If you like Google, mobile development and cloud platforms, this is going to be a good week for you.

Google will have lots of goodies this week for developers - and consumers - at its I/O developer conference in San Francisco. We might see some new hardware, a couple updates to Google’s major platforms (Maps, Android, Chrome, Google+ and Play) and most likely a surprise or two. But, really, the week belongs to the developers.

Historically, I/O has been an occasion for Google to get its developer community together and introduce them to the newest tools, tips on how to develop for Google apps and best practices. Until the last couple of years, I/O (which Google started in 2008) was all about developers and less about big product announcements. In 2011, Google announced Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich as well as Chromebooks from Samsung and Acer. In 2012, the rage was Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, the Nexus 7 Android tablet and the spectacular unveiling of Google Glass. This year, we expect Google to once again focus heavily on its developer community - with fewer major product announcements.

From a hardware perspective, Google may or may not announce new devices during I/O, but don't expect an event like 2012, when Google-branded hardware stole the show. If Google does announce hardware, we expect that it will release (or at least update) some kind of Nexus tablet and/or smartphone (probably through LG), an update to its Chromebook line (likely through Samsung or Acer) and maybe something to do with Google TV.

Otherwise, Google I/O will be a developer’s paradise. Here’s what mobile, Web, cloud and social developers should be looking forward to:

Android Update: Probably More Jelly Beans

Chrome Android by Paul Wilcox

Google’s new head of Android, Sundar Pichai, told Wired not to expect any major product announcements at I/O. Considering that Pichai is head of Android and Chrome OS, we tend to think that he was specifically talking more about Google’s computing platforms and less about new hardware. 

That said, Google will update Android one way or another this week. The rumors surrounding I/O are that Google will issue an iterative update to Jelly Bean, Android version 4.3. If true, that means that Google is not yet coming out with Key Lime Pie, the next named version of Android. 

Regardless if we see a new version of Android or just a Jelly Bean update, there will be plenty of Android news at I/O. Some major themes:

• Gaming: Google will host a variety of game-related developer sessions at I/O. It will give developers best practices, design tips and ideas on taking their games to the next level. Google’s Ingress augmented/alternate reality game will be featured, with several Ingress battles taking place at Moscone West during the week. Most of the Android gaming sessions will take place on Day 1 (Wednesday, May 15) of I/O.
• Design & Performance: Google’s biggest objective with Android during the week will be working with developers to make their apps function seamlessly, look better and present dynamic user experiences. Most design and performance sessions will take place on Day 2. 
• Google Play: Google will be giving developers tips on how to best monetize their apps and get seen on its app store, Google Play, throughout the conference. Google Play sessions will be held on Day 2 & 3. 
• Maps: We expect a big update to Google Maps in both user interface, functionality and developer tools. Location is a key ingredient in how Google uses Android and there will be a variety of location- and Maps-related sessions on all three days of the event.

Chrome OS Tools, Apps & Features

Chromebook (by Mark Hachman)

Again, if we can believe Pichai, there will not be any major new announcements for Chrome. But there might be a new Chromebook announced at I/O and there will definitely be new feature updates. 

Chrome OS and the Chrome browser are important to Google because they are the company’s window to the Web. Chrome OS is also a key cog in Google's cloud strategy - the company wants to tie developers to the operating system and get them to run their apps in Google’s cloud platform. Many of the announcements and sessions at I/O related to Chrome will focus on functionality, cloud adoption and Google Apps (like Maps, Gmail, Drive etc.). On Monday, Google announced that Gmail, Google+ Photos and Drive will be merged to give users 15GB of storage. That type of integration will be prominent in how Google steers developers toward developing for Chrome at I/O.

• Drive: Google will be making a bid to get developers and users to tie their Chrome OS and browser storage to Drive, its personal cloud product. Google will push tying use of its Apps to Drive, such as in the Day 1 session titled, “Integrate Google Drive With Google App Scripts.”
• HTML: Chrome is for the Web and of the Web. Hence, HTML will always be a big part of development for apps on Chrome OS and the browser. I/O has several sessions on how to create mobile websites optimized through Chrome with HTML. It will also have sessions on Dart, Google’s programming language meant to accelerate function and performance in HTML Web apps. 

Google+ Enhanced Communication

The biggest improvements to Google’s social network likely concern communication. Google Babel is rumored to be the company’s integration of all of its messaging platforms into one product - likely to be rolled out through Google+. Google will spend a lot of time showing developers how to use Google+ as a “one true sign-in” platform, much like Facebook uses your profile to let you sign into a variety of websites. Google will also announce new features to Google+ designed to get developers to build more apps for the platform and increase engagement - from brands and consumers. 

Location, Location, Location

Google Maps will get some heavy play at this year's I/O. Maps will likely get a user experience overhaul - look for that to be a major component of Wednesday morning's keynote. Google wants Maps to be integrated everywhere, from Android to Chrome to every third-party app in between. On Day 1 and Day 2 it has a variety of sessions dedicated solely to Maps integration. That includes HTML5 and mobile Web visualization, indoor maps, API integration and discovery.

Only A Little Glass

Google Glass was the big announcement at I/O 2012. It will likely be a major theme at the keynote on Wednesday. The hype that surrounds Glass requires Google to mention it prominently. Yet, when it comes to developers, Glass will only be a sideshow to the major events around Chrome, Cloud and Android. 

Google is holding just four announced Glass development sessions, all on Day 2. Essentially, these sessions are Developing For Glass 101, and will include how to use the Google Mirror API.

Yahoo's mobile gameplan is shaping up fast - or its stable of mobile apps is, anyhow. Yahoo has now acquired Alike, a mobile location-based suggestion engine app à la Foursquare. The news broke on the same day that CEO Marissa Mayer took the stage of the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference to repeat her clarion call for Yahoo's new direction.  

Paring Down Yahoo's Mobile Mess

At the conference, Mayer took a verbal machete to Yahoo's existing tangle of apps, announcing plans to cull Yahoo's ridiculous current mess of 60 to 70 apps down to around a dozen core mobile products. 

At the same time, though, Mayer also keeps adding apps. In her tenure at Yahoo so far, she has already brought two other mobile apps with social tendencies on board: Stamped, a social-suggestion network that could be interwoven with Alike's DNA, and OnTheAir, a livestreaming app that facilitates video chat.

There's no word yet on how much Yahoo paid for the small Seattle-based company, which will integrate into Yahoo's San Francisco and Sunnyvale offices. In a statement on its website, the team behind the now-discontinued Alike app announced the big news.

Alike To Join Yahoo In The Sunshine State

"We’ve always been passionate about the growing power of intelligent mobile experiences," read the statement from the Alike team. "We believe that distilled information, deeply personalized and made accessible anytime and anywhere, is what makes mobile experiences a part of our customers’ daily lives. In Yahoo! we've found a team as excited about this vision as we are, and who are serious about making it real."

While pruning Yahoo is no small task, Mayer is making decisive moves toward her roadmap for the ailing internet giant. With a trio of nimble mobile teams under her wing and a clearer vision for a company recently known for trying to do everything at once, she just needs to stay her own course.

Facebook may already know a lot about our daily habits - where we check in, what we buy, who we hang out with - but it might be on the cusp on knowing exactly where we are in real-time. A new report out of Bloomberg claims that Facebook is working on its own equivalent of Apple's Find My Friends app - or Google's Latitude, for the more Android-inclined among us. 

Bloomberg's report suggests that new Facebook app would "track the location of users" and is set to launch in mid-March - but it's otherwise extremely light on detail. The story neglects to mention that the company rolled the very same thing last June in the form of "Find Friends Nearby" - a hackathon-born mobile feature which the company released and rescinded within hours. And it cites Highlight rather than Facebook-owned Glancee as one of this new(ish) class of constant location tracking apps. 

Glancee was all about ambient social geo-data, just like Nearby is all about check-ins. We spoke to Facebook in December about the company's plans for expanding further into location on mobile - and there's definitely more on the way this year.  

"We spent a lot of 2012 working to improve the foundation of our mobile products," a Facebook representative told us. "... Nearby positions us well to offer more location aware features on mobile in the new year."

Building out a mobile app that connects the dots of its existing location service into one continuous stream of real-time user location data seems like a no brainer. But how Facebook plans to sweet talk its billion-plus increasingly cynical users into toggling continuous geo-data on is the real question here. It's a matter of when and how - not if. 

Image by Taylor Hatmaker

HTML5 Relevance 

These days any time you talk mobile app development or operating systems, HTML5 is a key part of the conversation.

Perhaps the biggest development for HTML5 in 2012 was its non-development. At the end of 2011, HTML5 seemed like a young athlete that had no limits to its potential. Yet, just as we watch many athletes mature into professional players, the development was marred by maturation and performance issues that took some of the luster off the subject. From a technological standpoint, the HTML5 stack saw good improvement in 2012 as companies like Google, Mozilla, appMobi, Sencha, Research In Motion, Facebook and others have developed towards the stack. HTML5 is well on its way to being a mature technology.

Yet, HTML5 may have suffered a blow to its popularity and perception in 2012. One of HTML5’s biggest proponents was Facebook, which built its “native” apps for iOS, Android and other platforms by taking its Facebook mobile site and “wrapping” it for the native platforms. It was essentially a Web-based approach that lent itself to HTML5 proponents version of the future success of the stack. In the middle of the year, Facebook completely redid its mobile app for iOS, going towards native code and for its iPhone app. Like it or not, Facebook is a big influence among developers and is closely watched for the decisions it makes. When Facebook says it has gone native to increase performance and improve the user interface of its app, people take note. Hence, many HTML5 proponents changed their tune and said that, while HTML5 has its uses, it still is not ready for the primetime. 

Location, Location, Location

The use of location services, social games and maps in smartphones has been something of a useful curiosity in the Mobile Revolution. People may like to use Foursquare and Google Maps on their phones, but ultimately they are just tools to inform you or entertain you. In 2012, location took on a much wider breadth of functionality in the mobile market. 

Location features in smartphones had several interesting storylines in 2012. In the beginning of the year we saw an interesting fad of “ambient location apps” for locating people near you such as Highlight, Glancee and Banjo. This trend moves away from the simple Foursquare-style check-in but ultimately these types of services are more of an edge-case, first-adopter market than anything that will seriously penetrate the mass market. 

Perhaps the biggest story of the year in the mobile location department was the act by Apple to drop Google Maps from its iPhones and iPads in iOS 6. Apple was then roundly criticized for releasing a half-baked product prone to errors. Apple has been working hard to fix those problems and eventually iOS Maps may be a quality product to rival Google Maps. Yet it was very telling that when Google released its own Maps for iOS app in middle December, it immediately became one of the most popular free apps in the App Store. People still like (and trust) Google Maps. 

The seeds for smarter location services in smartphones was planted in several ways in 2012. Companies like Geoloqi out of Portland, Ore. are attempting to create low battery consumption services for background location that application developers and enterprises (like government agencies) can implant into their own services to keep track of employees or the retail shopping habits of consumers. Games are starting to implement location in an alternate/augmented reality layer, such as with Google’s Ingress app or TapCity from Boston-based TapLabs. 

Location will become a much more ubiquitous feature in smartphones and tablets going forward. It may also become less visible as apps and services employ location behind the scenes to learn user patterns and tailor their mobile experience to how users move through the world. The key to that will be to create location services that have lower battery usage while also remaining highly accurate. 

Growing Base Of Developer Services

We noted in the Mobile Trends for 2012 that an app explosion has gripped the mobile industry. Everybody is making an app, in one form or another. 

It was inevitable then that and entire industry would emerge dedicated to the support of app developers. In 2012, we saw the cream rise to the top as some of the services that help developers create apps have cemented their positions in the mobile industry.

From a tools and services standpoints, two big companies have created significant pushes into the mobile services department, with IBM and SAP both offering multi-pronged service features targeted at both consumer app developers and enterprises. Microsoft has made a big push to get developers to use its Azure cloud service as the de facto back end for apps. Adobe, Brightcove and other publically traded companies have made big bets that they can provide much-needed services to app developers and designers. 

Some of the most interesting momentum in the developer services space has come from rapidly growing startups. Analytics companies like Flurry, Localytics, Apsalar, PlayHaven and others are vying to be the default tracking platform for a variety of apps. Tools companies like appMobi, Sencha working to create workable features for mobile HTML5 developers while Appcelerator has cemented itself as a go-to destination for tools and developer support. Several “backend as a service” companies have solidified leads to help developers tie their apps to cloud infrastructure with StackMob, Parse and Kinvey leading the way. The list of developer-focused, service-oriented startups is very long and it is only going to grow as more and more people look to create apps for a variety of platforms and the Web. 

Think of it in the same way you might think of what kinds of mobile apps you may be looking for. If you want recipes, there are hundreds of recipe apps. Shopping? Sure. Communication? Productivity? Maps? Calendars? Yeah, we got all of those. As developers create more and better apps, the services industry will grown underneath it to prop it up. Think of anything that an app developer might need, and there will be a dozen startups and several billion-dollar big boys lining up to provide those services. Marketing, advertising, integrated developer environments, cloud services, user interface and consulting, communications … you name it and a shadow industry that consumers may never see or care about is growing to serve developers.

It was 10:30pm on a Tuesday in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A slurry of snow and rain fell in clumps as I huddled in front of my local post office, clutching my smartphone and shivering. People walked by, giving friendly nods to me, this creep lurking on the street with no apparent purpose other than staring at my smartphone, tapping furiously, waiting, then listening to the sounds that came of it. What was I doing on this corner at night when I could have been curled up on my couch, reading a book and sipping eggnog?

I was playing Ingress, the new Android location-based augmented reality game from Google’s Niantic Labs. And I was not quite sure what I was doing.

What Is Ingress?

A mystery wrapped inside a riddle inside an enigma. At least that is the way it is being marketed. At its core, Ingress is a game that tries to get you to move around. It encourages you to collect “Exotic Matter” (XM), a mysterious energy discovered by scientists in Europe working with the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator. It is believed to be some sort of structured data. This matter can be found and collected just by walking down the street. It is used, along with a variety of other items that can be gained in game play, to “hack” portals.

In Ingress, portals are areas of interest, such a public park or a federal building. This is what I was doing on that chilly evening: hacking my local post office. In real life, if I said that I was hacking my local post office, the FBI would be knocking down my door in a matter of hours. But Ingress is not reality. It is augmented reality.

The term "augmented reality" typically conjures the idea of using a smartphone’s camera to create visual overlays through the viewfinder. Usually this will lead us to a local business or display some type of deal at a nearby restaurant. The Yelp app does this and so does new features for the next-generation Lumia devices from Nokia. But, augmented reality does not necessarily have to use a smartphone’s camera. This mixture of location, reality, augmentation and mystery are what give Ingress a unique and exciting new angle on the concept of mobile gaming.

In terms of plot, there are two factions in Ingress: the Enlightened and the Resistance. The Enlightened think that XM is a good thing and want to help something called “Shapers” escape the portals scattered throughout the world. The Resistance thinks that these Shapers are here to invade and are out to stop them. In terms of game play, there is no fundamental difference between which side you choose, other than the color (green for Enlightened, blue for Resistance). You can hack portals controlled by your alliance for strength (by adding “Resonators”) or attack those of the opposition to destroy those Resonators. Various items of differing purpose and strength can be found through these acts as gameplay advances. 

The game is inherently social, though not in the familiar status-update manner associated with games like Zynga's FarmVille. Ingress is more of Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) game a la World of Warcraft, where people in the environment can access a universal chat to talk to each other. The chat works on a sliding scale from local (players within 20 kilometers of you), regional (within 200 kilometers) to global (everywhere) ranges. But instead of a fake world created by designers and programmers populated by role players like World of Warcraft, Ingress is the real world with real people. 

The game is currently in a closed beta, but for the lucky ones with an Ingress invite, there are a couple things to note. Foremost, this is a smartphone-based game, not optimized for Android tablets. Given the nature of location-based games, this is understandable. Also, the map is limited to what is around you on the smartphone. Go the the Ingress Intel Map on your computer to see where portals are located outside of your immediate vicinity.

Ingress Advances The Concept Of Mobile Gaming

Ingress can be a touch confusing at first. By its nature, it is a learn-on-the-fly type of game that forces you to interact with it through real-world destinations (hence, the creeping in front of the post office at 10:30 at night). Yet, once you get the basic concepts down, the game offers a significant potential for addiction. Ingress also has the potential to redefine the nature of a mobile game.

As yet, I have not seen a mobile game that branches into a such variety of technology categories the way Ingress does. There are location-based social games like Foursquare, but Foursquare is more grounded in social than gaming. There is plenty of augmented reality technology in smartphones (usually in a camera-based function), but usually not with an extra layer of augmentation spread across the entire world. I have seen social mobile games, but never anything that adds the element of MMO like Ingress does. 

Essentially, what Ingress has done is take the basic concepts of mobile gaming and advanced them a step further. And it is just getting started.

There is an element of mystery to Ingress. At this very early stage, players are still getting used to the notion of hacking and linking portals together to control swaths of their locales. The linchpin to the operation, Niantic Labs (which is a part of Google but also an element within the game), is gradually releasing new aspects of game play that will double as viral marketing. 

It's not clear when Ingress will be available to the public. It could be weeks, it could be months. Right now you can go to Ingress.com and request and invite and Google may or may not pick you.

I think it's worth a shot. Ingress should be enough of a game to keep the geeks among us interested but simple and engaging enough for the average player. And I am kind of fascinated by the layers of tech involved. In short, Ingress is hip, thoughtful and fun. Hopefully it will provide a blueprint for other games of its type going forward. 

Nokia unveiled is new line of Lumia smartphones today at an event in New York City. Building on Windows Phone 8, the company has harnessed its design and development teams to create one of the most innovative smartphone approaches on the market.

It's no secret that Nokia has been playing catch up in the smartphone market. It has shed market share, laid off employees, and been forced to completely rethink the company, top to bottom, in its effort to compete with Apple and Google's Android operating system.

When Nokia abandoned its MeeGo smartphone platform and began phasing out its Symbian devices in February 2011 in favor of Windows Phone, the natural question was how Nokia would adjust its R&D effort to Microsoft’s new mobile platform. Windows Phone's Hubs-and-Tiles approach did not leave much room for software customization.

Nokia has built its reputation and market presence on R&D. But when it pulled the plug on its own mobile platforms, it had to race to get a Windows Phone to market and did not have time to properly implement many of its particular enhancements, such as location services or camera technology. The result was two well designed Windows Phones, the Lumia 800 and 900, that were ho-hum additions to flashier Windows Phones made by companies like HTC or Samsung.

The goal for Nokia was to add its distinctive technology to the Windows Phone platform. That is precisely what the company has pulled off with the new Lumia 920.

“Across all of our strategy, we said that Nokia would differentiate,” CEO Stephen Elop said. “Future disruptions, we are identifying ways to challenge the shortcomings of today's user experiences.”

Nokia focused on a few specific categories to differentiate the Lumia 920 from other smartphones: camera, screen and video playback, location and navigation services, and wireless charging. 

Nokia seems to be proudest of the camera. The company has integrated its 8.7 megapixel PureView hardware and software with its Carl Zeiss optics in an effort to deliver one of the best smartphone camera experiences available. Nokia uses what it calls “floating lens technology” (which isolates the optics using tiny springs) to keep the shutter open longer while accounting for the natural movement of a person’s hand. Essentially, Nokia has increased the size of the Lumia’s aperture while keeping the shutter open longer. It expects this approach to deliver superior low-light performance. 

“Since the Nokia Lumia 920 has the best smartphone camera for taking pictures and video for every day use, we wanted to help people find places to use it,” said Jo Harlow, executive vice president of Nokia. 

Nokia also touted its navigation and location services. The usual Nokia stand-outs are there, including revamped maps and turn-by-turn navigation. The newest feature combines the smartphone camera with location services for an augmented reality function called “Nokia City Lens.” The feature overlays information on local businesses through the smartphone’s camera viewfinder. A user can tap the screen and call a restaurant to make a reservation.

Nokia also became the first major smartphone manufacturer to ship a smartphone that has inductive, wireless charging as a default feature. Until now, wireless charging (by laying the phone on a pad that charges the battery) was available only from third-party vendors and required users to change the device's back panel. Nokia has partnered with a company called Fatboy to add a charging pillow without the need to change the back plate.

Nokia did not announce the pricing or availability of the Lumia 920 or the lower-end Lumia 820. Elop said that pricing and regional availability would be available in the fourth quarter of this year. 

Since 2005, the dominant maker of digital maps has been Google. Developers, companies and users rely on Google Maps to look up locations, see snapshots of the world and get turn-by-turn directions. Even Apple has always relied on Google Maps for its iOS products, such as the iPhone and iPad. That is no longer the case. Apple has created its own maps program for iOS and it is looking to blow Google out of the water.

Apple is not only trying to replicate maps for iOS, it is trying to redefine it. Whether or not it has done so will be up for debate, but the new maps program demoed during Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference keynote today looks impressive. Siri, Apple’s erstwhile digital assistant, has been integrated into the new product and can help you navigate or tell you how long it will be until you arrive at your destination. By integrating Siri into its own maps product, Apple has just created what will be one of the most popular hands-free mobile navigation systems in the world. 

Apple’s new maps will do just about everything you would expect from a maps application. It has turn-by-turn navigation, traffic view and crowd-sourced data with incident reports that can reroute information in case you get stuck. Just like Google Maps, Apple is building 3D renditions of cities and has a “Flyover” feature that will show an aerial view of buildings and landscapes. 

Flyover is one of the most interesting aspects of Apple’s new maps, as it can show the user a 3D rendition of certain structures. For instance, want to take a closer look at the Empire State Building? Pin it in Apple’s maps and isolate it from the rest of the picture. Apple has built 3D models of cities across the world to feature in its new maps offering. 

Apple’s goal in creating a new maps application has several motivations. Foremost, it wants to cut Google out of the iOS experience, and one of the biggest ways to do so is to cut off access to one of Google’s most important products. Apple has integrated Yelp into its maps and has a listing of 100 million local businesses in its maps product. By tying its maps to a database not controlled by Google, Apple is striking a blow right at the heart of Google’s revenue source: local search, referral and advertising. Apple also wants to create a better-looking product than Google, and the first shots of Apple’s maps show that it can challenge the search giant in aesthetics, especially with the 3D rendering and flyover. 

In the end, all that Apple has really accomplished is replicating functionality that was already provided on all iOS devices. While Apple maps are interesting, they are not a groundbreaking development in the history of innovation. Apple’s decision to create maps is all about business, not necessarily the users or the user experience. Apple has entered a market long dominated by other companies, such as AOL (which owns Mapquest), Nokia and Google. All of those companies make comparable services, and Apple, despite its best efforts, will have trouble making a product that will blow the incumbents out of the water. Maps plus Siri? Awesome-looking maps and 3D renditions? Great for Apple’s marketing department but not exactly delivering a new era of innovation. 

Today location check-in app Foursquare unveiled a new design for its iOS and Android mobile apps. It now focuses on recommending places for you to go, based on your current location. It's also more social. This is a sensible pivot, but Foursquare is not yet at the place it needs to be.

My usage of Foursquare dropped off markedly over the past year. It was one of those apps that was addictive for a while, being the mayor of my local cafe and so forth, but then it just became a drag. That's because there weren't enough real world rewards for checking in - too few retailers offered incentives such as discounts. Today's redesign aims to entice people like me back to the service. Not to mention hook the many millions of mainstream users who haven't yet tried it. 

With this release, Foursquare becomes a direct competitor to the current recommendations leader, Yelp (whose tagline reads: "Real people. Real reviews"). This means that Foursquare will need to beef up its database of real world reviews, even though it will rely mostly on the implicit recommendations of check-ins. Foursquare is also aiming to beat Yelp on the social part, hence social functionality has been enhanced in the new version of Foursquare.

The Pivot

This is quite a change in the core use case for Foursquare. Previously, you opened up Foursquare to "check in" to a place. When I was a more regular user, I tended to use it in one of two ways: 1) to check into exotic locations when I was traveling, or 2) to keep my mayorship at my favorite local cafe. That check-in use case is still a big part of Foursquare, but it's been augmented with the "Explore" functionality. This enables you to search for something, like "sushi" or "cafe", and Foursquare will recommend places nearby.

The goal then of Foursquare has moved from checking in (where, as mentioned, the real world benefits turned out to be small), to discovery (where the benefits are potentially bigger, in that you could find great new places to visit).

More Social

The redesigned app feels more social. Comments are more to the fore now and you can see more check-ins when you visit a person's profile. You're also encouraged to "share your adventures", with the help of larger images and maps that display faces. The Facebook integration has been tightened: when you first open the new app, you're prompted to add Foursquare to your Facebook Timeline. Also your check-in history is more accessible now - you can now search through your check-in history, similar to how Timeline works in Facebook.

Overall, there are a lot of neat feature upgrades in the new Foursquare. There's less focus on the gimmicks (mayors, badges) and more focus on places, people and colorful images.

Another similarity to Facebook is Foursquare's renewed focus on brands. For example, the History Channel is on Foursquare and has so far recommended nearly 1,500 places with interesting histories.

Things To Improve On

It's not all beer and skittles. The user interface feels a bit crowded now and I got confused several times when tapping around the Explore section. So the design needs some work - especially to make it more intuitive to new users. But these things will get smoothed out over time.

Also if Foursquare wants to compete with Yelp, it needs to find a way to encourage more of its users to leave "tips" (aka reviews). Currently when you check in, you're asked "What are you up to?". That's a Twitter-like prompt, but really Foursquare needs to be asking something like: "What do you think of this place?". This would encourage more people to leave useful tips/reviews.

Will The Pivot Work?

Overall, this feels like a great move by Foursquare. The commercial aspects of check-ins didn't work out, but along the way Foursquare managed to amass a valuable store of data about places and where people go. Also, where they spend their money. So switching to recommendations, a la Yelp, is a smart move. That said, I think Foursquare needs more than just implicit check-in recommendations. It needs to increase its explicit recommendation database (= tips).

Will Foursquare be able to entice a mainstream market to "explore" the world using its app? Let us know in the comments.

What's less structured than a business incubator and more community-oriented than executive suites? For an increasing number of startups, the answer is co-working spaces - where entrepreneurs rent desks, office space and access to office amenities by the hour, day or month. 

But how can you tell if a co-working space is the right solution for your company?

As the co-working trend spreads from big urban centers including San Francisco and New York, most major cities now have at least one co-working space… and that number is growing. According to the 2nd Annual Global Coworking Survey, 36% of all co-working spaces plan to open additional locations this year, and 85% expect membership to increase.

But just because there’s a co-working space near your company, that doesn’t necessarily mean it - or any such space - is the right fit for you. Consider these five fact factors before moving in:

1. What kind of people do you want to work with? Co-working spaces come in many flavors. Some cater to creative workers like writers or graphic designers; others focus on women business owners or entrepreneurs who need child care during working hours; still others attract software designers, game designers or other techies. You’ll be spending a fair amount of time among these people, so choose your co-workers carefully.

2. How many amenities do you require? Some niceties you can expect to find include coffee makers and refrigerators, access to office equipment such as printers and fax machines, storage space, open-plan seating areas and meeting rooms. If there are any factors that are especially important to you, ask about them. Also find out what hours you can access the facility and how far in advance you need to reserve meeting space.

3. What plan options are available, and how much do they cost? Most co-working spaces offer a menu of options, from “drop-in” hourly space rentals to part-time or full-time membership plans. If you have employees, ask about group plans and make sure the center can accommodate the size of your team. If possible, test out the space with drop-in rental before making a bigger commitment.

4. What’s the vibe? Visit the co-working space to get a sense of how friendly, collaborative, energetic or practical it is for your purposes. In general, co-working spaces are informal by nature; the ease of sharing and meeting new people is part of the charm. But you also need to make sure it’s not too noisy and hectic for you to focus (unless you’re the type who thrives in chaos).

5. What “extra perks” are available? Some co-working spaces are affiliated with startup accelerators, business incubators, local universities or other programs to help members’ businesses grow. Many sponsor events, gatherings or classes tailored around topics of interest to their members. This can make a big difference to some startups, but have no value for others.

What kinds of startups should use co-working spaces?

In general, co-working spaces work great for solo founders who want others to bounce ideas off of or to simply keep them from going stir crazy in a home office or the local Starbucks. They can also be a great place to network and meet potential partners, professional advisers or clients.

As your business grows and your team gets bigger, however, you may outgrow your co-working space.

Other warning signs a co-working space might not be right for you:

You need privacy to discuss sensitive issues or trade secrets you don’t want others to overhear. It’s hard to keep secrets when you’re sitting elbow-to-elbow with strangers. Some co-working spaces offer dedicated space with privacy for teams, but you’ll need to make sure this is available and appropriate for your needs.

You’re worried about competition. It’s great to learn from others in your industry, but not everyone is there just to help you. If you’re concerned competitors may steal your ideas or employees, a co-working space might not be right for you.

There are several resources to help you find co-working spaces in your area:

• Deskmag
• Deskwanted
• the Coworking Directory

But the best approach may be to ask around to see what co-working spaces other startup entrepreneurs in your area use and recommend.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

UpNext Maps for iPhone is beautiful. It's the smoothest, fastest map I've ever used. It renders 3D buildings for virtual exploration of certain cities. Its look and functionality are distinctive. It's free. And both Google and Apple want to build these features themselves. Is this a kamikaze mission for UpNext?

"We've been hobbyists in maps since 2004," says UpNext co-founder Raj Advani. "At the time, I was fond of coding video games, and the gulf in interactivity between the video game experience and the digital mapping experience was striking. A video game world is animated, alive, interactive; things can change. There are weather patterns, sunsets, noise and immersion. In the digital mapping world back then, there were just roads - and ugly, static roads at that."

UpNext's goal from the outset was to write a vector-based mapping engine. Traditional mapping systems, including Google, Bing and OpenStreetMap, are tile-based. They download whole pieces of the map as you need them. UpNext works more like a 3D gaming engine; it's downloading raw data and then rendering the maps itself.

"The difference is key," Advani says, "because being able to decide, in real time, how data is rendered is what makes vector maps so compelling. It enables a map to change in response to the actions and the environment of the user."

The idea was ahead of its time in 2004, but now there are smart, fast mobile devices with lots of native computing power. Google Maps 5.0 for Android got vector-based maps in 2010, with similar tilting and 3D buildings, but UpNext Maps for iPhone has now gone further than that. It uses the dynamic nature of vector-based maps to adapt the map to the user's wishes.

What Does UpNext Maps Do Differently?

For the user, UpNext Maps just feels nicer than the built-in map. Everything happens faster. It snaps into position smartly, so it's impossible to lose your place, and it's easy to tilt back and forth between 2D and 3D views. The 3D buildings - only available in some cities - took some time to load in my tests, but that didn't take away from exploring the maps themselves or slow the process down.

UpNext focuses on what the user is doing. It shifts the colors and emphasis of the map based on what you're searching for. If you're looking for Italian restaurants, those glow, and the rest of the map fades out. If you tap a subway station, it animates actual trains and displays estimated arrival times. While the dominant map systems concentrate on roads, UpNext shifts to emphasize whatever information the user needs.

UpNext Maps for Android is coming soon. For iPhone users, UpNext ties in with VZ Navigator for turn-by-turn directions powered by Verizon. That service costs $4.99 per month, and Android users have turn-by-turn built into their phones. But until Apple offers its own turn-by-turn features, this combination with UpNext definitely outdoes the iPhone's stock navigation options.

The key difference between built-in maps and UpNext is the toggle between "immerse" and "explore" modes. It's not just a navigation tool like Google Maps, nor is it just a world-exploring tool like Google Earth. It's just enough of both at once, and it performs better.

The app is not perfect. It doesn't yet include much of the Earth, for one thing, but the U.S. is there. It has a pretty hard time finding places by search, whereas Google Maps figures out what you're looking for almost every time. But as a way of browsing a map, UpNext has no peers. It tilts seamlessly from 2D to 3D, and you can turn the place-browsing layer on and off as needed. But the most amazing part is the performance. It loads so fast and scrolls so smoothly that Apple and Google look like novices in comparison.

Bootstrapped Maps

UpNext does have considerable experience behind it. Three of its four co-founders have experience building 3D graphics for games. Its founders have been working on maps since 2004 - before Google Maps launched - and formally founded UpNext in 2007. For four years, they forged ahead as a bootstrapped company until Chris Sacca came aboard as an angel investor a little more than a year ago.

Was that a crazy investment?

By now, Google seems to have maps well under control for the entire world, and Apple is known to be building its own maps, which will have to be even better than Google's. Among Apple's mapping acquisitions was C3 Technologies, which built eye-popping 3D maps that are sure to dazzle users of existing immersive maps, including UpNext. What keeps UpNext working on maps despite the risk of getting stepped on by one (or both) of the mobile platform titans?

A Dearth of Innovation

It was only a year after these four founders started making maps that Google released Google Maps. "Our fledgling project was already on the ropes," Advani says. Google began to dominate, and investors began to run from mapping apps. All the VC money and press attention ran to social applications. "If you were working on 'raw tech,' you'd have a very difficult time raising money in this period," says Advani.

Consequently, UpNext found itself with very little competition from startups. Apps that needed location would just build on the Google Maps API. Google Maps became "safe," as Advani says. With all the attention on Google, UpNext kept building quietly.

"At some point," says Advani, "after several near-death experiences, we became inured to this fear of being steamrolled. We began to believe that while Google could evolve, they just couldn’t be radical. That’s what’s kept us going."

Google hasn't stopped innovating on maps. Street View is a different kind of immersive experience than 3D. It's a snapshot of the real place frozen in time but with photographic realism. Additionally, it has begun to push vector-mapping and indoor maps into the Android version and add more Google Earth integration for 3D experiences. But it has also started sewing up the business aspects of maps. That wonderful API upon which developers depended now costs money to use.

Maps is becoming a core business for Google, and that may be hurting its ubiquity and user experience. UpNext should be overjoyed about that. But there's one problem, and it's a little company called Apple, Inc.

Screenshot of C3 Technologies street view (via MacRumors)

Apple Maps: The Looming Shadow

We can pretty much bet on Apple revealing its new, Google-free maps at WWDC next month as part of iOS 6. Siri already asks Yelp for restaurants instead of Google, and now it will be able to give its own directions. And the 3D imagery acquired in the C3 Technologies deal will probably allow iOS users to forget about Google Street View. Where will that leave UpNext?

"We think C3 is the wrong direction," Advani says. "It’s essentially an improved satellite view - satellite with a third dimension. We believe maps are about more than maximizing realism; they’re meant to be immersive and evocative.

"Think of an amusement park map: You look at it, and with just a glance, you get a feel for the different areas. Realism is not what we’re after. What we want to do is bring that old-school sense of wonder back to maps."

Next month's news will escalate the platform battle between Google and Apple over mapping, which is a crucial mobile feature. But UpNext is finding more investor interest than ever before. With Apple and Google so concerned with the business of mapping, UpNext has a chance to deliver a better experience.

Clarification 5/25 7:48 AM: The post was updated to clarify that Google Maps for Android has also moved to a vector-based map.

So the big question is: what will Facebook do with Glancee?

This Ain't Another Instagram

First, let's put this acquisition into perspective. Facebook bought Instagram last month for $1 billion in cash and stock. But Instagram had 35 million users and was growing fast. Glancee is not on that level (and neither is Highlight). I confirmed with Glancee CEO Andrea Vaccari tonight that Glancee recently passed 30,000 downloads and it currently has about 20,000 users running the app in the background. Vaccari noted that the number of users who have conversations with others is lower.

So Facebook clearly didn't buy Glancee because it viewed the company as a potential threat, which was the main reason for buying Instagram. This Glancee acquisition was about technology and talent. Although this wasn't an "acqhire" either, the term for when a company is bought just to hire the people behind it. My understanding is that Facebook desired - and got - Glancee's location engine as part of this deal.

What Glancee Does & How It's Different To Foursquare

Glancee is a smartphone app that tells you when people with similar interests are in the same location as you. It's different to Foursquare, which is about "checking in" to a place. Glancee doesn't check you in. Instead it monitors your location in the background, using GPS signals, and alerts you to interesting people nearby.

In a nutshell, Foursquare is about places and Glancee is about the people in those places.

How does Glancee know which people nearby might interest you? It does this by connecting to Facebook and mining the interest data in it, such as the things you have "liked." Glancee had also developed recommendations from Twitter and LinkedIn, but hadn't released those in the product by the time of acquisition (so it's unlikely we'll see them now!). Glancee is a complex app and both it and Highlight were plagued with technical issues at SXSW, in particular battery life drain in phones due to heavy GPS usage.

Ideas on How Facebook Will Use Glancee

Facebook doesn't have a great track record with mobile location. Facebook Places, its attempt to mimic Foursquare's check-in functionality, was launched with great excitement in August 2010. However just a year later, Places was "phased out." Four months later, Facebook acquired check in app Gowalla - another product that had benefited from SXSW hype. What's more, like Glancee, Gowalla was a clear second to its main competitor (in this case, Foursquare). Facebook shut Gowalla down before the year was out and nothing has been heard from it since.

Glancee has already been shut down, after this news. My bet is that Facebook will soon make use of the technology in a new mobile location product. Its primary focus is likely to be "social discovery," a term Andrea Vaccari used when describing Glancee in our SXSW interview. Where Places failed for Facebook is that people didn't manually check in enough at locations. One benefit of Glancee is that it removes the need to check in. Another benefit is that it mines Facebook for interest data, which is then used to make social connections. This is something that Facebook is surely very interested in exploring, as it seeks new ways to tie social networking into mobile.

Another part of Glancee that likely appealed to Facebook is the time-based diary of who was at a location before you, a feature introduced to Glancee just before SXSW. The idea being that you could try and connect with someone next time at that location. Could this be a nice mobile-focused complement to Facebook's own Timeline?

Glancee's technology might also be used in Facebook Messenger, alongside the group messaging app that Facebook acquired last March: Beluga.

These are just some of the ideas that Facebook will be itching to experiment with, now that it has Glancee's technology and talent on board. I think this was a very smart acquisition by Facebook. In fact, Glancee may end up being an absolute bargain if it can help Facebook unlock compelling new ways to network on mobile phones.

On the face of it, the statistics are impressive: 20 million registered users and 2 billion check-ins. But as location check-in app Foursquare celebrates 4sqDay (16 April = 4 squared, geddit?), how many people still regularly use the service? After all, manually checking in to places is going out of fashion isn't it? Aren't next generation location apps like Highlight and Glancee the New New Thing in location? What's more, Instagram grew faster than Foursquare and it is, in a sense, a location app too (you typically take photos when out and about). So is Foursquare really as popular as the statistics the company released today suggest?

I've given Google+ grief over how active its millions of registered users are. It seems to me the same question should be asked of Foursquare. Particularly because many of Foursquare's original users (this author included) have drifted away from the service over the past year. Foursquare doesn't release active user numbers, probably for the same reason Google+ doesn't: it's likely a small percentage of registered users.

There is another reason to question Foursquare's active user base: it has done a mini-pivot. Last year Foursquare released a mobile feature called Explore, which is basically a search engine for location. It turned into a Web feature in January of this year, at which point it became clear that Foursquare sees Explore as a key part of its future. Indeed, Foursquare founder and CEO Dennis Crowley told ReadWriteWeb in February that Foursquare "isn't about points and badges anymore."

The implication is that check-ins alone aren't a good enough reason for its 20 million users to come back and keep using Foursquare. The company needed to find a way to entice its users back, again and again.

2 Things Foursquare Failed At Over 2011

Foursquare has clearly grown well over the past year, from about 9 million users this time last year to 20 million now. But it has also dropped the ball in a couple of areas - which I believe has directly impacted on its active user numbers.

Firstly, the initial promise of Foursquare was to make virtual check-ins and badges meaningful. Becoming the mayor of a cafe should entitle you to discounted coffees. Checking in five times in a bookstore (the ones that still exist, that is) ought to lead to some kind of reward: like 15% off your next purchase. While some of this commercial potential in Foursquare was unlocked, so to speak, it hasn't been widespread enough.

The second ball that Foursquare dropped was automated check-ins. New so-called ambient location apps like Glancee and Highlight have taken that ball and run with it, enabling people to make new social connections via automated location tracking. Admittedly, this is still early stage and these new generation location apps are plagued with battery life and other performance issues. Also the privacy implications have not been fully explored yet. Even so, Foursquare should have led the way with automated check-in technology. It should have at least experimented with it, to head off the likes of Highlight (the most successful of these apps at SXSW last month).

Explore May Be The Promised Land

So far I've presented a fairly pessimistic - maybe unfair - profile of Foursquare. With over double the user numbers from one year ago, clearly Foursquare is doing very well for itself. Even if the number of active users isn't as impressive, 20 million people registered to use Foursquare is nothing to be sneezed at.

Actually Foursquare has innovated on a number of fronts over the past year: a daily deals partnerships with Groupon in July 2011, revamped brand pages in August, tips lists later that same month.

But its biggest new feature was the one I termed a mini-pivot: Explore, which turned Foursquare into a discovery engine. Want to know the most popular nightclubs in a city you're visiting? Explore will tell you. The reason Foursquare is even able to offer this feature is its massive database of check-in data. So the Explore product may well be the next step in Foursquare's maturation as an Internet company. Perhaps it will even take them to the level of a Twitter, which has over 100 million users.

Wait, How Active Are Those 20 Million Users?

And yet... what motivation is there for Foursquare's 20 million users to keep checking in? I don't claim to be a typical Foursquare user, but my own usage of the product has tailed off significantly over the past year. I check in to my local cafe still, but only because I have been mayor there for a long time. There's no reward for being the mayor there - in fact I have to remind the baristas to click my paper coffee card.

Explore really is critical to Foursquare's future, because the value of Foursquare has morphed: from being a fun app to collect check-ins, to being a useful service where people can find interesting new places. Judging from the growth in user numbers, Explore does seem to be bringing in new users and reigniting the interest of users who had drifted away. Portland resident (and ex-ReadWriteWeb intern) Justin Houk told me that he started using Foursquare again "after I needed to find a lunch spot in a part of Portland that I seldom go and it came through." Foursquare is banking on more people using its product like that, as a kind of real-time location search engine.

So Foursquare is not a sinking ship. In fact it continues to steam ahead, into uncharted and exciting waters. The big question though, is whether Foursquare can get people regularly using the service. I'm one of those 20 million users Foursquare is celebrating, but I'm far from active on it. Frankly it needs to do more, for me to become an active user again. How many of you are in the same boat? Or are you a regular Foursquare user? Let us know in the comments.

The first generation of location-based apps has fallen short. Most consumers don't even know location apps exist, and only a tiny minority actually use them. Today's apps focus on benefits for businesses, like being discovered by nearby shoppers, but they've failed to stir customers. Can next-generation companies like Geoloqi show us why location is valuable?

The Foursquare-style check-in has been pronounced dead before, but here are the results of the autopsy: Delivery.com has enabled its users to virtually check in to restaurants from which they're ordering. Customers don't have to go to the restaurant at all. Foursquare is fine with this. In other words, the location check-in has lost all meaning.

Check-ins didn't have much meaning to begin with. A Forrester report in December found that only 4% of U.S. adults used location apps, and 70% don't even know what they are. Though Foursquare has been on the market for nearly four years, the idea of intentionally blasting one's present location to the world is a foreign concept to most people.

That's understandable. What value does a check-in have to the user? At worst, it's an invitation of real danger. Usually, it's a mundane performance of "I'm at the grocery store!", which is annoying noise to one's friends and followers.

At best, check-ins provide local recommendations, which are easy enough to find online without broadcasting one's dining habits. And now that virtual check-ins are possible without even physically being somewhere, check-ins are just absurd.

Geoloquacious

Even if a tiny minority of people check in to places, those users make enough noise to compensate for the rest. Uncontrolled check-in behavior is a kind of disorder. Geoloqi co-founder Amber Case calls it "geoloquaciousness."

Geoloquacious
Adj. the act of someone incessantly updating their location on a social network for all to see, without understanding that it is mundane information.

Geoloquaciousness syndrome results from a design flaw in the networks that support location sharing. The potential value of location sharing to people and the data-driven business models of social networking companies are at odds. One's present location is about as sensitive a data point as Facebook or Google+ ever has to handle, so they have to bend over backwards to not betray their users' privacy. They still fail too often.

The check-in is the best social networks can do. It allows them to collect at least one piece of location data to monetize, but it doesn't compromise the user's privacy for long. It's a willful act; to check in is to willingly share where one is, even if one doesn't fully grasp the consequences of doing so.

Find My Friends

The problem with check-ins is that they make too much noise and offer too little information. A check-in is just a single point in space and time. That's a thin slice of the information that's available about location now that smartphones are abundant.

"Location is a sensor," Case says. "It adds context to what was motionless." Motion and context are valuable data, though they make the privacy issues more touchy.

The major tech companies have hesitantly pushed location sharing beyond the check-in in dedicated, experimental products. These applications use real-time location, but they do so for closed networks.

Google Latitude and Apple's Find My Friends allow users to grant each other permission to pinpoint each other on a map at all times, unless sharing is turned off. Microsoft's We're In app is more cautious, setting up temporary location sharing around an event that disappears when it's over.

Facebook has taken a stab at real-time location sharing in its dedicated Messenger app, but it doesn't go all the way. It allows users to drop a pin on a map while sending an instant message, but it doesn't continue tracking.

This year's trendy location apps track real-time location but don't display it. They just send notifications when someone is nearby. These apps are best known for eating smartphone batteries for breakfast. Start-ups like Glassmap are already working to improve real-time location technology, expecting that a market will emerge.

But what kinds of software will serve that market? Check-ins to restaurants and finding friends on a map have evidently limited appeal. How does a location app bring value to more than 4% of people?

Location Is A Sensor

Geoloqi's co-founders are taking notes. "I had watched a lot of geo companies go down," Case told Richard MacManus at South by Southwest this year, "and so I'd been keeping this large notebook of what made them go." The reasons run the gamut from features, to timing, to pricing, and the technical hurdles of accuracy and battery life can be showstoppers.

She has teamed up with Aaron Parecki, champion of the quantified self. Parecki has been keeping track of the data generated by his day-to-day life since he was a kid, long before he could use smartphone sensors to help him.

His experiments in gathering and organizing data about himself have demonstrated that location data suddenly take on enormous value if they're owned and personal, rather than mere "data entry for other companies."

Location data that we control allows us to discover patterns in our lives. We can understand ourselves better and use the knowledge to be healthier and happier. We also develop an emotionally rich history. Imagine if your mobile device was able to send you this notification as you walked into a shop:

"Your grandmother checked in here 55 years ago."

How's that for a "value add?"

Pressing the Invisible Button

Case and Parecki say they believe that location's social contract has not yet been defined. That's why geoloquaciousness is rampant, and why the rest of us don't see the benefit of these services at all. When thinking about location tracking, consumers default to fear about safety and privacy, and companies default to greed, looking for ways to extract money from the data.

Part of Geoloqi's task is educational, outlining the terms of that contract and the benefits for both parties. As Case rightly points out, while location tracking might raise the specter of stalking for the uninitiated public, "everyone knowing where I am is the safest place I can be" if something actually goes wrong.

But there's also positive, emotional value waiting to be unlocked by better location technology. The history and analytics we can gather about ourselves are fun, which is valuable enough, but they're also helpful. A whole new class of businesses can be built to provide people and companies with more insight into the patterns we generate moving from place to place.

Geoloqi is learning to provide the tools for location services to be as light and ever-present as air. It also offers a free app for iOS and Android to demonstrate and test its approach. I'm walking around, testing it out, and getting comfortable pressing what Case calls "the invisible button" of sharing my location. Here's what happened the first time.

Lead image by Aaron Parecki

Crowd image courtesy of Shutterstock

In his update from the CEO yesterday, Google's Larry Page calls Google Maps "one of our best-loved services." But all the big Google Maps news lately is about major customers quitting. Just as Page was publishing his letter, Wikipedia announced it would be the latest big service to drop Google Maps for OpenStreetMap.

The Evolution of Google Maps

There's a growing disconnect between users and service providers over this. Google Maps provides the navigation for the vast majority of users. Around 71% of people who view maps online use Google. It keeps adding killer features like "typical traffic" that make it by far the handiest map app for consumers.

It's free, but it's monetized with little sponsored links, and it ties into Google's quest to lock up the business of location search. But the big business move for Google Maps was to start charging for API access after turning the service into a burgeoning platform. That's where the trouble started.

Big Companies Starting to Bail

Because Google Maps was so ubiquitous, users had a fairly consistent experience, even while using other third-party applications built on top of it. But due to the growing business differences between Google and its high-profile developers, that's starting to crack. Foursquare started to bail in February, and now Wikipedia's mobile apps are going to OpenStreetMap as well.

Apple is another significant case. iOS still uses Google Maps as its out-of-the-box provider. But Apple recently launched iPhoto for iOS, an application it's using to push forward into uncharted waters of user experience. That app is the first piece of Apple software to ditch Google, and don't expect it to be the last.

Apple has all kinds of reasons to push Google off its home screens, and it has been buying up its own mapping companies for years. Whether or not its eventual solution uses open-source map data, you can bet Apple is building its own experience.

But for now, iPhoto uses OpenStreetMap, just like Foursquare and Wikipedia have begun to do. Providers like MapBox Streets offer lovely and distinctive skins for OpenStreetMap data, so it's immediately apparent in these apps that you're not in Google Maps anymore, Toto.

Open & Closed

Though Google's decision to charge for Maps API access has forced some businesses to change course, it's actually better for the ecosystem to require bootstrapping developers to come up with sustainable business models. But for the really big players, the equation is different. Google Maps is a successful platform, and the likes of Apple, Foursquare and Wikipedia have competing interests.

And it's no secret that Microsoft is a huge patron of the OpenStreetMap Foundation. Bing is Google's most direct, across-the-board competitor. Instead of trying to build an in-house, proprietary competitor to Google Maps, which would be a tall order, Microsoft has decided to help fund and develop the open-source alternative. It's a weird future no one ten years ago could have predicted.

If enough location-based services start intermingling with OpenStreetMap, there will be a significant divide between those and the ones built on Google's proprietary service - and Microsoft and Bing will be on the open side. But Apple will be the most interesting company to watch here. Its ultimate decision about open versus proprietary map data will have big ripple effects for app developers.

Lead photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The new site includes interactive demos and showcases highlighting third-party sites and applications. Now that it costs money to access the Google Maps API, Google wants to give developers a little more motivation to get over that hurdle. Some will. Others are fleeing to open-source alternatives, and that's a great thing for the ecosystem.

"With the continuing evolution of the Google Maps API," product marketing manager and Maps developer Carlos Cuesta writes, "it became clear that we needed more than just code documentation to convey what's possible with the Google Maps API."

Lately, that "continuing evolution" has involved charging for API access, which was mostly free for years. Now Google has to inspire a new class of Maps apps whose businesses aren't dependent on free data.

The New York Times got a quote from Google spokesman Sean Carlson, who says that the pricing "is intended to encourage responsible use" of Maps data and "secure its long-term future."

Google already charged major users of the API, but now smaller developers will have to pay as well. It's not prohibitively expensive for everybody, but for businesses built on the free API access, this has forced some major changes.

In one of the most newsworthy departures so far, Foursquare switched to OpenStreetMap, starting with its Web views. We also reported on the decision by AllTrails, a big social network for outdoors enthusiasts, to partner with National Geographic Maps and start moving away from Google, a tough decision it had to make in the process of launching.

The pricing was "significantly higher than I think anyone anticipated," AllTrails founder/CEO Russell Cook told ReadWriteWeb.

"Deep down I think the developer community knew that at some point the Google APIs they were using would stop being free," Cook said, "but I don't think they ever expected the price gouging. My personal opinion is that Google has every right to charge for the services they are providing, but their recent actions have been very short sighted."

It's unfortunate that these businesses made plans that included cheap access to Google Maps data and later had to change them. But Google Maps has to be sustainable for the platform to thrive, and so do the businesses built on it. Hopefully, these new resources for developers will help.

"Overall it's healthy for the ecosystem," John Musser of Programmable Web told ReadWriteWeb when Google announced the change. "Services need to be sustainable with business models that work for both sides."

Meanwhile, open-source mapping projects like OpenStreetMap are still dwarfed by the popularity of Google Maps. But major adopters like Foursquare are changing that. They're also helping to sustain other supporting open-source projects like Leaflet. There are even studios building gorgeous graphics for OpenStreetMaps. As the need for location services grows and smartphones proliferate, the options for maps are multiplying.

Damn it.

Mobile security firm Lookout estimates that $30 billion worth of smartphones are lost every year in the United States. Sometimes those phones are found, many times they are not. Losing your phone is one of the most stressful events a person in a consumers' day-to-day life. Many people rely on their smartphones for everything, from directions to contacts to pictures of their puppies and babies. It is an intensely personal device. If you have lost your phone, in many ways, you have lost yourself.

In a new website launched today, Lookout takes a look at the lost phone conundrum. While Lookout user base is mostly U.S focused and Android-based, it still tracks $7 million in lost devices daily. Over the course of the year, Lookout located 9 million in 2011, or about one device every 3.5 seconds.

It is important to note that Lookout located these phones. That does not mean they were actually found. The sad reality is that once a phone is lost, the longer it takes you to find it, the likelier it is gone forever. Kind of like a missing persons case. I once used "find my phone" software to try and locate my device after a heavy night of drinking and could not find it, only to realize about three days later that it was in my couch cushions.

In the U.S. the most likely city to lose your phone is Philadelphia. Having spent significant time in Philly over the years, I can understand this. Mostly, I would lose almost all of my possessions just to escape being in Philly. Philadelphians are three times more likely to lose their phones than New Yorkers or San Franciscans who, in turn, are three times more likely to lose their phones than Chicagoans.

Philadelphians also lose their phones in weird places. For instance, the No. 1 place to lose your phone in Philly is the automotive shop, according to Lookout. A pizza place, church and an apartment were the next most likely places. In New York, phones were lost most often at a fast food restaurant, followed by coffee shops and apartments. It will come as a surprise to no one that San Franciscans lose their phones most often at coffee shops or at the office.

Phones are lost most often at night, particularly between the hours of 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. There could be a variety of reasons for this. It has been a long day and you are tired, not keeping track of your device. Or, you lost it earlier in the day and are just figuring out that it is not on your person. You may be working late at the office or the coffee shop and are in a rush to get out and go home.

Or, to the pub.

Drunk people lose stuff. This is a basic tenet of modern society. The most common place to lose your phone in London is at the pub. To be honest, this is where I tend to lose my device most often. I have left it sitting on the bar or at the table when with a group of friends. I have even left my phone at my local pub on purpose, trusting my local bartender buddies to keep me from drunk dialing ex-girlfriends. You would be surprised how well this works.

Lookout located $2.5 billion worth of devices in 2011, mostly Android and mostly in the U.S. That number was reached by averaging about $250 per device, which is pretty close to the cost of buying a new Android (after taxes and accessories etc.)

One interesting note that may have a correlation is that some cities that have the FBI's highest crime rates were also in Lookout's top 10 for lost phones. That includes Cleveland, Detroit, Oakland and Newark. While Lookout just processes the data and does not make the statement that "your phone is more likely to be stolen in this city," it is interesting to note.

Not included in Lookout's numbers are the psychological or enterprise toll that losing your phone has on an individual. For enterprise workers that lose there phones, the cost can be enormous. Trade secrets, contacts lists, access to company infrastructure are all concerns that IT departments have with workers who lose their phones. There is also the human cost for enterprises that must have IT guys set up device and application management software through companies like Apperian, App47, 3LM, Research In Motion, Symantec, Good Technology and a variety of others.

Do yourself, you business and your smartphone a favor. Do not lose your device. Use device tracking software through iOS or a variety of third-party applications to keep track of where it might be. Next time you reach into your pocket and find it empty, you will be glad you did.

Correction: The original headline of this article said Lookout predicts Americans lose $30 million in devices a year. The correct number is $30 billion.

Top and bottom images courtesy of Shutterstock

Although we eventually connected, the unreliable WiFi was one reason why neither Glancee nor any of its competitors took off at SXSW. The other main reason - which turned out to be a particular problem for the most popular one, Highlight - was that the apps drained your smartphone battery. I sat down with Vaccari to find out his reaction to the ambient location hype, his frustration at Highlight's Silicon Valley connections, and the disappointment many SXSW users felt with these apps.

Andrea Vaccari is a tall, cherub-faced 28 year old with dark hair. He's talkative and his eagerness to tell you about the product he created makes him a natural Silicon Valley entrepreneur. But like many in the Valley, he's an import. In 2006 Vaccari moved from his native Italy to live in the USA. Despite his friendly nature and Italian charm, Vaccari found it difficult to meet people when he first moved here. He also traveled a lot and wanted to find new ways to make friends and connections. This was his inspiration for creating a mobile app that enables you to meet like-minded people around you.

What Glancee Does; And Why Isn't Foursquare Doing It?

Glancee - like competitors Highlight, Kismet, Sonar and Ban.jo - is a mobile app that lets you discover who is around you at whatever location you're in. It does this mostly using GPS, which is also the reason for the battery drain. Through its API connection to Facebook and Twitter, Glancee can identify people around you who share interests with you. For example, you may be at your local cafe and discover that a fellow cafe dweller you haven't met before also loves literature. You can then send a message to that person via Glancee (maybe also wave at them across the room, although that would cross the freaky line). A new feature of Glancee, introduced just before SXSW, is a time-based diary of who was at the location before you. So you could try and connect with someone next time at that location.

These apps are slightly different from Foursquare, the market leader in location "check ins." Foursquare doesn't show you what, if anything, you have in common with others who check in to the same location. Glancee, Highlight and others aim to uncover those social connections. Vaccari did admit, however, that he's surprised Foursquare hasn't done this yet.

2009-2010: How Glancee Was Born

I first met Vaccari in Boston in mid-2009, when he was a research assistant at the MIT SENSEeable City Lab. At the time, mobile real-time technologies were coming into fashion. Vaccari was working on MIT projects such as WikiCity, which monitored cell phone traces in Rome and created visualizations from them.

Andrea Vaccari at SXSW 2012; photo by gui ambros

Even though he worked at an educational institution, Vaccari had an entrepreneurial pep about him. So I was curious, at the time, how he would go about commercializing the real-time cellphone data ideas he was researching. It turns out that Glancee was his answer.

Vaccari told me the spark of the Glancee concept came to him early 2010. Later that year, he went to work with Google in New York as a Software Engineer Intern. He tested out the initial concepts to Googlers, as a web page (not a smartphone app). He then started Glancee in November, with the idea of creating an iPhone app.

2011-2012: Ambient Proximity Social Location Apps (Or Something Like That...)

Glancee launched in June 2011, at O'Reilly Media's Foo Camp. It had 15,000 users at the time of SXSW.

Over 2011 and leading up to SXSW, Vaccari said that two key technologies evolved for Glancee: location and finding a good way to match people. With the location part, Vacarri claims that Glancee is more sophisticated than Highlight in terms of conserving battery power. He explained that with Glancee, the GPS is not always on and therefore it isn't a constant battery drain. GPS turns off and on in Glancee, depending on how active you are. For example if you've been in the same cafe for an hour, it won't constantly check your GPS. But if you're out and about, it will check the GPS more often. Vaccari said that it took two months to get their location technology right. Highlight, by comparison, is "battery heavy" according to Vaccari.

Highlighting Silicon Valley Connections

Glancee's main competitor, Highlight, only launched in January this year. Yet Highlight has gotten most of the attention from tech media and was more popular with SXSW users. The skewed media coverage has been a source of frustration for Vaccari all year, who came back to the subject a few times during our interview.

It's a fact of life that some products get more attention from industry influentials than others - particularly if they're backed by powerful investors (a.k.a. the Silicon Valley mafia), as Highlight is. But Vaccari has a point: Glancee launched 7 months before Highlight and is clearly technologically superior.

Vaccari got particularly incensed (or at least as incensed as an affable guy can be) by a favorable write-up that TechCrunch gave Highlight in early February. The article failed to mention Glancee at all. Vaccari left a comment calling the post an "advertorial" and bemoaning that "because we don't have connections in the valley it's impossible for us to get the word out about it." Although eventually TechCrunch and others did write more about Glancee, it's undeniably been an uphill battle for Glancee competing against the more socially connected Highlight.

Where To Next For Glancee & Ambient Location Apps?

While SXSW was a damp squib for Glancee, Highlight and the other apps, Vacarri unsurprisingly remains bullish. He thinks "social discovery" (his term for these types of apps) is a market ripe with potential.

One thing is for sure, no one has really cracked it. Foursquare isn't even in the social discovery game (yet), early proximity app Color never took off, and Glancee and Highlight still have technical and market challenges to overcome.

I myself am not a convert at this time, but I do see potential in this space. Do I want to meet more like-minded people as I travel and even in my own local cafes and places like the library? Sure I do! But I'll either need to become a lot more extroverted, or hope a lot of other people start using ambient location apps too.

We will call this the "eye test." In college basketball, the NCAA Tournament selects teams based on a variety of criteria including pure data but also considers if the team "looks" like it is capable of playing for the championship. On paper, the ambient location apps look great. But to be more than an oddity, they need to solve a problem that a real world user has.

Moneyball and the Eye Test

Framing our analysis is another sports related metaphor. In baseball, the concept of "Moneyball" is to take advantage of market inefficiencies through the use of advanced data. The concept disrupted traditional scouting that often focused on the eye test (does the player "look" like a major leaguer?) to focus specifically on advanced metrics.

In this scenario, the specific item we are looking for is the market inefficiency being addressed. There certainly has to be one or we would not have seen upwards of 12 different startups like Highlight, Glancee and Banjo attempting to tackle this problem.

At SXSW a couple of years ago, the hot startups that dominated the conversation were companies like Foursquare, SCVNGR and Gowalla. They were the first generation of "social location" apps and focused on the check-in model. To a certain extent these are the apps that are informing (sometimes literally through Foursquare's API) the ambient location apps. What Foursquare and the others have never been good at has been social context. Check-ins plus deals, tips, photos and to-do lists are interesting but only nominally useful. Where are your friends? Are you more likely to check-in to a restaurant or pub just because you happen to be there or if you know that your friends are there?

This is where the line is drawn between reactive and predictive social location. With Foursquare you often get to a location and then check-in. That is reactive. With the ambient location apps you could be planning on going to one place and see that your friends are at another and go there instead. In this scenario, the app "pulled" you to a different place than your original destination.

For Highlight, Glancee, Banjo and Sonar there needs to be more than "disrupting Foursquare" to pass the eye test. Another argument that has been put forth is the notion of creating a new style of social CRM. This is the idea of replacing business cards by creating connections in your phone when you meet somebody. The ambient location will know that you were near somebody, save it as a record and allow you to save that person to your contacts or social profiles like LinkedIn. While this is an interesting concept (nobody is saying these apps lack clever ideas) it comes down to the original argument: who and how many people are going to be using these apps? Creating a new social CRM based on ambient location will not work if only a few people you know are using the app or if one person is using Highlight and the other using Glancee. There is a pleasing degree of serendipity with who can meet with the apps, but serendipity is not going to replace business cards. In this case, the reality of real world interaction with these apps does not pass the eye test either.

Subjective v. Objective Analysis

Outside of the concept of disrupting market efficiencies, what Moneyball really boiled down to was the concept of objective vs. subjective analysis. Subjective analysis had ruled in baseball for a hundred years before advanced statistical measures became vogue.

In Silicon Valley, the mindset is often the other way around. Startups and venture capitalists drool of the idea of data. How can it be created? How can it be monetized? What kind of technology is creating it and is it a leap in innovation? This is antithetical to the subjective test of real world adoption outside the microclimate in which these conversations take place. The eye test in the tech world often has more to do with how pretty a user interface is than whether it can be a useful service millions of people.

The objective analysis of ambient location apps points to services that could potentially have great data sets. Better location and social models based on location awareness mixed with the data created by such interactions theoretically could have a profound affect on user behavior. Brands and retailers could find this information useful as well. Look at what Geoloqi is doing for proof that background location data is a very, very valuable tool.

From the subjective standpoint, where most real world users are going to live, ambient location apps have trouble passing the eye test. The problems that they "solve" are minor and the ambitious goals are less likely to be achieved when growth stalls after the first spike of early adopters.

This is all to say that Amber Case has equal parts enthusiasm for precise, measurable technology and the irregular, kinetic world that we live in. For Case, technology is an enabler - but it better get out of the way of our enjoyment of the real world.

Geoloqi is a platform for location-based functionality. According to Amber Case, it's a "next generation" location platform. For example, one common problem with location apps is that they drain your phone's battery. Geoloqi solves this through the use of algorithms that make use of "geofences" (virtual perimeters). Instead of leaving the GPS on your phone running all the time, which drains your battery, Geoloqi essentially turns GPS off when it's not needed.

Amber Case and the author.

How Will Geoloqi Succeed When Others Have Failed?

Geoloqi is a very new company. Along with co-founder Aaron Parecki, Case had been thinking about location since 2010. But it wasn't until May 2011 that she quit her day job to focus on it. Shortly after, the company got funded. This year Geoloqi launched SDKs and just this week, at SXSW, it announced three new partners: Appcelerator (a mobile development platform), Factual (a global location database) and Locaid (a carrier location platform).

Location isn't an easy business. Companies such as Simplegeo have not fulfilled their potential. So what makes Amber Case think she has solved the problems that affected first generation location services? "I had watched a lot of geo companies go down," said Case, "and so I'd been keeping this large notebook of what made them go." Factors she considered in the notebook included pricing, positioning, time when they came out, feature set. She concluded that the big issues were battery life, setting up the logic for the geofences to trigger, and making a visual editor.

The Quest For The Invisible Button

Amber Case is passionate about next generation interfaces and geofences are a key reason why. She's particularly interested in interfaces that automate certain tasks. In other words, the technology gets out of the way. While Foursquare made its reputation as the first truly large scale location-based app, it has an enduring problem: people have to physically "check in" to a place. Case said that she's a big fan of Foursquare and admires what the company has achieved, but with Geoloqi she wants to enable similar apps to have automatic check-ins.

Location apps should be seamless, said Case. With the rapid evolution of Internet devices - particularly smartphones - buttons can now be anywhere on a touchscreen. That reduces friction for the user, because they can touch anywhere on the screen and the right button for their context pops up. Taking that concept a step further, can we have an "invisible button"? Or as Case paraphrased it, "what triggers without having to be there?"

This question fascinated Case when she was at university, but now she thinks she has the answer: "it's a geofence, it's location, it's context." No longer do you need to click a button to do something on a smartphone, because "suddenly the trigger is you."

One of Amber Case's heroes is Ubiquitous Computing pioneer Mark Weiser, who put it this way: "the best interface should get out of the way and let you live your life."

Next Up: Cyborgs

Ultimately we may see these invisible buttons become part of our bodies. In other words, we'll become cyborgs. Prior to Geoloqi, Case called herself a "Cyborg Anthropologist" and in a 2008 blog post she defined a cyborg as "a symbiotic fusion of human and machine."

Cyborgs may be her ultimate vision, but for now Amber Case is content to bring these ideas into smartphone location apps. With Geoloqi, she aims to make smartphones automated and responsive to our context.

Case concluded our interview by saying that "our tools are mental extensions... and they're evaporating, they're disappearing."

I can't help but agree: once technology disappears from our view and becomes simply an enabler, we will have less friction in our life and enjoy it more. Remember that the next time you pull out your smartphone to check in to somewhere.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

I am calling shenanigans on this year's SXSW fad. The microclimate that is SXSW and San Francisco often creates hype for services that, ultimately, no one is going to really care about. Foursquare and Twitter did well at SXSW in their growth phases but those companies may prove to be the exception instead of the rule. The crop this year includes several "ambient social location' apps that are likely destined for obscurity when the time comes that normal users are supposed to adopt.

If you have been following the hype circles, we are talking about apps like Highlight, Glancee, Banjo and Sonar. These apps show users people that are around them using the apps and what their interests are. They use location running in the background as well as tying to social profiles like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. From a mass consumer prospective, location sharing has been the most fickle area of user adoption. Many people do not trust location apps. Below we examine the top contenders to win the hype circle and why the group is destined to fail.

The Leaders

Highlight and Glancee are the two apps most likely to make a splash at SXSW. As a microclimate, apps like these are perfect for an event like SXSW that has essentially turned into Spring Break for the startup crowd. Attendees are socially forward, iPhone carrying tech enthusiasts ready to jump on the bandwagon of the supposed next greatest thing. Put all of them in close proximity with each other and have their phones track each other and, hey, these apps seems pretty cool.

Highlight apparently has been getting the most hype in the Silicon Valley crowd. Good for it but hardly anyone outside of San Francisco has heard of the app. Highlight tracks your location in the background and sends you a push notification if someone using the app comes within 50 yards of you. You then can theoretically say hello, talk about your shared interests and a recording of that meeting will be saved in your Highlight account.

Glancee works in much the same way. It tracks your location in the background and links to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. It will show people who are using the app in the same area along with their social graph interests as well as automatically uploading your Facebook profile pictures.

Banjo also uses ambient location but it relies more on aggregating location data from Foursquare, Gowalla Facebook and Twitter to provide a map of people near you. In terms of the social, Banjo has the more integration than Glancee and Highlight that are focused more on the ambient location aspect of apps like these.

Sonar uses Foursquare to show you people nearby. I am not sure why I would not just use Foursquare to do that. It also has Twitter and Facebook integration. Sonar also uses some type of ranking system to give weight to the people around you and whom you might find the most interesting. It offers additional contextual data through LinkedIn integration.

EchoEcho wanted my phone number before I even signed into the service so I stopped the sign-in process before I even really started it. I do not give my phone number to social apps. That includes Facebook and Google if I can help it (Twitter is an exception). The neat thing about EchoEcho is that it can map your friends indoors through Wi-Fi and GPS outside.

Other apps in this category include Glassmap, Kismet, Intro, ntro, Mingle and CardFlick.

Outside of Echo Radius

One of my strengths in reporting on consumer technology is that I place myself outside of the influence of the echo bubble. That does not mean I am not in the echo bubble. Any reporter covering any topic gets caught up in the intricacies of the ecosystem in which they find themselves. Yet, my history gives me a critical eye and the fact that I grew up in New England makes me suspicious of popular tech hotbeds (including my own city of Boston).

There is little doubt that both Highlight and Glancee are going to be popular for people at SXSW and in San Francisco. Maybe even an enclave in Boston, New York and D.C. will pony up to these apps. The mass of consumers are not going to adopt these apps. The closest comparison we have to these ambient location apps is Foursquare that has done well but not terrific in the consumer market. Right now the service has more than 15 million users and doubled its rolls in 2011. People outside of tech circles are aware of Foursquare but are suspicious of it and wonder exactly what kind of benefits it provides. (The answer to that is its infrastructure and APIs that are more important to developers than consumers.) If Foursquare was the game changer that everybody wants it to be, growth would be higher than it is. Look at Twitter. It provides a truly useful service to the masses and adds more users than Foursquare's entire base every month or so.

When I opened Highlight today I went through the signup process and wanted to start exploring. Glancee, Banjo and Sonar makes this easy. What happens when you sign into Highlight?

Nothing.

Apparently I not only live outside the echo chamber but outside the radius of anybody that might be using the app. This is the message that I got when I signed up for the app.

Really Highlight? There is nothing to immediately engage a user, especially one that is likely very skeptical of your service in the first place? The company is betting heavily on the "ambient" portion of its functionality by promising that, hey, one day it may actually be useful when you happen to be around somebody that uses the app. Highlight is counting on the "aha!" moment for users once they get that first push notification that somebody is near them and then fall in love with the serendipity of random real world social discovery.

My immediate reaction? If it was not my job to judge apps like this, I would have immediately deleted it. Not go and start a roving dance troupe or run a 1K with my friends. I neither dance nor run, even if it is just .6 miles. Most users outside of the hype machine enclaves are going to have the same experience as me and Highlight will never actually send them a push update because they are never going to run into another person using the app.

This is the conundrum that faces any social startup: it is hard to be social when nobody else is using the app.

The Color Comparison

You know what company has tried to do something like this before? Yeah, everybody's favorite Silicon Valley Albatross, Color. At this time last year everybody was excited about what Color could bring to the table with a photography app that had ambient location in the background. We were not calling it ambient location at the time but that is basically what it was. The idea of color was to create an implicit social graph by recognizing other that were using the app and taking pictures around you. The initial problem with Color, outside of bad UI, was that no one was using it. How can you turn real world experience into implicit social connections if nobody is around?

Essentially that is what Highlight, Glancee and Banjo are trying to do. Instead of pictures, each is trying to tie implicit connections to the explicit social graph by tying ambient background location through existing social profiles like Twitter and Facebook. Will it work? It is an interesting idea but one that many people are not going to understand or care about.

So, have your fun with these apps down in Austin. The microclimate is perfect for temporary growth but do not expect ambient social location to be the next great consumer hit.