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UNL, an Amsterdam-based smart addressing platform for navigation and location-based services, has raised $2 million in seed funding to build the “Internet of Places” and bring the rest of the world’s population into the digital economy.
The round was co-led by fellow Dutch company HERE Technologies, which specialises in mapping and location solutions, and Elev8.vc, a Singapore-based deeptech VC fund. Other investors include Singapore’s SGInnovate, Amsterdam-based Venturerock and the US-headquartered SOSV. The Dutch startup graduated from SOSV’s Mobile Only Accelerator program one year ago.
In a “hyper-location-based economy,” UNL provides anyone with a unique address, making any physical spot a point of sale, delivery and payment. By adding a programmable layer to real-life locations, the startup claims it is building the Internet of Places.
“UNL is a whole new way to think about locations. It’s about economic impact and unlocking places to become the gravity points for location-based services,“ said Xander van der Heijden, CEO and founder of UNL. “And it’s about economic inclusion: bringing four billion unaddressed people into the global digital economy.”
Read full story at TechEU…
first published week of: 03/23/2020
The Sidon Bull’s head, thought to be 2,300 years old, was looted from a government facility in Lebanon more than 40 years ago during that country’s bloody civil war.
By Mapping the Trail of Stolen Antiquities, Coalition Hopes to Restore Cultural Relics to their Origins
Key Takeaways
Conflicts around the world are often funded by the sale of drugs, guns, diamonds, ivory—and antiquities. Often these cultural relics stolen from home countries are purchased unwittingly on the open market, in auction houses, galleries and even online commerce sites. One organization is hard at work to alert buyers and the art market about this growing problem, using maps to broadcast the stories of missing artifacts
Read full story at Esr Blog…
first published week of: 04/13/2020
Apple plots user-submitted business reviews and images plan for Apple Maps in iOS 14.
Driven by Siri and voice first, local search is becoming increasingly important for business, now Apple is finally preparing to introduce new features inside iOS 14’s Maps app that promises to boost the importance of putting your enterprise on the local map.
Photos and reviews are comingWe’ve learned that iOS 14 contains two key enhancements that raise the bar for Maps:
The implications for beautiful outdoor locations and places of interest is evident. In theory, you’ll be able to use Apple’s Look Around feature to check how these places look from the high street, and then explore them more deeply by exploring user submitted images.
At a time when social distancing and lockdowns are likely to become part of modern living, for some of us this may be the only way we can return to some of our most special places for a while.
The implications for business are perhaps greater. Business owners will want to generate those positive user reviews in Google, Yelp and in Apple Maps, as they know good reviews generate business. They will want to populate Maps with images that show their business in a good light.
Read full story at Computerworld…
first published week of: 08/31/2020
On a recent trip to Charleston for vacation, I continued what has by now been a longstanding practice of mine — a reliance on Google Maps to both navigate wherever I travel to (in this case the picturesque South Carolina town) and to do everything from check restaurant and business information, read reviews, and pull up numbers for a quick tap-to-call after I’ve read a bit about them. All from right there within the app that’s become so indispensable to me and millions of other users, never mind that its stated primary purpose is, well, offering navigation data. Apple, meanwhile, is trying hard to make its own mapping product competitive with Google’s, thanks in part to a comprehensive redesign of Apple Maps that was unveiled at the end of January.
The new features that update brought include Collections, which lets Apple Maps users build, save, and share lists of places they want to visit next, landmarks they want to check out on a vacation, and favorite restaurants, among other things. And along those same lines — of rolling out new features that are only barely related to the act of navigating from Point A to Point B — it seems that Apple is also planning to make a new hire as part of expanding editorial content and recommendations offered within Apple Maps.
Read full story at BGR…
first published week of: 03/23/2020
The pivot to privacy is roiling the location-based ad market, calling into question its future direction at a time when people are alert about the collection of their geographic information.
Apple’s iOS 13 update, released in September, includes regular reminders when apps are sucking up a user’s location data. The pop-up gives a user a chance to choose from the following options: allowing data collection at all times, or only when the app is open — or only one time. Four months in, ad tech sources are reporting the result that some observers had predicted: There’s less location data coming from apps.
People have decided to stop their phones’ sharing location data at a universal level Jason Smith, chief business officer at Location Sciences
Right now opt-in rates to share data with apps when they’re not in use are often below 50%, said Benoit Grouchko, who runs the ad tech business Teemo that creates software for apps to collect location data. Three years ago those opt-in rates were closer to 100%, he said. Higher opt-in rates prevailed when people weren’t aware that they even had a choice. Once installed on a phone, many apps would automatically start sharing a person’s location data.
Apple’s latest privacy protection move, however, is making people more aware that they do have a choice about which data is shared. Seven in 10 of the iPhone users tracked by location-verification business Location Sciences downloaded iOS 13 in the six weeks after it first became available, and 80% of those users stopped all background tracking across their devices.
“People have decided to stop their phones’ sharing location data at a universal level,” said Jason Smith, chief business officer at Location Sciences.
Read full story at Digiday…
first published week of: 01/13/2020
( Clarksville Now. All photos by Austin Peay State University )
Austin Peay State University’s GIS Center is leading a statewide effort to produce face shields for medical workers battling the spread of COVID-19 in Tennessee.
The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Center, a stand-alone, self-funded center at APSU uses data to create maps and has worked closely with city and county agencies, the 911 Center, and first responders during times of disaster and crisis.
Gov. Bill Lee asked late last week for contributions, ideas and resources in the coronavirus fight by designing and building a 3D-printed prototype shield.
“Last week I seen news reports about people printing stuff for the coronavirus outbreak. We saw a door handle you can open with your elbow and not your hand. We were testing things,” said Mike Wilson, GIS Center director. ” In the meantime, our president received a call asking what 3-D printers we had. Dr. White thought of us immediately and the university leadership contacted us and we immediately started researching templates and samples and jumped right in.”
Read full story at Clarksville Now.com…
first published week of: 04/06/2020