Getting tired of location

Location, location, location. That's all I read about these days on the internet. With the SXSW festival going on this week and every tech company under the sun launching new location features it's all starting to get a bit tiresome. Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Twitter, Facebook and Google Buzz. Everyone is really banking on location being the next big step in social. Here's the thing though, right now 'checking in' seems so frivolous and silly. If I want people to know I'm going to be somewhere I'll tell them beforehand via email, text message or Facebook. I started using Foursquare this year and was checking in left and right at first, but now I hardly ever check in anywhere anymore except at Kellogg and Vision Quest (and that's just to defend my mayorships, which I know sounds dumb). Anyways, I know location will be the breakthrough product of this year's SXSW, but I wonder if that craze will really carry over into the general mainstream. Will 2010 be the year of location?

Checking in

Last Friday Yelp released an updated version of their iPhone app that could spell trouble for Foursquare and Gowalla. The biggest new feature for Yelp users: the ability to check-in.

I've been playing around with a bunch of geolocation apps recently, including Yelp and Foursquare, and so far each of them has felt like it was lacking one thing or another. I was actually compiling a set of notes for a future article about the features I would like to see in an ideal geolocation app. Here are some of those notes:

Ability to check in at venues (like Foursquare). At each venue you should be able to pull up information (like Yelp or Wikitude). You should also be able to see relevant tweets about the venue, and then be able to expand that out to see relevant tweets about the area. Friends list should come from an established social networking site like Facebook or Twitter.

The new Yelp app has a lot of my desired features rolled into it, so in my book its emerging as one of the top contenders. The check-in and gaming features were some of the cool things about Foursquare and Gowalla, but that's not too hard to copy since Yelp and MyTown now have something similar built in. I think the success of these services lies in the the size of the user base, and right now Yelp has a lot more users than Foursquare and Gowalla. (Yelp has 1.25 million users, MyTown has 500,000 users and Foursquare has 150,000 users.) On top of that Yelp also has a large database of user generated content and reviews about locations. No wonder Google just recently tried to buy them out. Of course, the real question is when will Facebook enter this space. With its massive installed user base Facebook could quickly crush the competition if it wanted to.

Pete Cashmore said 2010 would be the year of Foursquare, and Time just featured Foursquare in its magazine, but if Foursquare doesn't step it up soon it could quickly be surpassed by its rivals. Location will be big in 2010, that's for certain, I'm just not sure if Foursquare will be the one leading the charge.

Augmented Reality on Michigan Ave.

This weekend I went Christmas shopping on Michigan Ave. and I decided to try out a couple iPhone augmented reality apps during my trip. The Magnificent Mile is a high traffic shopping area with a good mix of shops, restaurants and entertainment venues. With all of these different points around me I'd have access to a lot of data to play with as I walked around the area.

Augmented Reality Apps

Augmented reality on smartphones is essentially taking your phone's camera feed and overlaying graphical information on top of it. Most of the apps I list out below deal with your location. That means these apps use GPS to find your location, then take your camera feed and the digital compass capabilities and figure out where to lay out the data on the screen. It's pretty interesting stuff.

I had several different types of augmented reality apps on my iPhone. I had some venue review apps, like Yelp and Urbanspoon. I also had Wikitude, which overlays Wikipedia information on top of geotagged points of interest. Similar to Wikitude, I had Layar's augmented reality browser, which hooks into Wikipedia data. Layar also has a plug-in for showing tweets nearby. I also wanted to check out some of Google's Favorite Places so I downloaded NeoReader's app for scanning QR codes.

I started up north by the Water Tower Place. Right off the bat I realized that there would be no subtle way for me to use augmented reality with my phone. You have to point your device at the 'horizon'... which actually means a little bit higher than eye level. So essentially I was walking around with my phone held at arm's length in front of me. As you move the phone around from one direction to the next the data on the screen changes, so you have to keep an eye out on the display the whole time.

I started out with the review based apps. Yelp has a feature called Monocle that uses AR to display quick restaurant reviews around you. Urbanspoon has a similar feature. These apps worked pretty well, I noted that they were fairly accurate in direction and distance. One bad thing was that the number of data points on the screen was a bit much at times. You can set filters to limit the types of restaurants and places that get displayed, but in a densely populated area the AR items can quickly overtake your whole screen.

The Wikipedia based apps were a bit of bust. Both Wikitude and Layar's Wikipedia plug-in failed to show any real data around me, even though I was near actual points of interest like the Museum of Contemporary Art, Water Tower Place, or the John Hancock Center. The best these apps could show me was information for 'nearby' locations like Millenium Park to the south and Lincoln Park to north, which actually weren't that close to me at all.

Google's Favorite Places was also a bust. I was under the impression that the Favorite Places program had rolled out in Chicago and I would be able to find QR codes on windows of certain venues around the city. I had a list of places around Michigan Ave. but every one I checked out didn't actually have a decal sticker on the window. That was a bit disappointing.

The most interesting tool of all of them was definitely Layar's Twitter plug-in, Tweeps Around. With this app I could see tweets around me and find some pretty interesting tidbits of data. The problem was... most of these tweets weren't relevant to the location! I only saw one or two tweets about people actually shopping on Michigan Ave., the rest were just random bites of nonsense. The tweet that got me the most excited was one I saw near the Apple Store. Someone tweeted that they had just dropped off their computer at the store. Not too much there in that actual tweet but it shows a glimpse of the potential behind people geotagging relevant tweets around the city. Imagine being able to take the 'pulse' of the area based on tweets around you. Say for example you're on Michigan Ave. shopping, and you're thinking of going to the Apple Store at some point. If you see that there are a lot of tweets coming from the store that the place is "packed" you can plan accordingly, either by giving yourself extra time to shop there or skipping it altogether.

Overall Experience

Overall, 'augmented reality' itself didn't add too much value for me. There was a bit of a 'wow' factor at first, but that novelty quickly faded. The review based apps would have worked just as well for me without the augmented reality factor. Same goes for Layar's Twitter app. One thing I did notice was that there was a lot of 'noise' in the data being presented to me. There was a lot of information available, but it was cluttered and at times irrelevant. My small iPhone screen was quickly overwhelmed by labels and data that didn't really enhance my experience.

We're bound to see a huge growth in location based services as more data is geotagged on the internet. The key to all these services will be to figure out how best to filter all this data and present it to the user. Sure, 'augmented reality' is a cool way to present data, but I would much rather have a service that actually offers highly relevant and useful information to me and my current location.

4mapper

Check out this Google Map image showing all the places I've checked into around the city on Foursquare. Unsurprisingly enough, I've checked in the most around work and school. Seeing as how I spend most of my time at these two locations that shouldn't be too much of a shocker.

I generated this map over on the 4mapper website. 4mapper is a nice little mash-up of Google Maps and Foursquare that overlays your check-ins on top of a map to give you a visual display of your recent activity. From my map you can see I tend to hang out in certain areas of the city more so than others. Hopefully I'll add more spots on the map the rest of this month when I embark on my iPhone maps & augmented reality expedition. Stay tuned for more details!

Foursquare in Chicago

I've been playing around with Foursquare for the past couple of weeks and so far I'm the mayor at my office and gym, and I'm in the running for mayor at my school. Yeah!

Running through my Foursquare history, here's what I've done so far. I joined two weekends ago and started checking in as I ran some errands around town. I stopped off at the Borders on North Ave and Halsted and noticed that there's no mayor there. Hmm, I study there from time to time... maybe I'll try to take the mayor crown there.

I added my work location to Foursquare, and started checking in every day. I'm now the mayor at work! Considering that no one else in my office uses Foursquare it wasn't that hard to do. I also started checking in at places around work as I went out to lunch, but not every place was listed in the system. Oh well.

I added my training center (Vision Quest) to the map. Vision Quest is actually doing a pretty good job with social media and the web. They have a Facebook page and a Twitter account (@vqcoaching) but no Foursquare presence yet. Started checking in there and quickly became the mayor of VQ. Sweet!

I also started checking in at school but so far I'm not the mayor there yet. Jane U. has that crown now, but I've politely let her know that I may challenge her for mayorship of Kellogg.

So far Foursquare has been pretty fun, but I don't feel like it's done anything useful for me yet. Deals are starting to show up on my map, but I don't think the Foursquare 'buzz' has caught on in Chicago just yet, despite this weekend's article in the Chicago Tribune. I did score a free shot at the Hunt Club over the weekend thanks to Foursquare, but that's about the only real application of the system I've seen in the area.

Another problem for me is that none of my friends are on Foursquare yet, and I really only know of one or two other people on the service. Having my friends use Foursquare would make the game a lot more enjoyable for me, as I'd have people I could challenge for points and mayor positions all over the city. Right now most of my friends have never even heard of Foursquare and look at me funny when I "check in" at certain places. They get the concept of the game, but don't quite understand why I'm using it or what purpose it serves.

Geolocation services like Foursquare haven't quite gone mainstream yet, but according to many analysts the mobile market will soon begin trending this way. There's a lot of potential in these context-aware services, with applications ranging from mobile entertainment and social networking to targeted advertisement and localized recommendations. Like any hot new service du jour, success will ultimately be dictated by the size of its user base. Foursquare is generating a lot of buzz lately and is building up its user base, but will it be able to hold off bigger players like Twitter and Facebook, who have started to move into the geolocation space themselves?

I know if Facebook rolled out its own geolocation service tomorrow, I would start using it instead of Foursquare. Why? Well, all of my friends would already be on the service so the experience would be a lot more social and enjoyable for me. Also, with Facebook's massive installed user base we'd see more applications built on top of the platform and more "offers" available for users on the map.

We'll see how long it takes for geolocation to go mainstream. Hopefully all this media attention for Foursquare will lead to new users signing up for the service, especially in the Chicagoland area. It's a little lonely playing Foursquare all by myself. :(

Google GPS

Google just keeps dropping bombs all over the web, and its latest product offering is already making huge waves. Last week, Google announced that it would provide free turn-by-turn GPS maps to mobile devices. Reaction was sharp and immediate: GPS-makers saw their share prices plummet.

It's hard to compete against a giant like Google when it gives away its products for free. Just like with the Android mobile platform, Google is giving away its GPS maps product for free in order to build up its mobile search market. So it's hard for the other mapmakers to compete against Google when all of their profits come directly from the map technology and Google's profit comes from the search revenue delivered indirectly by the map technology. Google's complementary search product is so strong that it has a huge competitive advantage in almost any field X it enters since it can afford to off-set any direct losses on product X with indirect search revenue, so long as that product can add to Google's search market share.

What's even more interesting is that sometimes Google even pays for others to use its product. For example, with the Android platform, Google will actually pay you ad splits to use certain licensed versions of its software. This "less than free" model is even more bad news for anyone competing against the search giant.

Who will be next to fall under the mighty axe of Google?