Location, location, location

"Location, location, location" - I bet almost everyone has heard that phrase. You might wonder why it is used in a blog that covers mobility and technology?

The answer is Location Based Services (LBS) which are discussed more and more everyday. With the help of LBS, you can easily let your customers know where you are instead of taking your services wherever the customers are.

Previously only operators were able to know where you were, or actually where your phone was, using GSM cells. It is now almost an everyday business for service providers to utilize the same information in their services. Good example would be Google Maps that uses both GPS and GSM cell information for defining your location. If GPS is not available, GSM cell information is used like illustrated in picture 1.

Picture 1. GSM cell information is used for defining your location if GPS is not available.

Now some of the service providers have started sharing your location. One good example is Google Latitude which was introduced lately as a new feature in Google Maps illustrated in picture 2.

Picture 2. Latitude shows where your friends are.

Luckily Latitude don't show your Google Contacts' location automatically so you need to ask their permission and then they will be added to Latitude. This task is extremely easy because you can choose to add all of your contacts same time without writing their e-mail addresses like illustrated in picture 3.

Picture 3. You can add all of your Contacts easily.

You can see easily where all of your friends are with a single climps like shown in picture 4.

Picture 4. You can see all your friends location easily.

Like you can see in picture 5 you can also edit your information in Latitude and luckily there are also privacy settings, so you don't necessarily need to show your location to everybody. You can also manually define your location, so you can be wherever you want.

Picture 5. You can edit your information and set privacy settings.

In addition to mobile service, Google is also offering a Latitude widget to your iGoogle page, so you can see where your friends are even if you are not using your mobile phone. An example is shown in picture 6.

Picture 6. Latitude gadget in your iGoogle page.

Unfortunatelly Latitude doesn't offer any interaction methods with your friends, e.g. chat or some kind of microblogging. This kind of feature would be really handy in some circumstances.

Google isn't the only service provider who is offering social location based services, for example Nokia Research Lab is offering FriendView which also utilizes your phone's location. You can see example in picture 7.

Picture 7. Nokia's FriendView shows your location.

There are some diffirences between Nokia's FriendView and Google Latitude. FriendView offers microblogging possibility (picture 8.) that Latitude lacks. On the other hand FriendView doesn't have gadget/widget that you could add to your iGoogle, or similar page, but they have a web-based service like shown in picture 9. Like Latitude, FriendView offers the possibility see where your friends are (pictures 10 and 11.)

Picture 8. Microblogging with FriendView.

Picture 9. FriendView has a webpage where you can see where you and your friends are.

Picture 10. Also FriendView shows where your friends are.

Picture 11. FriendView shows you the listing of your friends, just like Latitude.

I think the biggest difference between FriendView and Latitude is that Latitude is "a real" product and FriendView is more of an experimentation. This being said, I haven't seen or heard that Google would be offering advertising based on your location but I would guess this will happen relatively soon.

Everybody that has been using services that are showing your location knows that it doesn't work well indoors. Don't worry, there is a solution to this - indoor location. It is possible to define your indoor location with the help of wireless accesspoints. Nokia Research Center has written an interesting article (pdf) about indoor positioning. I hope we'll see some real life experiments about this soon.

It is interesting to see when location is integrated to your phonebook. Imagine seeing all your contacts with their location. Nokia is for example offering Contacts on Ovi through Nokia Betalabs, which allows you to chat with your Nokia Ovi or Google contacts. This service could also utilize positioning information. What if Nordea that is shown in brackets in picture 12. would be my location?

Picture 12. Contact on Ovi could show also location.

In addition to location, your phonebook could also show all the conversations that you had with your contacts no matter what method (SMS, e-mail, IM) you have been using. Nokia Betalabs is offering a Conversation application that is grouping your SMSs based on the sender. You can see "the conversation" with the person, just like in iPhone.

First impressions on Ovi Suite - no thanks

I thought that I'll explore Nokia's relatively new Ovi Suite and start using it with my Nokia N96. After all Ovi Suite should be designed for NSeries phones. How wrong could I have been?

I'm not going to go through all the features Ovi Suite has because it has lots of those. Maybe best way of describing Ovi Suite is to say: "Ovi Suite tries to be your 'home entertainment center' that has everything, from music to maps and from videos to software updater and phone backups."

My first impression was that it is just a big mess and it is difficult to find or do anything. I don't know the reason for this because, for example, I think Nokia's phones, especially S60 phones are easy to use and I can find all the features easily. If I compare Ovi Suite to iTunes, iTunes was much easier to use in the beginning. I think the reason for this is a little similar to the fact some say that iPhone is much easier to use than S60 phones. After all with only few features it is easy to make usable product. This is a really big challenge for Nokia because they want to do all the possible things with their Ovi concept.

I have to be honest and say that I haven't used Ovi Suite enough to make a final decision, but it didn't impress me in the beginning. I'm for example getting "runtime error" when I've chosen "Yes, show me what's new" and try to resize the window.

This is something that you shouldn't get in this kind of product.

I'm a big fan of PC Suite and use it daily at work for synchronising calendar and contacts and sending SMSs using my PC. It seems that Ovi Suite is missing all these features; at least I didn't find them.

If I understood correctly, Nokia remade everything from scratch when they created Ovi Suite, and might eventually stop supporting PC Suite. I would like to say that this will not happen any time soon.

I think I'll try to reserve some time on weekend and explore Ovi Suite more, maybe my thoughts will change...

Ovi - door to success?

I bet you've heard about Nokia's Ovi, but do you really know what is it about? If you know what it is about, do you know how Nokia will make money out of it?

The reason for these two questions is that one of my friends asked me recently: "That Nokia's Ovi, what is it? I would like to use it, but I don't know how and I don't know what I could do there." I explained to him shortly that Ovi is a place for accessing Nokia's different services. You can find maps, music, games, share pictures there and upload calendar, contacts and files. To be honest, this was a kind of lousy explanation. After this I started thinking a little more about Ovi.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Nokia's general idea is to offer a service where you find everything you need and you can access it with any device (pc, mac or phone). Maybe it could be described in a few words as "personalised multi-channel portal"? Personally I think that if something cannot be explained in a few sentences, it won't be a success among users.

This "personalised multi-channel portal" looks quite nice and if you synchronise your phone with Ovi, it can be an useful service.



I tried it once, just to check it out how it works with generic data and stopped using it. Reason for this is that I've have company confidential information in my phone and I really don't want to share it. I know Ovi should be safe, but still I don't want to take that risk. I believe this is a quite big question / threat for IT departments because syncrhonising is really easy.

I'm not saying that Ovi concept wouldn't become a success, but I must say there are still lots of work to be done. I've listed some of things that need to be improved before success.

1. Too many user IDs and passwords. At the moment there isn't any general user ID and password for Ovi services, because it builds up from different services. Users won't use a service which need own credentials for Ovi (synchronisation), music, sharing pictures and games.


2. Integration. Basically same as above, all services must be seamlessly integrated before it is usable. If I use a portal, I want to be able to use all services easily and smoothly.


3. Common user-interface. I believe that a portal should have common user-interface because otherwise the usage of different services will be much more difficult.


4. Logic. A service must be logical to use. I was really surprised when I went to Ovi.com, clicked Sign In and saw a page saying "contacts & calendar". My first thoughts were: "What did I do? I don't want to sign in to contacts & calendar, I want to sign in to Ovi".
5. Useful services. Ask yourself why would someone create credentials and start using this service daily and suggest it to his/her friends? When Ovi is "fully personalised multi-channel portal", I believe this is possible.

Don't get me wrong, there are also good features already existing, for example easy syncrhonisation and your content from your Share on Ovi comes automatically to your Ovi portal. Atleast I don't remember giving any Share on Ovi credentials to Ovi, probably sharing is done by checking e-mail addresses.

A more difficult question is: "How Nokia will make money out of this?" If I would need to guess, I would mention three different approaches:

1. Offer first free services, then start charging. This seems to be the case in the Maps for example. Most of the new handsets have a free license for a year, after this the user needs to purchase a license.


2. Offer first free services, then start charging small amounts. Almost like previous, but with smaller amounts of money, e.g. a few euros (even cents?) per month.


3. Bundle the price to handset. Nokia is trying this with Comes with Music and everyone is waiting for the results.

I suggest that you check Ovi out yourself and make your own decisions. So, go to Ovi with your desktop or mobile browser and explore it.