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Blog: Chris Harlow on ITSearch The Harlow Report Archives
Here’s an experiment: The next time you head out to lunch, compare the restaurant’s icon on your mapping application to the location on the door. The odds are that the icon will be at least 20 meters away from the door itself.
For a consumer, that’s not going to stop them from finding lunch. But that margin of error presents a major hurdle for marketers as they look to use location data to not only target ads, but measure their effectiveness as well. The algorithms which marketers use to analyze location cannot tell whether we intended to go to a McDonald’s on the corner or the gym next door.
The good news is that the technology, which smartphones use to determine where we are in the real world, is improving. Here are four trends that will help push location-based services forward in 2015.
Read full story at StreetFight…
first published week of: 09/13/2021
Sears Holding Corporation (SHC) now deploys a wireless field geographic information system (GIS) solution that provides 10,000 SHC home services technicians with an in-vehicle navigation and mapping system. Developed by SHC and ESRI Professional Services, the solution leverages onboard GPS, satellite and terrestrial data communication, verbalized directions, and ruggedized laptop technology that makes available a touch-screen interface.
Known as the Sears Smart Toolbox (SST), the application launches automatically when the ruggedized Itronix laptop, also known as the GoBook, is powered on. The entire suite of technologies runs within an Internet Explorer browser. When the vehicle is stationary, the users have the option to view their daily routes, view their current progress along the route, geocode new stops, and make some modifications to their routes in the local database. When the vehicle begins to move, the mapping component switches into navigation mode and takes over the entire screen of the GoBook. ESRI used ArcObjects software components based on ArcGIS to create the customized wireless field application.
Originl story :Esri; no longer available [well, it has been 16 years]
first published week of: 08/23/2021
Current status of :MacGPS Pro
first published week of: 08/16/2021
For a consumer, that’s not going to stop them from finding lunch. But that margin of error presents a major hurdle for marketers as they look to use location data to not only target ads, but measure their effectiveness as well. The algorithms which marketers use to analyze location cannot tell whether we intended to go to a McDonald’s on the corner or the gym next door.
The good news is that the technology, which smartphones use to determine where we are in the real world, is improving. Here are four trends that will help push location-based services forward in 2015.
1. Smartphones will start to understand places — not just location
In 2014, Apple introduced Visit Monitoring, a feature that allows developers to identify common places in a user’s life and collect more granular information. The feature creates an alternative for developers who want to access a user’s location on a more passive basis. The concept of the passive check-in offers a solution to the problem that geo-fencing was only able to provide approximations for: Namely, where do my consumers go?Developers are still in the early days of figuring out how well passive visit detection works and how ad networks can take advantage of this ‘visit’ point. Mobile advertising networks have struggled to build meaningful attribution models using the local data available on the market today. But the introduction of the so-called “visit data” could change that in coming years.
2. Improved consumer data will put pressure on business POI providers
Several companies have launched SDKs enabling two-to-five-meter location resolution either via Bluetooth or refined GPS. Marketers will use those improved data to better measure whether consumers who saw ads eventually ended up in stores.The shift from a navigation to attribution use case will put pressure on the data companies who sell point-of-interest data. These companies will need to match the accuracy of the location signal to meet the market demand for attributing in-store visits to those they’ve advertised to; proximity will no longer be good enough. continued…
first published week of: 10/11/2021
To aid the safe implementation of automated driving, Toyota is developing a high-precision map generation system that will use data from on-board cameras and GPS devices installed in production vehicles. The new system will go on display at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2016 in Las Vegas, which will run from January 6 through 9.
Toyota's new system uses camera-equipped production vehicles to gather road images and vehicle positional information. This information is sent to data centers, where it is automatically pieced together, corrected and updated to generate high precision road maps that cover a wide area.
An understanding of road layouts and traffic rules (including speed limits and various road signs) is essential for the successful implementation of automated driving technologies. Additionally, high precision measurement of positional information requires the collection of information on dividing lines, curbs, and other road characteristics.
Until now, map data for automated driving purposes has been generated using specially-built vehicles equipped with three-dimensional laser scanners. The vehicles are driven through urban areas and on highways, and data is collected and manually edited to incorporate information such as dividing lines and road signs. Due to the infrequent nature of data collection, maps generated in this manner are seldom updated, limiting their usefulness. Additionally, this represents a relatively cost-intensive method of gathering data, due to the need to manually input specific types of data.
Toyota's newly developed system uses automated cloud-based spatial information generation technology (developed by Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc.) to generate high precision road image data from the databanks and GPS devices of designated user vehicles. While a system relying on cameras and GPS in this manner has a higher probability of error than a system using three-dimensional laser scanners, positional errors can be mitigated using image matching technologies that integrate and correct road image data collected from multiple vehicles, as well as high precision trajectory estimation technologies. This restricts the system's margin error to a maximum of 5 cm on straight roads. By utilizing production vehicles and existing infrastructure to collect information, this data can be updated in real time. Furthermore, the system can be implemented and scaled up at a relatively low cost.
first published week of: 08/30/2021
The January grounding of the minesweeper USS Guardian in a Philippine coral reef was caused in large part by a National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) map that was, quite simply, wrong by eight nautical miles, Breaking Defense has learned.
“It really was just a terrible fluke that caused the error,” NGA spokeswoman Christine Phillips said in a frank discussion of the incident and its aftermath.
The Sulu Sea grounding prompted NGA to order an agency-wide review of the nautical charts detailing the entire surface of the earth covered by the oceans. Also, NGA and the Navy have convened a team of maritime experts to take “an exhaustive look to make sure we are as sound as we can be,” Phillips told me.
Read full story at Breaking Defens…
first published week of: 12/06/2021