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Blog: Chris Harlow on ITSearch The Harlow Report Archives
Guiding your way around large and crowded indoor venues, such as shopping malls, sports stadiums, museums, convention centers and hospitals, can be difficult. Signage is often ineffective and the global positioning technologies built into mobiles cannot be used indoors because they require a clear satellite signal to work effectively. Today, many companies are realizing the benefits of deploying indoor location-based services (ILBS) solutions that not only help people navigate venues easily, but also provide them with contextual information to enhance the visitor experience.
“Indoor spaces are becoming much larger so there is new demand for ILBS tools that use wi-fi networks or Bluetooth beacons to pinpoint the exact location of individuals and use contextual information to guide them around indoor venues,” says Kyle Rhee, manager at South Korea’s leading wireless telecommunications operator SK Telecom.
Recognizing the demand for such service in South Korea, SK Telecom introduced its own Bluetooth 4.0 beacon-based ILBS solution in 2013. Named Wizturn, the B2B ILBS solution is hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform and uses Bluetooth to automatically detect the exact location of consumers and deliver relevant, real-time information to their mobile devices. continued…
first published week of: 04/27/2015
Whenever possible, Smart Mapping aims to offload work from the map author to the machine. The goal is not to take control away from the author, but rather, make informed, intelligent choices and partner with the map author so we can all work faster.
Here are some tips and tricks to get the most out of Smart Mapping.
Tip #1: Decide what range of your data to emphasize
When working with numerical data mapped as Counts and Amounts (Size) or (Color) explore how moving the handles beside the histogram can dramatically change the look of the map. Use this to emphasize certain ranges of the data, or to uncover subtle details. continued…
first published week of: 06/22/2015
googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com
Asynchronously loading JavaScript on your pages can give you huge performance wins. We have just updated all of our JavaScript Maps API samples and you can make these changes to your site, too. Read on to find out what we did and how it works, or skip straight to Unblocking scripts to see what you can start to update on your site today.
first published week of: 09/28/2015
The founders of Parkour Method rebooted twice before arriving at a geolocation SDK they can be proud of.
On a sunny street by the C&O Canal in Georgetown, a tiny startup called Parkour Method is trying to make the world a more navigable place.
But getting there has itself been a journey.
The stars aligned for Yonis Benitez and Phillip Zakas when they met at CoFoundersLab in February 2013.
Benitez, then a GM at Hailo, saw that geolocation, a field long overshadowed by >Google and Apple, still had a long ways to go.
“The on-demand taxi apps, one of their challenges is to figure out exactly where the person is,” said Benitez. Too often, he said, “drivers are looking for you at the wrong places.”
Zakas, a fast-talking developer who’d previously served as a CTO of AOL’s ecommerce division, vigorously agreed.
Geolocation technology is “oversimplified for developers,” said Zakas. Pointing to a Google map on his computer, he added: “This is lazy, this is embarrassing.”
The two launched Gridskippr and began developing an SDK that could produce, they say, better geolocation coordinates for less battery drain. The algorithm geared location data more efficiently. It “minimizes how much we need to access the location,” said Zakas.
Their product was soon taken up by ad networks interested in tracking the geographical habits of consumers. continued…
first published week of: 10/12/2015
Dear Cecil:
What's the difference between a street, a road, an avenue, a boulevard, etc.? There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to how the names of public ways are suffixed. Does it depend on width, length, importance, or (more likely) the builder's whim? Please advise.
— Will Lampe, Englewood, New Jersey
Cecil replies:
Whimsy? Lesser minds might describe it as whimsy. I see it as evidence of the same confusion that got us involved in a war in the Balkans.
Whatever scarcities we may have in this world, a shortage of street-name suffixes isn't one of them. The possibilities include but are not limited to alley, avenue, boulevard, circle, court, cove, crescent, crossing, dale, drive, estate, extension, gardens, gate, heights, highway, lake, landing, lane, loop, park, parkway, path, place, plaza, point, promenade, ridge, road, roadway, square, street, terrace, trace, trail, village, or way, to say nothing of commonly used foreign words such as camino, calle, etc.
Confronted with this plethora of terms, you'll probably have one of the following reactions:
(1) We need some kind of system here.
(2) We don't need no stinking system, we need some minimal restrictions to protect the public interest.
(3) Whatever, I don't care. Go away.
first published week of: 10/19/2015
A new partnership with Aclima will track air quality in L.A., San Francisco, and California's Central Valley.
To make cities safer from air pollution, urban planners need to know exactly where the damaging particles originate and how they move through the air. A new partnership between Google and San Francisco-based air sensor company Aclima promises to collect that data and make it publicly available.
Google Street View cars equipped with Aclima mobile air sensors will map pollution at the neighborhood level in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and California’s Central Valley, Aclima CEO and co-founder Davida Herzl announced at the Clinton Global Initiative on Monday. The resulting data will appear on Google Earth Engine for scientists to examine, while everyone will be able to track environmental health where they live through street-level air pollution maps on Google Earth and Google Maps. The project is already underway in San Francisco and is set to expand in 2016.
“Today when you look at an air quality index you're seeing data compiled that's based on a model, and what limited data is available,” Herzl tells CityLab via email. “As scientists and modelers gain more data—we hope through our driving—our knowledge base will greatly improve and contribute richer dimension to the models they are creating that inform our understanding of daily air quality.” continued…
first published week of: 10/05/2015