Sunday, January 25, 2009

25 Years of Steve Jobs

Check out this great video from the archives. Classic Steve Jobs from 1984.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Boston Mobile Investment

Along with the list of Boston area mobile startups, Xconomy (a great site covering Boston and Seattle startups) also posted an analysis of the total mobile investment which has been steadily growing. Interestingly, the 2008 investments were fairly steady despite economic issues.

"MoMoBoston didn’t detect any dropoff in mobile investment as 2008 progressed: the total of $562 million was invested in fairly even chunks across the four quarters, with a slight spike in the second quarter...With over half of a billion dollars invested in 2008 and 180 very diverse companies operating locally, Boston has quietly developed into the worldwide hub of mobile and wireless.”

Boston Mobile Companies

Xconomy, with the help of Mobile Monday, just posted a list of all the mobile startups in the Boston area. It is pretty cool to see Boston gaining a reputation in the mobile community. Some of the more notable statups include Skyhook, uLocate, and JumpTap. Here is the full list.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Mapping in the Web 2.0 World

As part of my MBA internship I had the opportunity to research mapping and location based technologies like wifi, GPS, UWB, and cell tower triangulation. Through the combination of these technologies there is an opportunity to guide people from the outdoors through an indoor environment to their destination.

My internship project work focused on thinking about how people navigate large indoor spaces like casinos or malls. It seems like almost everyone who has been to Las Vegas has spent a significant amount of time trying to find their way out of a casino or just trying to find what you're looking for in the casino. Although GPS is continuing to make headway as a location based technology outdoors, an indoor solution is still lacking (despite that fact that the technology exists). Further, most mapping / navigation applications continue to think of search in a 2D world rather than in the full context of the user's space, time, and situation. By combining customer information from a loyalty program (or other data source), time, and location there is an opportunity to drive behavior. I belive that this will be the future of search and location technologies.

I hope to post some of my location based services (LBS) research soon. Until then check out the video archive from the Web 2.0 Mapping and Social Networks meetup group. The group meets regularly in Mountain View, CA. Also, if you want to check out some cool ultra-wideband technology Ubisense has an interesting solution. It is a bit cost prohibitive right now but when used in conjunction with other lower cost technologies it has great potential.