« Ludlow is the least wired place in the UK (possibly) |
Main
| Day 2 Navigation and Location Europe »
June 05, 2008
Day 1 Navigation and Location Europe
N&LE is being held at the Marriott, Amsterdam in a meeting room full of green beize tables with a constant supply of refreshments next door. Thomas and Osman run around shepherding speakers and keeping the whole thing to time.
Highlights for me:
Panel on mobile navigation, excellently moderated by Peggy Anne Salz of MSearchGroove . The panel were discussing the available propositions for mobile navigation. John Craig of Destinator stirred things up by suggesting that mobile advertising was not the killer app in any sense. There was also a discussion of pedestrian navigation, and some wondering out loud why it had not taken off. Jure Sustersic of Forum Nokia pointed out that walkers had embraced mobile navigation guidance for outdoor sports. I reminded people of the achievement of Navitime in getting 2million users to use a public transport-integrated pedestrian navigation system in Japan. The discussion then moved onto the question of why and how Navitime succeeded in Japan, and others elsewhere were struggling. Are Japanese consumers different? Is it because Japanese addressing is so different? Is it because of the superior sidewalk databases that exist in Japan? I prefer to think that it is an innovative developer who have the great advantage of the required infrastructure (3G data, flat data tariffs and GPS phones) and a well organised value chain. Andrew Grill said that he believes the Google cellID API will be opened up allowing thousands of developers access to reasonably accurate base station locations.
Speednetworking: 2 rows of chains arranged opposite each other... explain what you do to the people opposite... then move on at the bell. Very enjoyable and introduced me to Rainer Horn of space tec capital , who tries to combat my scepticism about VC funding!
I chair a panel about dynamic LBS content featuring Weatherbug, NavX , Oxford Softworks and 8motions. The questions of user expectations, POI standards and kinds of POI's that users will pay for all came up
I meet some entrepreneurs working on some of the same business propositions that Placr is, including Journey Dynamics and Networks in Motion
I also hear a very interesting presentation by Adrienne Jan, Head of LBS for Orange Group who lets it be known that they have done a soft launch of A-GPS in UK and France... and that they are willing to hear propositions for access by developers. Eventually, they aspire to opening up the interface to all, when the capacity and privacy issues can be sorted out.
All in all... a very interesting day!
Jonathan
Posted by raper at June 5, 2008 12:00 AM