Notes from session on mobile / geolocation apps (Aaron & Case)

[Joe McCarthy]

Quick & dirty notes from session:

Aaron & Amber Case
GeoLoqi (http://geoloqi.com/)
API, SDK
iPhone & Android
JSON + Oauth

Chattercast (http://geoloqi.com/blog/tag/chattercast/):
911 data from the city
As you walk down the street, you'd get real-time 911 call data via
text

Open Government Hackathon:
http://geoloqi.com/blog/2010/10/apps-built-at-the-tropo-geoloqi-open-gov-hackathon/
DontEatThat: restaurant inspection data
Text message when you walk by a restaurant with inspection lower < 50

Science Hackathon: Palo Alto
http://geoloqi.com/blog/2010/11/building-a-location-based-science-trivia-game-with-geoloqi-at-science-hack-day-san-francisco/
Text you a question about science, tied to location, e.g., what kind
of brick is in the building to your right. Includes a leaderboard.

Layers
Triggers: automatically send a text to your boss if you are not
detected in an area by a certain time
Share your location with someone
Privacy issues: post your location with a link that expires at a
specified time
Can use any Lat/Long data, subscribe to that data
Geofences: radius specification for location-based data
Battery life monitoring
Accounts: can subscribe to layers
integration with foursquare checkins
may need to add ratings (to identify lame layers)
For more info: http://beta.geoloqi.com

Tropo (https://www.tropo.com/)
Send / receive SMS notifications
Can build interactive chat apps (via a number)
e.g., Science Hackathon game

Phono app
turns your browser into a phone client

Speech synthesis

Code samples

Assistive technologies?
Not used much for this (yet): more for games
Limitations: Can't have turn-by-turn directions

Could use geolocation help application
Demo app ended up using it for finding beer (help, we ran out of beer)

Richard: works for King County, GIS data
Built environment data, density, transit data, water quality, location-
based amount of CO2 emissions
Sustainability: EnviroStars, Chinook book businesses
App ideas
Help people find healthy foods, socially responsible businesses (don't
have that data yet)
Goal (King County): help promote more healthy, sustainable behavior
through access to data / information
Healthy food access
King County Spatial Data Catalog: http://www5.kingcounty.gov/sdc/toc.aspx

Jesse:
http://www.walkscore.com/
Find out hat's nearby

Case:
idea: app for mapping a path for wheelchair access in downtown
Portland

Russell:
Seattle API
http://seaapi.com
(also http://pdxapi.com)
working on GeoFetch JQuery plugin in order to tie Flickr photos to
MyNeighborhood map data from
https://github.com/chewbranca/geofetch

Google Maps API
Can replace Google Map tiles with whatever you want

Reverse GeoCoding:
Wanted: mapping from lat/long to nearest intersection
Typically: map from lat/long to an address
See http://www.geonames.org/

Exercises so far
Haven't hit critical mass (yet)
Still need to experiment (a lot) at this stage
Foursquare (Dodgeball?) grew out of NYU project
Goal: provide tools for people to play / experiment

Richard:
King County: web site under development: key in address, learn more
about amenities in the area.

MyNeighborhood map from Socrata
http://seaapi.com/
HTML
Geo-JSON data for landmarks

Advertising
geolocation marketing
Need good filters: want to have sufficient specificity (e.g., Indian
food, >= 20% discount, within one-block radius)

Layar: augmented reality app for iPhone (http://www.layar.com/)
Issue: lag time in downloading location-based content (up to 30
seconds)
Also: heads-up displays, e.g., Steve Mann (http://wearcam.org/
steve.html), Thad Starner (http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~thad/)
The tension between attending to offline and online activities and
interactions
(cf book: Alone Together by Sherry Turkle)