Where 2.0 2008
I participated Oreilly’s Where 2.0 2008 conference. It’s 4th where 2.0 conference by O’reilly. There are many big sponsors like a Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Yahoo!. There are over 900 participants. I listened 41 sessions and 2 tutorials.
The main trends of where 2.0 2008 are summarized like belows.
- Real World Online: making same virtual world from real world’s photo and map
- Data Visualization: show the several kind datas, like a statistic data, on the map or satellite image.
- Social Data: making more interesting and useful social networking service using location information.
- The Need for Standards: Now we need standards about location-based service.
- Location Sensing: For location-based service, we need to know the location of the someone or something. Positioning technology is essential.
It is impossible to introduce all sessions. So I choose 3 topics.
First is Fire eagle of Yahoo!. Yahoo! want to be the location information broker. Fire eagle provide open interface for location saving and using. People can save their location information at fire eable using several methos like a SMS, web api. Services that user accept can use the location information at Fire eagle. So customers easily save and control their location information and service providers can easily build location service using Fire eagle. Also, Fire eagle provides unlimited storage for location information. If Fire eagle success, Yahoo! will have strong power in location-based service area.
The second is about Geotate’s GPS technology. They developed GPS technology that is optimized for geotagging. Traditional GPS calculate the location when they receive the signal from GPS satellite, however, Geotate GPS just save the GPS IF signal of 200ms at that time and calculate the location when user come back home and back up photos. In conclusion, they need no delay for starting and consume very few battery.
The last one is my feeling about Google and Microsoft. Google and Microsoft are giants at location-based service. They also provide similar 3D map services like a Google earth and Microsoft Virtual earth. But their approach is very different. Google use and depend on customers. To make 3D building model, they provide 3D modeling tool to people and people make and upload their building model. It is very cheap and quality is not guaranteed although quality is useful in many cases. It also have some problem. If some area is not favorite to people, no one make the 3d model for that area. In contrast, Microsoft invest a lot money to buy high-res airplane image and develop the image technologies for automated 3D model generation. This approach can make 3D model of all area and guarantee constant quality. Hence, it need a lot of money and automation is not easily operated as we think. The difference of Google and Microsoft is very interesting.
Tutorials are about google api and HP mscape. At first tutorial, google’s engineer gived lectures of google api using examples. The tutorial content is here. Next tutorial is about HP mscape. Mscape is a location-based platform including authoring tools. Anyone can easily make location-based game, guide using mscape authoring tools.
Below is some keynote of Where 2.0 2008.