signal disappears, we'll still be able to navigate," he adds, pointing to the computer screen depicting a map with a dotted line showing the vehicle's location.

The device for use in buildings is as small as a smartphone and it works with a tiny radio receiver

The device works by picking up all the available signals nearby, heavily relying on medium wave radio frequencies.

This is the same part of the spectrum used by radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi more than 100 years ago, who opened the world's first wireless telegraph in the same city.

first published week of:   07/02/2012

big data: will it transform your industry?

The top marketing executive at a sizable US retailer recently found herself perplexed by the sales reports she was getting. A major competitor was steadily gaining market share across a range of profitable segments. Despite a counterpunch that combined online promotions with merchandizing improvements, her company kept losing ground.

When the executive convened a group of senior leaders to dig into the competitor’s practices, they found that the challenge ran deeper than they had imagined. The competitor had made massive investments in its ability to collect, integrate, and analyze data from each store and every sales unit and had used this ability to run myriad real–world experiments. At the same time, it had linked this information to suppliers’ databases, making it possible to adjust prices in real time, to reorder hot–selling items automatically, and to shift items from store to store easily. By constantly testing, bundling, synthesizing, and making information instantly available across the organization—from the store floor to the CFO’s office—the rival company had become a different, far nimbler type of business.

Details Here

first published week of:   02/27/2012

Bing Maps adds 165TB of new images of Earth
Doubling down, Bing Maps adds a stockpile of new satellite and photo images that cover 38 million square kilometers of the world.

Bing is now offering 165 terabytes of new birds-eye-view satellite shots of locations all over the Earth, from the Moroccan Mountains to Egypt's pyramids of Giza to the Extraterrestrial Highway in the U.S.

This is Microsoft's mapping engine's largest satellite data release ever. Before today, Bing Map's total amount of data was 129TB. So, what can be seen on the search engine's maps has now more than doubled in size.

“This release features imagery over North America, South America, Africa, Australia, Europe and Asia,” Bing wrote in a blog post today. “The total area covered in this data release is nearly 38 million square kilometers.”

Besides satellite imagery, Global Ortho photography taken from aircrafts or satellites is also included in this release of data. Bing says that as of this month, it completed 100 percent of aerial photography of the U.S. and is planning to finish Europe by the end of the year. The Global Ortho Photography on Bing Maps covers 9.54 million square kilometers.

Details Here

first published week of:   06/25/2012

Volume 31

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