Michael Robson’s new Australian based venture, mapmates, is by no means travelling uncharted waters. It is essentially another friendfinder application to add to the crowded pool, however, this time around it carries an explicit service charge in addition to applicable carrier data fees. Attempting to charge for such a basic service is a big ask, especially when we’re still currently sore from being financially milked by Telcos when it comes to mobile data charges.

I hate to bag an Australian service, purely because of my bias against always hearing about US based services but I think if Robson is really going to make it a success he should be thinking more in terms of platforms and not services. Friendfinding does not equate to something people would necessarily explicitly pay for and I think that’s evident from the wreckage left by other similar free services.

Adding this as one offering amongst many on a mapmates platform would make more sense. Opening it up to other developers to use your location code and deliver their own widgets is even more compelling. In the meantime, without a broader offer, will people really pay AU$25 for 2000 “finds”?

Time will tell but I don’t believe so.

To bring mapmates in league with our US counterparts, we need to focus more on building platforms and marketing them like hell. The first to really be able to reach critical mass in a geographical locale, in terms of downloads, will have created a mobile distribution channel worth something. Until we have some proof that Nokia or perhaps even the upcoming Google Android OS will give LBS developers out there something to work with that takes the pain associated with porting across multiple mobile platforms away, he who sells / promotes theirs the hardest could just prevail.

A platform that I think has a lot of potential and that has been bubbling away for about a year is Che Metcalfe’s Adelaide based podmo.com. Give them a look-see! They’re evolving a free mobile-based communications infrastructure with an interesting twist and their parent company Kukan Studio is a mobile games developer that specialises in porting mobile applications.

Maybe this is a mapmatch made in mapmate heaven?

Chris Messina gets it. I mean, he REALLY gets it!

It’s not about how many friends, contacts or distant relatives you have linked on your social network account. It’s about knowing who lives where and contacting people based upon where they live / work / play etc.

It’s not about who is meeting who in The Valley. It’s about who is meeting who in your town and joining in on the conversation.

It’s not about using your RSS reader to aggregate feeds from a sea of news sites to find out what’s going on. It’s about having all the content relevant to your location, gift wrapped and presented to you.
It’s about your ultimate social service, giving you all of the above without you needing to ask in the one online experience (whether that be a single service or a smooth aggregation of multiple services). 

Ubiquitous support for location awareness within websites, services and networks or whatever you choose to spend your online time interacting with is where it’s heading. Opening up new opportunities to interact more with your immediate locale or any locale that YOU CHOOSE is Web 3.0 (hehe - had to throw in a corny term so that maybe it gains some meaning).

Chris’ article quite eloquently states that online providers must get better at integrating with one another and geo-tagging their content / services / ads etc.

I’ll let this video speak for itself. Give it a few minutes and then let me know if you’re not also blown away by what the guys from enkin.net have managed to prototype. It’s a first look into the next generation of location based services, one that blurs the line between the online world and our real world.

Simply brilliant. I want it.

Jetsetting into Sydney today for their Australian media conference, Google CEO Eric Schmidt announced that the online giant’s first deployment of Google Transit in the southern-hemisphere will be in Perth, Western Australia. Perth’s Transperth transit authority has been a leader in Australian public service LBS for a few years now, with their Journey Planner service able to accurately schedule journeys including bus/train/ferry numbers, accurate running times and maps. With a relatively mature level of GIS permeating throughout the Western Australian Government’s infrastructure, no doubt Google has found it a straightforward process to adapt Transperth’s services to their own.

Of course, regular readers will be aware that Perth is my hometown, so it’s especially pleasing to see more LBS action taking place there than on the east coast of Australia.

For those not following the trials and tribulations of Unwired Australia, the listed ASX wireless internet provider that holds the rights to the Wimax spectrum here, you would have missed the fact that the end of 2007 saw them taken over by listed Australian media cash-box, Seven Network Limited (ASX:SEV). In case you’re wondering why a predominantly media based group would want to buy a wireless Internet Service Provider, here’s a little bit of background on Seven to help fill in the gaps.

1. Seven Network used to be in the cable television arena until their sports network C7 was an unceremonious financial flop back in 2005 due to a number of mitigating circumstances, most of which were the subject of a long-running anti-competitive based legal case against their primary competitor at the time.

2. Foxtel is the current dominant cable TV provider in Australia (yep - that’s right, Seven’s nemesis!), comprising part ownership from - Telstra, Newscorp and Consolidated Media Holdings.

2. Seven Network recently sold around a half-share of their media assets to US based investment group KKR and are now armed with $2.5b cash.

3. They’ve invested heavily to-date in expanding their Internet asset portfolio (content providers, strategic partnerships, e.g. Yahoo!7 ) including technology company Engin which currently provides cable internet-based voip services but is rapidly appearing as becoming the primary vehicle by which Seven will deliver Tivo and IPTV capabilities in the near-term.

4. What do you do when the dominant cable TV player also has a majority holding from the dominant player in Australia’s cable, wireless internet and mobile phone market?

Answer: You buy your own, almost profitable wireless internet provider, expand their network and use the Wimax spectrum to trounce your competitors with subsidised wireless IPTV and roaming mobile Internet services.

Revenge is sweet, so they say.

The Australian newspaper today reports that local company Intelematics Australia is trialling the broadcast of traffic management information to enabled GPS devices through its SUNA service. This is great news and finally brings Australia in line with Europe and the US. Device support for receiving, “the message channel” (TMC) radio broadcasts, will initially be provided by a new range of Mitac/MIO GPS devices and will require an ongoing subscription.

Time for me to upgrade (Note to self - Xmas wishlist item)! This should be a must-have if you live in Sydney where one accident can lead to hours of motionless pain. 

Cambrian House has been around for about a year now and since it’s inception it has demonstrated an ability to attract a loyal following of entrepreneurs and “do-ers”. Building on the growing “crowd sourcing” philosophy (otherwise known as the wisdom of crowds) people can submit their business ideas to the crowd for review. Opportunities are available to then meet like-minded individuals to help make your dreams a reality and the site community itself offers a weekly competition, with quarterly financial awards for the highest rating idea.

So for all those budding LBS’ers out there wishing they could find a way to make their idea a reality - join the Cambrian community!

www.cambrianhouse.com

I’ll see you there!

Well, I am sorry to report that 3-months following my first attempt to get smart2go to live up to it’s hype on my Windows mobile 5.0 based HP hw6965, a new version is out and nothing has changed….

Still the same inability to let me set my preferences first before assuming I am using GPRS and a bluetooth GPS.

Still the same ability to lock up with no chance of escape other than the dreaded hard reset.

Impressively, I can’t even get into the main menu this time around.

This is definitely not an application that is going to rock your LBS world anytime soon.

The announcement last month that Nokia was releasing a free mapping application called smart2go for users of Nokia and Windows Mobile 5.0 smartphones was great news. What was even more exciting was realising that there were Australian maps available for download. The technology was purchased by Nokia from a German company called Gate5.

Unfortunately the excitement has stopped there for now. Nokia has taken the google-style beta release approach one step further and released software that is embarrassingly buggy.

I installed and ran the software only to realise that it did not recognise the built-in GPS in my ipaq hw6965.
It was also apparent that their standalone maploader application (used for downloading maps offline instead of via your mobile carrier) was just as buggy. It took a few attempts to commence downloading the Australian maps, which for some reason only downloaded at about the same rate as dial-up (some achievement given I’m on ADSL2). Five hours later the 56Mb download completed.

As I had selected the option to save maps directly to the mini-sd I use in my ipaq, I was hoping that I would still be able to play with the application after bypassing the search for a bluetooth GPS (which seems to be a default start-up function that can’t be turned off).

No such luck, I’m afraid! After pressing cancel a few times to stop the bluetooth search and entering the main screen, I was unable to bring up any locations using the search interface provided. For some reason it appears as though the Australian maps were not registered.

I’ve fired off some feedback to the smart2go.com website and hopefully we’ll see a slightly more rewarding beta release sometime soon.

I will then provide some commentary and screenshots of what should be a groundbreaking move for Nokia in 2007.

Update 08/04/2007: Just to check that I wasn’t being unnecessarily critical, I uninstalled and re-installed the application (including the maps downloaded onto my SD card). I started the application and entered “Sydney” in the location search screen and it worked. Manually scrolling the map seemed ok, however, searches for suburbs or street addresses would always return zero results (even though I could manually traverse the maps and eventually find the locations I had tried to search for). The graphics do render nicely and overall the application looks nice, however, it isn’t usable in its currently crippled form. Basically it’s a buggy application that really isn’t going to excite anyone in Australia just yet (or anyone with in-built mobile GPS Receivers).

As a sign that we’re about to enter an election year here in New South Wales, Premier Morris Iemma today announced that the state Government intends to provide CBD-wide free wireless access by 2008. As reported by news.com.au, the Government will put out a tender early in 2007 to cover the CBD and six other key business centres.

Given the planned timeframe one would hope that they hold out for Wimax, as it would not only arguably reduce their expenditure but also facilitate true LBS entrants entering the marketspace, courtesy of the roaming support that the 802.16e Wimax standard brings.

Given the relatively small number of commercial players in this space, it’s likely that the lucky winner will be one of the following;

Unwired - They’ll be crossing their fingers that the state Government recognises the benefit of waiting for them to upgrade their existing network to Wimax in 2007 and the subsequent rollout of consumer gear in 2008. Unlike the Telcos, Unwired would not be risking channel conflict given this is all they offer.

Telstra - I’m sure they’ll have a stab at it, until they realise that it will conflict horribly with their NextG 3G network expansion. Come to think of it, they may just win it to ensure that Unwired doesn’t have an opportunity to leap miles ahead courtesy of their Wimax network. I wouldn’t put this past them.

Optus - Optus already have a significant investment in Wifi hotspots around NSW. I’m sure they will look for an opportunity to finally make money out of their service although the conflict with their 3G network is likely to put them in a similar position as Tel$tra.

Azure - They’re definitely up there as a company that would benefit significantly from winning such a deal. They already leverage existing Telco hotspots as part of their large WiFi hotspot virtual network, so it would be all positive for them.

Of course I’m also excited about the separate news in this article that Perth, Western Australia will see significant investment in their broadband capacity (to the sum of $1 billion over 10 years). This is great news indeed for the state that the East coast seems to forget exists. WA is a leader in so many ways but doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. You only need to look at a company like metromesh to know that WA is switched on to the world of location based services.

Go Perth!

Update 06/05/2008: This is dead. Yep, you heard me. Dead! Our state government announced that they’ve killed off their plans for rolling out free wireless yesterday. Granted this could be because Unwired was a frontrunner (maybe?) and they’ve since been bought-out by Channel 7, who also announced today that they’re even further behind in their plans to rollout Wimax here in Australia.  So perhaps the plan still has a pulse and the government is merely killing time (pardon the pun) but the bad news is that the good news would be that we have to wait another year to find out what they’re up to and whether it does in fact involve flooding our local universe with ubiquitous, free Wimax goodness.