This project constitutes of the work undertaken by Mohamad Syazli Fathi as part of the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programme run by the Civil and Building Engineering Department at Loughborough University, UK.
The PhD programme is primarily funded by the Malaysian Government. Syazli's sponsoring department for the 3-year duration of this research is Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, who is the one of the leading Engineering and Technology university in Malaysia
Wikitude is a mobile travel guide for the Android platform based on location-based Wikipedia content. It is a handy application for planning a trip or to find out about landmarks in your surroundings; 350,000 world-wide points of interest may be searched by GPS or by address and displayed in a list view, map view or cam view. Simpel Search
Wikitude AR is a Top-50 finalist in Google's Android Developer Challenge . Wikitude has been launched along with the G1 phone in October 2008 and is now available in the Android Market. Map View SEARCH POINTS OF INTEREST
Search 350,000 world-wide points of interests based on your current GPS location and address. To get started as easily as possible, two search options have been provided:
- Simple Search allows users to initiate a search just by pressing "Start Search" - Advanced Search offers users additional search options (category, distance, and search term) Wikitude for android - Sightseeing in Sevilla MAP, LIST, ... SEARCH RESULTS MAY BE VIEWED ON A MAP ...
Search results are displayed on a map (normal or satellite mode) as orange dots. There is a text bubble containing a short description next to the selected point of interest. Map View ... AND CAMERA SEARCH RESULTS MAY BE VIEWED ON THE PHONE'S CAMERA SCREEN
The truly compelling feature is the augmented reality cam view, users may hold the phone’s camera against a spectacular mountain range and see the names and heights displayed as overlay mapped with the mountains in the camera. Users may look out of an airplane window to see what is down there. Users may walk through a city like Seville, Spain, holding the phone’s camera against a building and Wikitude tells what it is.
Team Leader, User Experience Oulu, Finland Contact
About Jonna Häkkilä
I am team leader of User Experience Team at Smart Spaces Laboratory, Nokia Research Center, Finland. Prior to that role, I have been working in various units at Nokia since 2001, mainly with usability in product development. I received my PhD in 2007 at University of Oulu, Finland, and my thesis considered usability issues with context-aware mobile applications. Ispent part of my post graduate study time at Griffith University, Australia, with prof. Liisa von Hellens (2003), and at Carnegie Mellon University, US, with prof. Anind Dey (2006). I have MSc in physics from University of Oulu (2000). My hobbies include snowboarding, skiing and science fiction.
Jonna Häkkilä research interests
My research interests are wide and versatile, and mostly to do with mobile computing and ubicomp - they include e.g. mobile multimedia, usability aspects of context-awareness, mobile user culture, and women and technology. Currently, my team is doing user experience research on emotional interaction, location-awareness, mobile wellness, and adaptive user interfaces. What I love in my job is to explore and try out new ideas, and to see how they are refined from original drafts to usable applications.
How Contextual Information Can Drastically Change Your Business Mobility and Allow You to Achieve Unprecedented Efficiency
What You Will Learn
Context-aware mobility-the ability to capture and integrate into business processes detailed contextual information about things such as location, temperature, the availability of an asset, and applications used-is fast becoming the next level of true enterprise mobility. With the Cisco® Context-Aware Mobility solution, mobile users can go beyond simple anytime, anywhere connectivity to automatically having the right device, the right application, and the right environment while on the go. They will now be able to answer business-critical questions about both mobile assets and the users of those assets, and hence directly improve their organization's profitability.
This solution overview introduces the different technologies requires to deliver context-aware mobility. It also explains and provides examples on how the Cisco solution can be deployed to empower their mobile workers by providing them with unprecedented insight into corporate assets.
Challenges
Today over 10 million subscribers are using location-based services. However, with more than 300 million subscribers expected by the end of 2011, the technology and its market adoption are clearly at a tipping point. Considering that location is only one of the many contextual parameters your business can gather about mobile assets-others include environmental temperature or humidity, or whether an asset is static or in motion-the potential for intelligently coordinating those assets and increasing business efficiency is tremendous.
But to deliver a full context-aware mobility experience, several challenges have to be overcome. Indeed, collecting information for each mobile asset manually is time consuming, introduces errors and delays, and cannot scale with an ever-increasing number of assets, such as laptops, smartphones, tagged wheelchairs and infusion pumps in hospitals, as well as pallets and hand tools in plants or sticker applicators in retail stores. In addition, business processes often encompass multiple networks such as Wi-Fi, outdoor mesh, cellular, or GPS, and retrieving information from disparate networks increases the chance of losing some information or adding delay to the information exchange process. Because of these limitations, business applications that should follow mobile workers usually do not have access to the relevant information at the right time and from the right place. The only alternatives today are costly, tailor-made adapters developed by application integrators. Such adapters cannot encompass all the possible combinations and need to be updated every time a change is introduced in one of the networks, APIs, or devices.
Finally, to fully benefit from contextual information about mobile assets, several technologies have to be used simultaneously and in complementary ways. For instance, to automate the capture of information of information about an asset, the processes that collect the information need to be always active. Information capture has to happen throughout the whole business process and across all the wireless networks involved, regardless of the different technologies involved. A fully automated system makes a more comprehensive set of data available, especially as compared to manual records that are usually limited to a few basic parameters.
Context-Aware Mobility Defined
A context-aware mobility Solution is the ability to capture contextual information via wireless devices and networks and to analyze it and use it in order to mobilize business applications either by updating inputs in real time and by optimizing the user interface for the working environment. Thanks to Cisco's Context-Aware Mobility Solution, mobile workers can make better decisions and corporations can have more comprehensive and accurate insight into their business.
Contextual information should be collected for any mobile asset involved in a business process, and this includes not just devices and products but also people. For instance, a mobile asset can be a worker, a customer, or a patient, or it can be a pallet of finished goods, a vehicle, a work in progress on a conveyor belt, a chemical substance flowing in a pipe, a pouch filled with blood or medication, or medical equipment like infusion pump and wheelchairs.
The data collected about the mobile asset may include its identification information (for example, its radio frequency ID [RFID]), the date and the time of the day, its physical location, the surrounding temperature, humidity, or pressure, if the asset is in motion or not, and any other information relevant to business processes and applications.
Figure 1 summarizes some of the kinds of contextual information that can be collected and the benefits to end users.
Figure 1. Context-Aware Mobility Solution Logic
This information is captured over a wireless network. If the mobile asset is a wireless device like a laptop or a phone, the information will be directly sent from the device radio module over Wi-Fi, cellular, or any other technology. When the mobile asset does not have a radio capability, wireless tags can be attached to it to collect the parameters needed. Some advanced parameters such as temperature, pressure, humidity or motion require a sensor to be present on the wireless tag or device itself.
Once collected and stored, an intelligent mechanism analyzes the sensor data and defines rules to give the relevant information to the right business process in order to deliver a true mobile experience for the user.
As an example, consider the following scenario: An alert is sent to the IT team as the wireless sensor on laptop L, running in building A, registered abnormal temperatures. When the member of the IT team arrives in building A, his or her mobile device automatically opens a map of building A and helps locate L. Once the IT staff member is close enough to L, the associated case report appears on the screen, accelerating the process and reducing the chance for error. If in the meanwhile, another IT case opens and is located in building A, the same IT staff member is notified. Thus the contextual information is used to optimize the team's resources and speed up resolution of the problem. The result is increased customer satisfaction.
The Technologies Used to Deliver Context-Aware Mobility
Typically, several wireless networks have to be used during execution of the same business process and thus for the same context-aware mobility solution. As the most widely adopted wireless technology is Wi-Fi or wireless LAN (WLAN), we will provide more use cases for it, but Wi-Fi mesh, WiMAX, cellular, or GPS networks can also be used when devices, tags, and sensors with the proper radios are available, as shown in Figure 2. A variety of context-aware technical solutions using Wi-Fi or other wireless networks can be deployed running standalone or simultaneously. For detailed information about other context-aware technical solutions in addition to Wi-Fi, see the following white paper: The technologies behind a Context-Aware Mobility Solution.
Wi-Fi is often the wireless network used because of its high penetration rate in corporations and the wide availability of devices with Wi-Fi radios. Wireless devices, tags, or sensors send the contextual information they collected via WLAN, and the network, in turn, uses these signals to calculate the location of the assets. The algorithms used vary depending on the RF environment and the accuracy needed for a specific application. For indoor applications, algorithms are often based on received signal strength indication (RSSI). For outdoor or high ceiling environments such as warehouses, time difference of arrival (TDoA) is often most appropriate.
Figure 2. Different Context-Aware Technologies
The location of a mobile asset is not always the information relevant to the business application. In many cases, business processes need to know only if an asset is in or out of a zone (room, parking place, and so on). Chokepoints can be used to define a zone, monitor it, and immediately send alerts to the appropriate applications as wireless tags enter or leave the zone.
Sensor capabilities can be directly embedded into tags in order to link the data captured (for instance, motion or temperature data) with the location of the mobile asset, but this is not mandatory. Sensors can also be placed in fixed locations like a refrigerator or a storage room.
Cisco Context-Aware Mobility Solution
As Figure 3 illustrates, the Cisco Context Mobility Solution can support all the technologies just described in a modular way to adapt to customer needs.
Figure 3. Cisco Context-Aware Mobility Solution
The different components of the Cisco Context-Aware Mobility Solution are:
• Mobile assets that can be devices or tags manufactured by Cisco technology partners.
– Devices: Any Wi-Fi device that connects to the WLAN can have its associated contextual information captured.
– Tags: Any Wi-Fi tag attached to a mobile asset and that connects to the WLAN can have its associated contextual information captured
• Cisco Compatible Extensions program for tags: This Cisco program, open to technology partners, helps ensure that RFID tags comply to a predefined format so that the advanced information they send (such as motion, humidity and other parameters) is captured and made available to the rest of the solution, including business applications from other Cisco partners.
• Cisco Unified Wireless Network: This multipurpose network is also the only unified wired and wireless network solution to cost-effectively address the wireless network security, deployment, management, and control issues that businesses face, in addition to providing context-aware mobility.
– RSSI: This technology running on the Cisco Mobility Services Engine can be used for devices and tags that need to be located indoors. It is based on the signal sent from the mobile asset to the different access points deployed in the facilities.
– Chokepoint: Chokepoints use a different frequency from Wi-Fi and are deployed along zones of interest for business applications. They act as exciters for tags that come in a close range of them. These tags, in turn, send a notification over the WLAN to the Cisco Mobility Services Engine, along with the contextual data they have captured.
– TDoA: This technology, which also runs on running on the Cisco Mobility Services Engine, is used in association with TDoA receivers that are placed outdoors or in the challenging RF environments in which some mobile assets must be located.
– Sensor data: This type of data depends on the sensor capabilities. The information is sent over the WLAN and captured by the Cisco Context-Aware software module thanks to the Cisco compatible format.
• Cisco open API: Once all the contextual information has been captured, calculated and stored by the Context-Aware software module, it can be made available to any business application that needs it through the Cisco open API, which is based on Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and XML protocol. Access to this API is available to any Cisco technology partner and allows a full integration into the business processes of customers.
The Cisco Context-Aware Mobility Solution offers a broad range of wireless technologies that deliver solutions to variety of business problems and also act as a platform that is open to any type of mobile asset and any type of business applications deployed on the premises of a Cisco customer. It is an adaptive, agile, and intelligent Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) solution that delivers a superior end-user experience and enables significant efficiency for businesses. To support this approach, Cisco Services and Cisco Wireless LAN Specialized Partners offer a wide variety of specialized networking services and support services is available to help deliver customized and reliable context aware solutions.
How Context-Aware Mobility Helps Businesses
The Cisco Context-Aware Mobility Solution provides real-time answers to questions that are critical to business success. Just as a search engine helps users by shortening the time needed to find relevant information on the Web, context-aware mobility helps businesses by allowing them to find the information they need right away. Business processes can thus anticipate what mobile workers will need proactively.
The most frequent questions workers and businesses come across can be classified into five categories, each associated with a different type of business application (Figure 4).
Figure 4. Business Applications Associated with Context-Aware Mobility
Is It Here?-Zone or Inventory Management
Zone or inventory management applications interfacing with the Cisco Context-Aware Mobility Solution will be able to define zones and monitor the mobile assets entering and exiting the area. They are widely used in several industries:
• Hospitals use these applications to know which caregivers are in the building and thus on duty, to ensure that there is always attendance in emergency rooms, or to count the number of wheelchairs in a storage room. This translates directly into a faster reaction to emergency situations, a better optimization of human resources, and a maximum utilization of medical equipment.
• In the retail space, knowing when a consumer enters a certain department makes it possible to target the selection of the promotions to send the consumer's mobile device.
• Universities use zone management to automate class attendance and help ensure that no student is left in the building in case of emergency evacuation.
• Automobile dealers or expedited delivery companies can use inventory management to determine at any moment how many and which cars or delivery vans are available in certain parking spaces. In this way, they can more accurately manage resources and achieve greater customer satisfaction.
Where Is It?-Asset Tracking
Asset tracking applications interfacing with the Cisco Context-Aware Mobility Solution can help locate a mobile asset anywhere in the campus. This is needed for the recovery of lost equipment and for timely coordination.
• In a factory plant, work-in-progress pieces that need to be assembled can rapidly be located when needed. The result is that factories avoid slow-downs in the delivery of finished goods, increasing both responsiveness and avoiding penalties.
• In a hospital, a nurse can use asset tracking to locate the closest infusion pump to administer a medication to a patient. This results in an improved patient care and a more efficient use of the time of highly skilled workers.
• In retail stores, the closest and more expert employee can be located to advise a customer on a specific product and help him or her make the right purchase.
What Is Its Condition?-Condition Tracking
Condition tracking applications interfacing with the Cisco Context-Aware Mobility Solution can monitor the environmental conditions that an asset is subject to by measuring parameters such as temperature, humidity, pressure, and many more. Perishable goods can be thus be monitored during transportation or storage, and alerts sent when these conditions are not within acceptable ranges.
• For hospitals, condition tracking can prevent the waste of expensive medications and help ensure maximum efficiency in patient treatment.
• In retail stores, consumers will be more likely to find fresh products, and merchants can avoid waste that undermines profitability.
• In factories, complex production processes where equipment or chemicals have to stay within predefined conditions can be monitored more closely so that corrective actions are taken as soon as a negative trend is noticed. Plants gain more consistent quality in their finished goods and a better cost control.
What Is the User's Status?-Presence
Presence applications interfacing with the Cisco Context-Aware Mobility Solution will use people's location information to automate presence status in unified communications applications.
• When a corporate employee is in a meeting room, he or she will be shown as "In a meeting" in all associated collaboration tools without any manual intervention. Co-workers can then use e-mail or instant messaging to communicate instead of an intrusive phone call.
• In the same manner, healthcare organizations can prevent surgeons from being disturbed while in surgery, and they can place the names of other caregivers higher in the list of available resources.
Where Is It in My Network?-Network Location Services
Network location applications interfacing with the Cisco Context-Aware Mobility Solution can automatically optimize the wireless network resources where they are needed most. Locating rogue devices, interference, or dense usage areas can save the IT team significant time and provide the insight necessary to determine the right actions from the network perspective. The benefits of maximizing the use of network resources are numerous: reduction in troubleshooting time, more IT resources available, delivery of a best-in-class network experience to end-users, and lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO). Historical usage patterns can also be studied prior to introducing any new capabilities in the network and to help make for smooth adoption.
Summary
Over the last few years, technical progress in the capture and analysis of data about mobile assets has made context-aware mobility a reality. This technology has the potential to completely revolutionize the way corporations look at their business and to transform the experience of mobile workers. Unprecedented levels of productivity, efficiency, and collaboration can be reached. But to truly benefit from a pervasive context-aware solution, several conditions must be met.
First, using the network as a platform and converging different wireless technologies is critical to automating data collection and ensuring compliance with business needs. This will also help lower the total cost of ownership for companies by reusing their existing IT wireless infrastructure. Second, identifying the best technical ways to track data at the mobile-asset level will also greatly influence the relevance and comprehensiveness of the data collected. Several options are available, and in most cases, a mix of techniques is required. Finally, making this contextual information available to the rest of the business in a timely and simple manner is crucial to ensuring a fast adoption and allowing corporations to reap the benefits of context awareness.
Once deployed, a context-aware mobility solution provides answers to many questions that businesses face every day. Getting answers to these questions is crucial for making informed decisions and staying competitive. Every worker in the corporation using business or collaboration applications will be able to benefit from a working environment that is more "mobile user friendly." Workers will be able to increase their productivity by having access to the right people, through the right tool, at the right time.
Being December, it’s time for my look into next year. It’s become somewhat of a tradition for me and this year is no different. What does 2009 have in store for the GNSS user?
GPS will push forward in 2009 with the launch of the two remaining IIR-M satellites and launch of the first IIF satellite which will, incidentally, introduce a new civil frequency, L5, to the world. Those are very important milestones, but is it enough to grab the headline as the 2009 GNSS of the Year?
Nope.
It’s been a couple of years since I published a column titled “GLONASS — the Comeback Kid”.
Indeed, at that point the GLONASS program was building steam, albeit slowly. The problem was that although the Russian government was launching six satellites a year, there were still many legacy GLONASS satellites that were being decommissioned. The launch rate was barely keeping up with the rate of attrition. For this reason the GLONASS constellation has fluctuated between 10 and 14 operational satellites for many years. That is changing. In 2009, GLONASS will reach heights we’ve not experienced before.
With almost all of the legacy GLONASS satellites decommissioned and the Russians still launching new GLONASS satellites at a rate of six per year, it won’t be long before the GLONASS constellation starts to look really, really good. Currently, there are 17 operational GLONASS satellites and three more are scheduled to launch later this month on their annual Christmas Day present to the GNSS world. Assuming the Russians bring them online within 60 days or so after launch, you’ll have 20 GLONASS satellites at your disposal in the first quarter of 2009. There are still some adjustments forthcoming to the constellation due to legacy satellites, according to Sergey Revnivykh of the Russian Space Agency (RSA), so “18 satellites in January/February is nominal.” In other words, we’ll have 20 with a possibility of it dropping to 18.
Even with 17, the benefits are shining bright for RTK users. Nothing illustrates this better than a couple of plots using mission planning software (provided by Trimble Navigation free of charge via website). These plots are based on my location in Portland, OR USA using an elevation mask of 10 degrees.
Figure 1: Satellite visibility chart based on using GPS satellites only (plot date is Dec. 15, 2008).
Figure 2: Satellite visibility chart based on using GPS and GLONASS satellites (plot date is Dec. 15, 2008).
The evolution of GLONASS isn’t a complete surprise. GLONASS was declared operational in 1993, the same year as GPS. However, Russia’s political and economic struggles relegated GLONASS to the back burner and the program began a long, steady decline to a skeleton of what it once was. At its lowest point, in 2002, there were only eight operational satellites.
As Russia’s economic and political climate stabilized (some say that oil has contributed largely to the revitalization of GLONASS), Russia brought the GLONASS program back to the front burner in 2001 when it announced an ambitious plan to revitalize the program by 2010. The plan was to fly 30 GLONASS satellites by 2010.
As with many long-term plans, especially a multi-year, publicly financed plan to spend billions, the devil is in the details . . . and execution is the devil. Well, nearly eight years later, the Russians seem to have executed their plan quite well. It wasn’t an easy road with quick results, either. As I mentioned above, the attrition rate of GLONASS satellites was high most of this decade, so they had to be very aggressive in developing and launching new satellites just to keep their head above water.
This is not to say there haven’t been any problems along the way. I’ve heard several complaints from users of excessive RTK initialization times that were eventually traced back to troubled GLONASS satellite data. For example, a few months ago Topcon issued a Service Bulletin regarding “GLONASS Satellite 9.” The bulletin states that it is “not (currently) broadcasting a P2 signal. This may have an effect on RTK performance. It may cause the receiver to stay in float for a longer period of time.”
Looking Beyond 2009
I reported in 2007 that Russia was on the path to bringing GLONASS closer to GPS with respect to compatibility. Currently, GPS uses the CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) signal-processing scheme while GLONASS uses the FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access) signal-processing scheme. They aren’t compatible at all . . . sort of like CDMA (Sprint) vs. GSM (AT&T) networks for mobile phones. They just don’t work together, so manufacturers essentially have to build two receivers (one for GPS and one for GLONASS) in one box. While it’s impressive that manufacturers have been able to squeeze such amazing functionality into small boxes, it’s a complicated design.
Russia has announced its commitment to support CDMA on the next generation of GLONASS satellites (GLONASS-K). While this will go a long way in making GPS/GLONASS receivers easier/cheaper to design/build, Russia and the U.S. are in discussions to even take it a step further towards interoperability with GPS L5 and the future L1C signal. However, keep in mind the space business works at a different pace than most businesses. It will be well into the next decade before we see any GLONASS satellites broadcasting CDMA signals.
GLONASS funding is also looking pretty solid at this point. Last September, it was announced that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a budget directive allocating 67 billion rubles (US $2.6 billion) to further develop GLONASS with the majority being steered towards adding satellites. Compare that with the GLONASS budget in 2007 being 9.9 billion rubles ($418.25 million) and 4.7 billion rubles ($200 million) in 2006.
Congratulations
Because of GLONASS’s exceptional value to the survey/construction user community in 2009, GLONASS has indeed earned my vote as GPS World magazine’s award of 2009 GNSS of the Year. Remember, the purpose of this particular column is to look forward into the future instead of a year in review. I believe that in 2009 GLONASS will add even greater value to the survey/construction user than we have ever seen.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is efficient, cost-effective and adaptable to business and market changes. Unfortunately, mobile screens, miniature keyboards or immature mobile browsers have limited your options for supporting mobile users to expensive mobile application development strategies.
Context-Aware Mobility The success of Mobile SaaS, or any mobile web service, hinges upon the strength of the data flowing into and out of your Web applications. Effective mobile SaaS infrastructure should:
Deliver real-time contextual data to your Web application – who, what & where
Require minimal data entry by the mobile user – convenience
Deliver only what the mobile user needs –relevance
Remain consistent across mobile platforms - in the browser
Retain Control over your Customers & Data 5o9® Context Manager is client-server software. We are not a service or transcoder and are not tied to any carrier. You retain control over your applications, customers and data.
Upgrade the Mobile Browser with Context5o9® Context Manager uses the browser to deliver who(user), what(device) and where(location) data from your mobile device directly to your Web server. It enables contextual browser menus, transforming the browser into a Rich Internet Application interface. (Compatibility info*)
Uses Open APIs & Industry Standards 5o9® Context Manager delivers real-time contextual data from your mobile device directly to your Web server for use by any SaaS application – simply by using HTTP, CGI, XML, & Mobile SDKs. Like desktop SaaS, it works across multiple platforms and networks – just for mobile.
And if you already have an existing mobile application, our Open APIs let you or your development partners efficiently extend it to support new smartphone capabilities such as GPS or sensor connectivity.
Location is everything. That rule applies not just to real estate—it’s also what companies and their investors are counting on as the mobile and Internet spaces converge.
One case in point is the recent funding of Eagan, Minnesota-based Gearworks, which recently got $21.4 in a third round of financing from new investors Rho Ventures and Split Rock. The bet there is is that businesses will want to use location-based mobile applications to supervise mobile workforces and field-based activities.
The business case is twofold: Because the applications can be deployed through off-the-shelf cellular phones, carriers realize more revenue per user.In turn, Gearworks realizes returning revenues from its software-as-a-service model.
The company already has three major carriers as partners—including Verizon Wireless Sprint, and SouthernLinc. Application vendors for Gearworks include software-as-a-service players like Salesforce.com, Points North, and TLMLink.
On the customer front, companies like Pepsi Bottling Group, Select Comfort and Roto-Rooter are using Gearworks’ technologies and services to route deliveries and deploy service workers to customers.
“There are a number of companies that are all focused on building the new mobile Internet, and I think we’re at an inflection point in the market where it’s finally attracting a lot of attention and capital,” noted Todd Krautkremer, Gearworks’ CEO. “Right now, we’re at a place where anybody that has the desire to deliver mobility and location-intelligent mobility to the mass of white, grey, and blue collar workers will be either a collaborator or a potential competitor of ours.”
By that measure, count Airclic, another recently funded firm, as potential competitor or collaborator. The Newtown, Pennsylvania-based firm raised $12.5 million in a third round of funding from JMI Equity along with prior investorsMotorola, and Zon Capital Partners.Airclic’s idea is to equip wireless devices like mobile phones and PDAs with barcode readers, add on global positioning tracking and connect those inputs to their backend systems that allows companies to track who scanned an item, when, and where they were at the time. Again, it’s a software-as-a-service model, and Airclic sees in supply-chain management, service technicians, and retail.
“We’re making the cellular phone into a business tool,” noted Airclic CEO Tim Bradley. “We’re trying to take all those issues keeping companies from adopting this model, by taking away the cost of hardware and the infrastructure. We can deliver it to businesses now for $300 or less per user, and applications can be delivered to a customer over the air, literally in days. Ultimately we think the cell phone will be the main transaction vehicle for customers in the field.”
Both Gearworks and Airclic have managed to attract a healthy amount of attention from venture capitalists. Airclic has raised a total of $23 million to date, and believes this will be its last round.Similarly, Gearworks has managed to attract $56.4 million in total capital, also likely to be the last it needs.
Both companies face execution challenges in terms of rolling out new services to meet customer demands quickly enough, and to that end are using the funds to build out products and sales and marketing teams.
What’s clear is that the the market for handset-based LBS (location based service) applications is likely to grow quickly over the next three years.A recent study by ABI Research notes that worldwide carrier deployments of LBS handset applications will top 144 million subscribers by 2010, with 76 million expected to be deployed within business customer environments.
Ubiest Announces The Mobile Location Based Service For Family Peace Of Mind
UbiSafe will be available for on-line purchase on italian market from 18 september
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRLog (Press Release) – Sep 15, 2008 – SAN DIEGO, Calif., Sept. 8 -- UbiEst SpA, leading Italian developer of location-based mobile services, today announced at the DEMOfall 08 conference a mobile application for personal security, contact locating and emergency needs. UbiSafe can be used for monitoring elder or invalid persons in need of attendance, for personal safety (at night, in walking risk zones, etc.) or for our children’s security.
Unlike other already-marketed "child locators" working from a Web-based interface, UbiSafe is an all-mobile application bringing portability and everytime/everywhere access to contact locating directly from mobile phones. Furthermore UbiSafe is a mobile-to-mobile application that doesn't require dedicated GPS trackers, as localization can leverage on any GPS equipped handset.
UbiSafe comes as a mobile Java (and Java RIM) client enabling: verification and tracking of family members’ positions on the map; the ability to send/receive emergency messages; the set up of personalized “safe” zones (geo-fencing); and the creation of personalized notification rules (ie. when child leaves location).
Two main features bring UbiSafe in the forefront of technological innovation in LBS for personal security: parents can create a “virtual leash” for preventing children from moving out of sight and activating a chasing mode to track simultaneously the child’s movements related to the parent’s while trying to reach him. A graphic toolbar helps approach the target with basic colors: red for target moving apart, yellow for constant distance and green for approaching target.
The second feature is aimed to help adolescents enjoy greater freedom of movement ensuring tranquility of the parents: thanks to a GPS receiver, parents can be warned if a newly-licensed son/daughter exceeds an agreed-upon speed-limit by car or if a sudden breaking occurs.
"UbiSafe leverages the demand for contemporary solutions for safety and care in the family. It’s a brilliant example of cutting-edge advanced technology applied to universal and down-to-earth needs,” says Chris Shipley, executive producer of the DEMO Conferences.
UbiSafe is planned to be marketed worldwide by TelCo Operators on a subscription model. In addition, it is appealing for device manufacturers (and retailers) and OEMs with post-sale code activation, promoting uptake of new advanced smartphone models.
UbiEst will also activate a direct selling channel from a dedicated ecommerce platform at www.ubisafe.com.
ABOUT DEMO Produced by Network World Events and Executive Forums, the semi-annual DEMO conferences focus on emerging technologies and new products, which are hand-selected from across the spectrum of the technology marketplace. The DEMO conferences have earned their reputation for consistently identifying tomorrow's cutting-edge technologies, and have served as launch pad events for companies such as Palm, E*Trade, Handspring, and U.S. Robotics, helping them to secure venture funding, establish critical business relationships, and influence early adopters. Each DEMO conference features approximately 70 new companies, products and technologies. For more information, visit www.demo.com
ABOUT UBIEST Founded in 2000 and based in Treviso (Italy), UbiEst SpA provides location based solution on Internet and Mobile connections for Business and Consumer markets.
Despite being an early stage comapny counting 40 employees, UbiEst holds a strong leadership in italian B2B market of Location Based Services and is among NAVTEQ main EMEA partners.
The company has developed its own mapping technology in order to provide state of the art and highly performing Internet and mobile solutions, available for in-house or SaaS (Software as a Service) and provides provides the location technology, the expertise and the infrastructure to develop new value added location based services for business and consumer markets.
Currently the company provides a suite of mobile location based products for fleet management, personal security, off board navigation and workforce management. Significant customers: Fiat, Trenitalia, Vodafone Italy, Ferrari, Enel, Telecom Italia, etc.
UbiSafe is a mobile location based service for personal security, contact locating and emergency needs. UbiSafe can be used for monitoring elder or invalid persons in need of attendance, for personal safety (at night, in walking risk zones, etc.) or for our children security.
UbiSafe web access
A web-based fleet-management-like interface to track and trace contacts, set up notification alerts and real-time “follow” movements of assets.
UBISAFE
A java based client for a wide range of mobile phones featuring the same functionalities of the web-based interface, plus special “asset chasing” capabilities.
UBISAFE plugin and UbiSafe Box
A client software for GPS-equipped mobile phones and GPS tracker (UbiSafe box) connected to UbiSafe: it enables tracking of movements and is equipped with a “panic push-button” for sending emergency messages.
What is Capital Efficiency?: "Capital efficiency has to do with understanding the ratio of output in comparison to the amount of capital expenditure involved in maintaining the operation of a business or a product line. This simple comparison serves as a way to determine if a particular operation should be continued as is, continued with some adjustments, or abandoned and the resources diverted to other projects.
The basic formula for calculating capital efficiency involves dividing the average value of output by the rate of expenditure for the same period of time. Output divided by expenditure will help to make it clear if a venture is currently generating a modest profit, is approaching a point where profitability will be realized once expenditures are decreased, or if there is no real value in continuing to fund the venture. While the latter situation is one to avoid at all costs, the two former possible states are not situations that should be considered negative.
Because many business ventures begin with a higher level of capital expenditures, a project rarely realizes a profit in the first stages of the operation. The expectation is that after the initial launch, some expenses will be settled and not be recurring. As the rate of expenditure decreases and the output or production increases, the opportunity for profit expands. For this reason, periodic calculation of the capital efficiency of a"
The future is a hybrid world where location is taken for granted. GPS is complemented by other satellite systems, radio signals (such as Wi-Fi and cellular), micro-electromechanical systems sensors (e.g. accelerometers and compasses), and other methods to utilize whatever assistance is necessary to extend its sensitivity.
A tall thin man, wearing a grey suit and red tie, entered an enormous field in the heart of Chicago. Crowds, festivities, and hoopla greeted him, along with shouts of "Yes, We Can!" A momentous event was about to occur, one that was certain to be remembered for generations to come.
It was the president of Ameritech Mobile Communications on Soldier's Field that day, 25 years ago, ready to place the first commercial cellular call to the grandson of Alexander Graham Bell. Though no one seems to remember what they said, we do know that the first phone was the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, with just 30 minutes of talk time, weighing more than two pounds, and costing nearly $4,000.
To convert degree minutes and seconds to decimal degrees use the following perl formula.
$dec_deg = $deg + ($min + $sec/60)/60;
Finally, there is no acos function in perl so here is the function I use. I don't remember where I got the math for this.
# subroutine acos # # input: an angle in radians # # output: returns the arc cosine of the angle # # description: this is needed because perl does not provide an arc cosine function
Longitude Latitude Distance Calculation in Visual Basic: "this routine calculates the distance between two points (given the latitude/longitude of those points). it is being used to calculate the distance between two zip codes or postal codes using our zipcodeworld(tm) and postalcodeworld(tm) products."
Data products and services gauranteed to meet your unique business requirements.
Our Mission:
'We are enthusiastically devoted to our customer's success by providing the most cost-effective and comprehensive end-to-end solution, with the most accurate geographical data products and services. We do this by providing a unique set of tools, services, data, and consulting to ensure that the specific needs of our customers are met to their complete satisfaction.'
Our database products span 270+ countries/territories and contain entries on geographic features such as Global Cites, Postal Codes, and other landmarks. With over 7.1 million geographic features available, Meridian World Data products are some of the most comprehensive listings in the world.
For more information on GPS well as global distance calculations, please see the list of world features databases.
GPS is a satellite-based radionavigation system developed and operated by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). GPS permits land, sea, and airborne users to determine their three-dimensional position, velocity, and time 24 hours a day, in all weather, anywhere in the world with a precision and accuracy far better than other radionavigation systems available today or in the foreseeable future.
GPS consists of three segments: space, control, and user.
* The Space Segment consists of 24 operational satellites in six circular orbits 20,200 km (10,900 NM) above the earth at an inclination angle of 55 degrees with a 12 hour period. The satellites are spaced in orbit so that at any time a minimum of 6 satellites will be in view to users anywhere in the world. The satellites continuously broadcast position and time data to users throughout the world. * The Control Segment consists of a master control station in Colorado Springs, with five monitor stations and three ground antennas located throughout the world. The monitor stations track all GPS satellites in view and collect ranging information from the satellite broadcasts. The monitor stations send the information they collect from each of t"
We offer many Global Database Products that you can use with the below formulas to calculate distances and many other uses. Not sure how to use distance calculations or global databases within your company? See our Global Database Examples for more information on how to use our data within your industry. Be sure to Download a Free Sample of one of our many Global Database Products."
This script calculates great-circle distances between the two points – that is, the shortest distance over the earth’s surface – using the ‘Haversine’ formula.
It assumes a spherical earth, ignoring ellipsoidal effects – which is accurate enough* for most purposes… – giving an ‘as-the-crow-flies’ distance between the two points (ignoring any hills!)."
Of all the things that your notebook computer does, connecting to the Internet – simply and reliably – is among the most important. Gobi™ is the first embedded mobile wireless solution designed to put an end to connectivity limitations. With Gobi, the notebook computer becomes the unifying agent between the different high speed wireless networking technologies deployed around the world and that means freedom from having to locate hotspots, more choice in carrier networks, and, ultimately, freedom to Gobi where you want without fear of losing connectivity – your lifeline to your world.
Would you like your notebook to provide a choice of wireless network carriers and global connectivity possibilities? No matter where you travel?
Notebooks featuring the multi-mode Gobi solution can take advantage of the high-speed mobile Internet services offered by leading network operators in virtually all parts of the world, as well as GPS. The Gobi solution is meeting the demand from leading notebook manufacturers for worldwide connectivity capabilities beyond Wi-Fi and is being certified to operate on 3G networks worldwide. What does this mean for you? With your Gobi notebook you'll have mobile Internet access wherever you can make a mobile phone ca"
Chipmaker Qualcomm has been showing off a prototype touchscreen laptop-to-tablet powered by its 3G Snapdragon chipset, which it claims will enable a new generation of always-on, low-power mobile computing devices ready to rock the mobile data world...
.jpg)
