DigitalGlobe, Inc., has launched a crowdsourcing campaign that will allow anyone to help look for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 by combing through satellite images for clues of its whereabouts.
The search drew so many participants on its first day March 17, that it crashed the company’s website, with 500,000 visitors wanting to help find the missing Boeing 777. Anyone can begin searching the satellite images, tagging anything that looks suspicious. Each pixel on a computer screen represents half a meter on the ocean’s surface.
The Longmont, Colorado, company said two of its commercial satellites have already collected images comprising roughly 1,988 square miles at the confluence of the Gulf of Thailand and the South China Sea, where the Beijing-bound aircraft mysteriously went missing on Saturday. The company is continuing to update the images to reflect new information about the search area provided by the Malaysian government.
To help, go to DigitalGlobe’s crowdsourcing website, Tomnod.com.
Telenav, Inc., announced today that it has acquired skobbler GmbH, the European-based navigation company with the highest rated OpenStreetMap (OSM)-based GPS navigation apps in the world. With this acquisition, Telenav brings the most successful OSM navigation experts in the world together as one team — including the founder of OSM, Steve Coast, who joined Telenav in 2013 — and becomes a major contributor to the creation of the open-sourced and most comprehensive map of the world, according to the announcement.
The acquisition closed on January 29 for consideration of approximately $19.2 million in cash and $4.6 million of company common stock.
“Crowdsourced OSM can power personalized navigation services like Scout — with highly detailed maps on a global scale,” said HP Jin, Telenav’s chairman and CEO. “We plan to offer Scout with OSM for much of the world. We have already made significant headway toward this goal in the U.S., including using OSM for our HTML5 version of Scout.”
OSM is the only crowdsourced and open-sourced map of the globe and, for many developers, it has become a clear alternative to Google Maps.
“Waze and Google — or, just Google now — provide similar mechanisms to improve their maps, based mostly on OSM’s innovations. With one big catch. It is very much their map. Not yours,” said Coast in his blog commentary today regarding the acquisition. “OpenStreetMap is different. All of the quality data contributed is openly available — just like Wikipedia. So, anyone can download, experiment and play with it freely. It’s not locked up beyond your reach.”
Since Coast founded OSM, the community has doubled year over year to more than 1.5 million registered editors, becoming a global community of local editors in every corner of the world. Its crowdsourced model publishes edits every minute on openstreetmap.org, resulting in maps that are detailed and up to date. For example, newly laid streets and newly developed areas can be updated on a regular basis and in real time. In addition, OSM allows for greater map detail for pedestrians such as alleys, sidewalks, parks, hiking trails, zoos, and even city trees.
Telenav has been an active contributor to OSM for more than three years, working closely with the community to enhance specific features needed for navigation, traffic and other future location-based services.
With offices in Germany and Romania, skobbler was the first company to launch a commercial navigation app using OSM (in 2010) for both Android and iOS devices and is available in app stores in 49 regions with worldwide map coverage. In order to do this, skobbler developed sophisticated algorithms that evolved OSM data from a display map to a navigable map.
skobbler’s apps are top ranked and highly rated in multiple countries including Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. skobbler’s CEO, Peter Scheufen, previously served as the CEO of Navigon, which became a leading GPS device manufacturer in Europe and was eventually purchased by Garmin. The other skobbler founders also held senior roles at Navigon before founding skobbler. Telenav expects that all skobbler employees will join Telenav as part of its OSM team, bringing significant industry-leading software expertise in location-based services, navigation and mapping.
“By joining our efforts with skobbler, we will build on our combined successes to bring the best mapping and navigation services to our customers around the world,” said Jin. “The benefits of an open source model will provide an enormous opportunity to change the economic models of navigation and other location-based services.”
“OSM is currently one of the most active and dynamic crowdsourcing communities and is growing at an explosive rate,” said Scheufen. “Our team lives and breathes OSM and so we are excited to join forces with Telenav to create the largest, most sophisticated, and smartest OSM navigation team in the world.”
In connection with the acquisition and in accordance with NASDAQ Marketplace Rule 5635(c), Telenav granted four employees of skobbler and its subsidiaries, upon the closing of the acquisition, restricted stock units for an aggregate of 634,920 shares of common stock.
These RSUs were granted outside of the existing Telenav stock plans and without stockholder approval pursuant to NASDAQ Marketplace Rule 5635(c)(4) with the following terms: each RSU vests as to 50% of the award on the anniversary of Acquisition and as to 50% of the award on the second anniversary of the Acquisition, subject to continued employment through each relevant date.
SkyTraq Technology, Inc., a fabless GNSS positioning technology company, is undertaking a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to explore if there is sufficient interest in applying GPS/GNSS processor technology beyond traditional ways by offering NavSpark, a small, powerful, thumb-sized, 32-bit, microcontroller development board with GPS/GNSS receiver as onboard peripheral. With price approaching an 8-bit microcontroller development board, the GPS/GNSS receiver is effectively provided to users free of charge. They are seeking $27,000 in funding until February 6, 2014.
NavSpark features:
100MHz 32bit RISC Processor with 16Kbyte I-Cache and 2Kbyte D-Cache
IEEE-754 Compliant Floating Point Unit
1MByte Flash Memory
212Kbyte SRAM
GPS Receiver
UART x 2
SPI x 2
I2C x 1
17 Digital I/O (shared with above functional pins)
1 Pulse Per Sec Timing Reference with +/-10nsec Accuracy
Customized Arduino IDE with GPS SDK Seamlessly Integrated
NavSpark-BD model has a GPS/Beidou receiver onboard, enabling users to use the latest GPS/Beidou navigation technology just as large smartphone makers are beginning to adopt this new technology. The NavSpark-GL model has GPS/GLONASS receiver onboard, enabling users to use dual-satellite navigation technology, GPS/GLONASS as used in high-end smartphones, in their hardware projects. The NavSpark development board makes the latest global navigation satellite technology easily accessible.
SkyTraq’s 7mm x 7mm QFN56 Venus822 quad-mode GPS/GNSS processor with extended I/O pins is used on NavSpark. Venus822 is designed to simultaneously process 34 GPS/GLONASS/Beidou/Galileo/QZSS/SBAS signals in parallel, thus having much higher computation power and larger memory than conventional 8-bit or 32-bit microcontrollers. Without using GPS/GNSS function, all the 100 MIPS RISC/FPU processing power and 1 MB Flash + 212 Kb RAM memory capacity is available for user application. When just using GPS-only mode or GPS/GLONASS, GPS/Beidou dual-satellite navigation mode, the remaining MIPS and memory still far exceeds what’s available on similar small, low-cost development boards on the market.
With average price of different model variants plus active antenna in range of $15 ~ $20, NavSpark’s goal is to provide the makers an alternative powerful, small development board with location-sensing capability, and at the same time making latest GPS/Beidou or GPS/GLONASS dual-satellite navigation technology as easily accessible as GPS to the users worldwide.
NavSpark is low cost enough to leave in small hardware projects. For higher volume projects such as asset tracker, GPS fitness product, sports performance logger, toy quad-copter autopilot, etc., after rapid prototyping using NavSpark, volume usage can later change to 10mm x 10mm x 1.3mm Venus838FLPx module, a miniaturized LGA version of NavSpark. For applications benefiting from NavSpark’s high processing power and large memory without using GPS/GNSS, volume usage can later change to Venus822 chip to lower cost.
2013 was an up-and-down roller coaster of a year for the location industry…and 2014 appears to be more of the same. What was the big story? Google buying Waze? While it is easy to predict what will happen, the harder thing to do is to predict when it will happen. With that in mind, LBS Insider reached out to industry veterans to discuss the big buzz in 2013 in the industry — and what the future holds, next year and beyond.
“The valuation remains a mystery to many in the mapping community, but it is always nice to see a truly great exit in this business. There haven’t been enough for an industry that is both foundational in mobile and online, and really hard to do well,” said Marc Prioleau, president of Prioleau Advisors.
Prioleau says one of the big stories of 2013 was the reemergence of Apple Maps. “For all the flak they took, they’ve worked hard to make them better. Their default position in iOS has given them traffic, as has the extension to OSX in the Maverick’s release,” he said. “Last year you saw Apple start to buy companies that could extend the features (like HopStop), a sign that they think they’ve fixed the major problems and are working on moving forward. They are also hiring aggressively and have brought in some very good people.”
Last year, Prioleau predicted that the combination of data with location to derive better location-based context would be a big thing. “I think a lot has happened in that area with much more to come. It’s happening in apps (see Foursquare recommendations), advertising (PlaceIQ and others), CRM (SAP Precision retailing as an example),” he said. “There is a lot more to come here, and we should expect many new applications, most of which will do things badly, but some — likely the ones with the most targeted data — will do things that really change the model.”
Prioleau says MapBox is making mapping cool again (and Prioleau is a director at the company). “Just when all was going to be subsumed by the Google Maps juggernaut, MapBox is doing new interesting data visualization work,” he said.
Crowdsourcing being embraced by the wider mapping community is another big trend Prioleau has identified. “Everyone knows about OSm, but then you add Waze for crowdsourcing real-time traffic plus map corrections. Google is in deep with MapMaker, and even Nokia is pushing crowdsourced input,” he said. “It’s no longer the battle between crowdsourced maps and professional maps. It’s how to make the two work together.”
Prioleau sees the location industry having a few benchmarks in 2014. “I’ll stick with the same prediction as last year: Data + location for better location context. Google Now is a great benchmark,” he said. “Break out in location-based ad targeting. The technology is better, and the providers really understand the advertising market now. Complementary ad technologies like Real Time Bidding are maturing, and these will fit in to a model that really works. And if for no other reason, if we keep predicting it, it will be right one year, right?”
Prioleau believes Google Map domination will begin to show cracks. “Google has a great platform, but as they monetize it more aggressively, more companies will look for alternatives,” he said. “Apple maps will be one. HERE will be another. But solutions from MapBox and others will grow as well.”
In terms of connected car and other automotive technology, Prioleau says new and interesting applications will come from local search, driver services, and diagnostics — rather than just basic navigation.
Another industry insider, Mike Dobson, president of TeleMapis, said 2013 was a quiet year for location-based services. “Even the biggest deal, Google’s acquisition of Waze, does not look as if it will have much impact, other than as a defensive strategy. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the year was the stream of patents covering LBS and GIS-like applications from both Apple and Google, not to mention those of several start-ups,” he said.
From his perspective, Dobson said 2013 was yet another year in waiting, but 2014 looks like it might actually be exciting. “It appears that Google will finally make its move into the in-car navigation market. Apple is beginning to play with the idea of allowing its users access to a more GIS-like parsing of its map database,” he said. “Perhaps the biggest change will be a new focus on thematic maps that aim not to be navigation aids, but to perform the function of information devices for travelers and others using directed search technology. I suspect that 2014 will be another slow year for indoor positioning, but maybe it will flourish as a subset of BIM.”
Indoor Mapping Still Considered Trend for Location Industry
While many in the location industry have seen new companies and products coming to the indoor positioning market, at least one analyst says that Wi-Fi positioning has been weak.
“The biggest trend in 2013 was indoor mapping, the beginning of the hockey stick adoption curve in my opinion. Major retailers like Home Depot, Lowes, etc., launched indoor maps with product search/locator,” said industry veteran Kris Kolodziej. “What was overblown was indoor Wi-Fi positioning. The latency and accuracy is not good enough for micro location. It’s good enough to know what store/venue you’re in, but that’s about it.”
Kolodziej said that the big deal in 2014 will be ibeacons or Bluetooth low energy (BLE) for micro location and proximity services. “BLE solves the many shortcomings Wi-Fi has,” he said.
Prioleau says that in-door location will be big, but it is where outdoor location was in the early 1990s: many technologies and technology providers all pushing different solutions — and most will not succeed.
“Beyond the location technology, the market needs to figure out how the money will flow from beneficiaries of the market (retailers, brands) to the providers of indoor location technology (mostly semiconductor companies and tech companies). There is no natural connection,” he said.
Geoporter, a non-profit focused on leveraging advanced mapping technology to empower communities to address burgeoning problems from within, has launched an Indiegogo crowdsourcing campaign to help support continued work and expansion. Funds will be used to provide resources to current projects in Costa Rica, while allowing the team to establish new operations in other areas globally.
Besides financial donations, the group is seeking serviceable digital cameras, GPS units, and laptop computers — worn but working well.
The organization uses GPS-driven technology to map behaviors in a community, allowing them to better define problems, develop and implement solutions, and evaluate the effectiveness of their efforts for continual improvement. The technology can be used to address a wide variety of problems, from tackling trash build up in the area to monitoring whale patterns in order to facilitate more sustainable tourism practices. In Costa Rica, the Geoporter team worked to map mosquito larva and water treatment to help reduce the risk of exposure to dengue fever.
“It’s exciting and rewarding work,” said co-founder Anita Palmer. “We’re going into areas where we can make a real difference in the everyday lives of people through the power of data analysis. What’s more, we’re helping to reverse trends that would otherwise have regional and, in some cases, global implications.”
Geospatial mapping is not new, but it has traditionally been executed by teams of experts in the aftermath of a crisis. Geoporter’s approach is a proactive one, where experts move into communities as challenges are developing so they can effect change before there’s a real problem. Still, building and sustaining a team of experts would have been cost-prohibitive, so Geoporter decided it would try something radical: teaching people within these communities to use the technology themselves.
“We started by training adults and youth,” explains Geoporter Director Amy Work. “Now, children in the area are taught how to use the technology in and outside of school. We have eight-year-olds navigating commercial-grade geospatial mapping technology like Esri ArcGIS Online better than some of the professionals I’ve known. The lessons they’re learning today will not only enable them to take ownership of their communities, but provide them with skills they can leverage through adulthood.”
Geoporter is hoping to use the IndieGoGo campaign to raise the funds necessary to continue their work in Costa Rica, and are looking to expand into other areas over the course of the next year. Donations will go towards funding technology, educator travel and living expenses, and community staffing.
To support the Geoporter mission or learn more about their work, visit the Indiegogo campaign by clicking here.
Rx Networks, Inc., a mobile location technology and services company, today announced a new z-axis determination capability called Zed. This new solution, comprised of a client software library and associated cloud-based data services, is targeted at chipset vendors, device OEMs and application developers seeking to integrate reliable floor-level detection. The announcement came at ION GNSS 2013 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Whether for emergency or consumer applications, the determination of a mobile device’s vertical position while indoors presents unique challenges. Given the environment, even when a GNSS receiver attains a fix, a mobile device cannot reliably use the reported altitude. Beacon-based techniques, such as those derived from Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, remain challenging as they often rely on GNSS-based crowd sourcing or costly venue characterization. The built-in barometric pressure sensors in recent smartphones bring a new ability to estimate altitude, but they have unique and variable characteristics that prevent floor-level accuracy without further assistance.
Rx Networks’ new Zed solution combines accurate geo-reference barometric pressure data (from Custom Weather, a global provider of real-time weather information), automatic device characterization, and pressure crowdsourcing along with existing location services to determine a device’s altitude within 1 to 3 meters.
The Zed solution will be commercially available at the start of 2014 and will be available either on its own, or as an optional feature alongside Rx Networks’ GPStream Assisted-GNSS and XYBRID hybrid location solutions.
For more information a demonstration of Zed, visit Rx Networks booth at ION GNSS+ 2013.
“In an ever-changing environment, it would be ideal if the U.S Geological Survey had a presence in every corner of the nation. While we may not be able to cover every inch of the landscape, we can greatly enhance our scope with your help,” the USGS continues.
The USGS has a variety of citizen science efforts where people can report what’s happening in their own backyards. It’s seeking information on events such as earthquakes, landslides, new construction, and climate. “If you live in Alaska, we want you to tell us if you experience a volcanic ash fall and even collect a sample,” the USGS said.
The information gets aggregated and disseminated through a variety of tools geared toward making this information easily accessible so it can be put to use. Using , there are interactive online systems where people can report what it was like during an earthquake, and then see all the reports for that event mapped out for the affected area.
“Through your contribution, not only will your observations build a much larger and more complete database, but you will also become a virtual member of the USGS scientific team!” the USGS said.
Map of tweets containing the word “terremoto” (Italian for “earthquake”) collected in the two minutes following a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in Northern Italy on May 5, 2012. The red star shows the location of the earthquake. The tweets are concentrated in the epicentral area but discussion of the earthquake has already spread beyond the impacted region. This shows the speed that USGS Tweet Earthquake Dispatch (TED) collects tweets to provide insight into potential earthquake events. Image Credit: USGS.
The valuable role of crowd-sourcing data is outlined in a 2013 report by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, authored in collaboration with the USGS. The report highlights success stories from the USGS’ Tweet Earthquake Dispatch (@USGSted) program, Did You Feel It? and related USGS activities. For example, although there was an exceedingly swift international aid response to the massive 2008 earthquake in Wenchuan, China, the first reports of the event outside of the impacted area came from citizens, and information spread through the use of social networking tools such as Twitter. Similarly, 148,000 individuals used Did You Feel It? to describe their experience of a magnitude 5.8 earthquake that occurred in Virginia on August 23, 2011. Because large-magnitude earthquakes are fairly rare along the East Coast, there were only a handful of seismometers installed nearby to record the event. Thus, much of the preliminary data regarding this earthquake came from the DYFI? system.
These are the ways USGS gathers information from the public:
Improving Earthquake Monitoring
Did You Feel It? (DYFI?) is an online crowd-sourcing system developed by the USGS for the public to provide first-hand accounts of earthquakes they experience. As one of the longest standing and most successful examples of citizen-based science to date, it has garnered more than 2,790,000 total responses since its launch in 1997.
Through this program, users are able to document the shaking level they experienced and find out what was felt elsewhere. Specifically, USGS scientists aggregate results by zip code (domestically) and by city (globally) to show reported shaking intensity. Those reports also augment shaking data from sensors and are incorporated in ShakeMaps used for emergency response. To document a seismic encounter, visit the DYFI? home page and fill out a brief questionnaire.
Tweeting and Shaking
Many regions around the world have only a scant number of seismometers, complicating the rapid detection and characterization of earthquakes. To enhance earthquake monitoring, Twitter has proven to be an advantageous source for USGS scientists to receive rapid firsthand accounts of potential events.
The USGS Tweet Earthquake Dispatch (TED) program rapidly detects possible earthquakes when a large number of public tweets mention “earthquake” or its equivalent in several languages. These tweet-based detections often come prior to sensor alerts in sparsely instrumented regions. USGS analysts at the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) receive these indicators and then turn to more accurate earthquake sensors and instrumental data for confirmation and quantitative assessment. For earthquakes with a magnitude 5.5 or greater, the USGS sends out notifications via the Twitter account @USGSted to people around the world.
Did You See It? Watch Out for Landslides
In an average year, landslides can cost the United States up to $2 billion in damage. Now, scientists at the USGS are asking the public to help track landslides to better understand how to protect lives and property. This is being done through the system, Did You Feel It? This program allows respondents to report detailed accounts of observed landslides, including photographs. To make your contribution, visit the DYSI? webpage and click on the Report a Landslide tab.
Ascending eruption cloud from Redoubt Volcano as viewed to the west from the Kenai Peninsula. Photo Credit: R.J. Clucas, USGS.
Is Ash Falling? Helping Monitor Volcanic Eruptions
This tool will help AVO scientists build a more complete record of the amount, duration, and extent of ash fall. Getting first-hand accounts of ash fall will also help refine computer models of ash cloud movement and interpretation of satellite imagery. Citizens are also encouraged to collect ash samples and send them to AVO. With your help, volcano scientists can greatly expand their sampling of ash deposits.
The National Map Corps
Citizen volunteers are also making significant additions to The National Map (TNM), a web-based geospatial visualization platform. The public is encouraged to collect data on manmade structures such as schools, hospitals, post offices, police stations, and other buildings. The project started in 2012 in Colorado and has expanded to 35 states. A recognition program has also been created where badges can be earned based on the number of data points a volunteer contributes. This effort is through The National Map Corps (TNMCorps) Volunteered Geographic Information project, which partners with organizations such as 4-H and GISCorps.
Observing Nature’s Calendar
As the seasons come and go, temperatures fluctuate, leaves emerge and change colors, and animals migrate. The USA National Phenology Network gives you this opportunity through its program Nature’s Notebook. Volunteers are collecting observations of these seasonal changes—referred to as phenology—to help scientists better understand subjects including climate change, invasive species, agricultural production, impacts of frosts and freezes, and the timing of pests and diseases.
“In an ever-changing environment, it would be ideal if the U.S Geological Survey had a presence in every corner of the nation. While we may not be able to cover every inch of the landscape, we can greatly enhance our scope with your help,” the USGS continues.
The USGS has a variety of citizen science efforts where people can report what’s happening in their own backyards. It’s seeking information on events such as earthquakes, landslides, new construction, and climate. “If you live in Alaska, we want you to tell us if you experience a volcanic ash fall and even collect a sample,” the USGS said.
The information gets aggregated and disseminated through a variety of tools geared toward making this information easily accessible so it can be put to use. Using , there are interactive online systems where people can report what it was like during an earthquake, and then see all the reports for that event mapped out for the affected area.
“Through your contribution, not only will your observations build a much larger and more complete database, but you will also become a virtual member of the USGS scientific team!” the USGS said.
Map of tweets containing the word “terremoto” (Italian for “earthquake”) collected in the two minutes following a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in Northern Italy on May 5, 2012. The red star shows the location of the earthquake. The tweets are concentrated in the epicentral area but discussion of the earthquake has already spread beyond the impacted region. This shows the speed that USGS Tweet Earthquake Dispatch (TED) collects tweets to provide insight into potential earthquake events. Image Credit: USGS.
The valuable role of crowd-sourcing data is outlined in a 2013 report by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, authored in collaboration with the USGS. The report highlights success stories from the USGS’ Tweet Earthquake Dispatch (@USGSted) program, Did You Feel It? and related USGS activities. For example, although there was an exceedingly swift international aid response to the massive 2008 earthquake in Wenchuan, China, the first reports of the event outside of the impacted area came from citizens, and information spread through the use of social networking tools such as Twitter. Similarly, 148,000 individuals used Did You Feel It? to describe their experience of a magnitude 5.8 earthquake that occurred in Virginia on August 23, 2011. Because large-magnitude earthquakes are fairly rare along the East Coast, there were only a handful of seismometers installed nearby to record the event. Thus, much of the preliminary data regarding this earthquake came from the DYFI? system.
These are the ways USGS gathers information from the public:
Improving Earthquake Monitoring
Did You Feel It? (DYFI?) is an online crowd-sourcing system developed by the USGS for the public to provide first-hand accounts of earthquakes they experience. As one of the longest standing and most successful examples of citizen-based science to date, it has garnered more than 2,790,000 total responses since its launch in 1997.
Through this program, users are able to document the shaking level they experienced and find out what was felt elsewhere. Specifically, USGS scientists aggregate results by zip code (domestically) and by city (globally) to show reported shaking intensity. Those reports also augment shaking data from sensors and are incorporated in ShakeMaps used for emergency response. To document a seismic encounter, visit the DYFI? home page and fill out a brief questionnaire.
Tweeting and Shaking
Many regions around the world have only a scant number of seismometers, complicating the rapid detection and characterization of earthquakes. To enhance earthquake monitoring, Twitter has proven to be an advantageous source for USGS scientists to receive rapid firsthand accounts of potential events.
The USGS Tweet Earthquake Dispatch (TED) program rapidly detects possible earthquakes when a large number of public tweets mention “earthquake” or its equivalent in several languages. These tweet-based detections often come prior to sensor alerts in sparsely instrumented regions. USGS analysts at the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) receive these indicators and then turn to more accurate earthquake sensors and instrumental data for confirmation and quantitative assessment. For earthquakes with a magnitude 5.5 or greater, the USGS sends out notifications via the Twitter account @USGSted to people around the world.
Did You See It? Watch Out for Landslides
In an average year, landslides can cost the United States up to $2 billion in damage. Now, scientists at the USGS are asking the public to help track landslides to better understand how to protect lives and property. This is being done through the system, Did You Feel It? This program allows respondents to report detailed accounts of observed landslides, including photographs. To make your contribution, visit the DYSI? webpage and click on the Report a Landslide tab.
Ascending eruption cloud from Redoubt Volcano as viewed to the west from the Kenai Peninsula. Photo Credit: R.J. Clucas, USGS.
Is Ash Falling? Helping Monitor Volcanic Eruptions
This tool will help AVO scientists build a more complete record of the amount, duration, and extent of ash fall. Getting first-hand accounts of ash fall will also help refine computer models of ash cloud movement and interpretation of satellite imagery. Citizens are also encouraged to collect ash samples and send them to AVO. With your help, volcano scientists can greatly expand their sampling of ash deposits.
The National Map Corps
Citizen volunteers are also making significant additions to The National Map (TNM), a web-based geospatial visualization platform. The public is encouraged to collect data on manmade structures such as schools, hospitals, post offices, police stations, and other buildings. The project started in 2012 in Colorado and has expanded to 35 states. A recognition program has also been created where badges can be earned based on the number of data points a volunteer contributes. This effort is through The National Map Corps (TNMCorps) Volunteered Geographic Information project, which partners with organizations such as 4-H and GISCorps.
Observing Nature’s Calendar
As the seasons come and go, temperatures fluctuate, leaves emerge and change colors, and animals migrate. The USA National Phenology Network gives you this opportunity through its program Nature’s Notebook. Volunteers are collecting observations of these seasonal changes—referred to as phenology—to help scientists better understand subjects including climate change, invasive species, agricultural production, impacts of frosts and freezes, and the timing of pests and diseases.
Not so long ago, paper maps were a necessity in many walks of life. Today, they are increasingly a nostalgic novelty, to coin a term.
It’s not difficult to understand why digital maps replaced their paper brethren. Digital maps are more accurate, more adaptable, and most importantly, in an increasingly real-time environment, much faster at making the appropriate updates and amends.
Now, however, digital mapping finds itself at a crossroads. Crowdsourced navigation platforms like OpenStreetMap — affectionately referred to as the “Wikipedia of maps” — are forcing digital maps and the map-building process to evolve significantly. As a result, the future of mapping is now in the hands of location enthusiasts and everyday map users. These people are redefining what a map is, how data is sourced and utilized, and how much it can cost to harness that information both efficiently and effectively. Those of us who have been in this space for years can see the writing on the wall.
Some, however, are eager to write off crowdsourced mapping. Corporate digital map providers, for instance, often refer dismissively to these mapping platforms as “hobby maps.” Nevertheless, they recognize the potential for change such innovation brings and are vulnerable to it.
What potential? Consider the benefits attainable through a crowdsourced approach, in the following sections.
Scalability
As with any process, cost is critical. It is particularly core to building a digital map. Truth be told, the fewer dollars ultimately spent on a map’s construction, the more its long-term operational preservation and, through that, scalability can be ensured. Despite massive innovation in our field, collecting data and creating a usable international digital map is far from cost-effective or efficient today. Candidly, it is one of the clunkier processes in technology, perhaps because it appears compulsory.
Look no further than Google, which spends billions of dollars a year to maintain its platform, yet we marvel at the huge scope of its operation. In truth, it is an effort in dire need of real streamlining. Google, via its recent acquisition of Waze, along with Navteq, TeleAtlas, and the like, leverage laser-enabled cars and high-tech backpacks that are astoundingly inefficient from a pricing standpoint, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nokia’s Map Mobiles, for example, are each outfitted with more than $25,000 of computing equipment.
To think this is sustainable in the long term, on an international level, is wrong. It will inevitably cripple a map’s quality and viability, with corporate providers choosing to limit global detail and upkeep to balance costs.
For crowdsourced map platforms, this problem does not exist. They can and are scaling rapidly, without the exorbitant costs corporate players are used to — and tired of. These costs secondarily manifest in mapping service usage fees for third parties, as well as subscription costs for consumer navigaton products. For either use case (business-to-business or business-to-consumer) crowdsourcing delivers cost benefits traditional players cannot match. Again, this leads directly to scalability, with crowdsourcing the most enduring maps option.
Same time, same place — different look. Crowdsourced OpenStreetMap (left) and Nokia map (right) of central Berlin, Germany. Photo: Oliver Kühn
Detail
Crowdsourced mapping services and platforms like OpenStreetMap are more than just cost-efficienct tools to coax scale. As a crowdsourced dataset built using more than a million dedicated mappers, OpenStreetMap inherently delivers benefits above and beyond those obtained from corporate map providers like TeleAtlas and Navteq.
The most visible benefit is the unrivaled map quality. With an army of contributors, the data dynamically and constantly evolves — just as places do. Locations are rarely fixed or stable. They change and progress over time. No other service or platform can immediately provide developers with the real-time, on-the-ground granularity of a crowdsourced map. Google and the others are trying, but the costs they incur will ultimately be too taxing to maintain detail.
Firsthand influence carries equal weight. Mappers who edit an open-source map have often had personal interactions with a place or locale. They know places intimately, and this makes their contributions detailed, rich, and hyperlocal. More companies and developers are looking to OpenStreetMap for this reason: they want to future-proof their services and products, making sure that they always have the best and most up-to-date data. Only a platform like OpenStreetMap can do this. Corporate map providers are painfully aware of it, too.
Flexibility
Google owns Google Maps, and TeleAtlas owns its TomTom platform. Not surprisingly, this affects what a third party, whether an automotive company or a travel brand, can and cannot do with the service. It is essentially a copyrighted product like an MP3, an audio digital file. So, Google can limit the way you visually render and showcase its platform. Needless to say, this can be suffocating for those interested in building their own unique services. This is what makes crowdsourced mapping such a significant development for those interested in integrating additional data with a digital map. Do with OpenStreetMap what you will, visually or design-wise; there are absolutely no limitations. Every map can be made unique and rendered differently. This also speaks to the flexibility of crowdsourcing more generally.
Beyond design, crowdsourced maps can harness the data to build completely new maps that cater to a specific concept, creating thematic maps for different uses, such as walking, hiking, bicycling, routes for those with disabilities, and more. More traditional digital maps lack this flexibility; it affords possibilities to source non-traditional location data to build even more accurate maps.
The Future — Through Cars
Despite the fact that crowdsourced maps are forcing digital mapping to adopt a more scalable, cost-efficient, detailed, flexible andaltogether long-term approach, digital mapping definitely has room to grow.
One of the most exciting opportunities for crowdsourced maps specifically, and digital maps generally, lies in car user data, which is just coming into its own. Cars are obviously one of the largest travel tools utilized by individuals on a daily basis, and, with the advent of the connected car, the data that they collect via internal/external sensors has grown more nuanced, granular, and specific over the years.
Cars are simply getting smarter, with sensors capable of providing everything from weather conditions to speed-zone information.
Making this information available in the cloud and combining it with data available via crowdsourced mapping platforms produces remarkable possibilities for innovation.
Imagine adding road-condition data, as just one example, to crowdsourced mapping services. By marrying a crowdsourced map with crowdsourced car-sensor data, the map’s overall utility multiplies immeasurably.
To avoid missteps that have positioned companies like Google to spend billions on building a digital mapping service — unsustainable long-term figures — we must always look to embrace that which is cutting-edge. We find that today in crowdsourced mapping platforms, as they enable us to maintain, update, and enrich maps as never before. We must also consider the limitations of the cutting edge and understand how to improve the latest innovation (car-sensor data, and more) before the once cutting edge becomes the next paper map, so to speak. This is key to evolving maps for the better and for the future.
Oliver Kühn has an MBA from the University of Cologne, Germany. He has 10 years of location-based service experience and was Head of Product Management Special Projects at navigation systems specialist Navigon AG (acquired by Garmin). In late 2008, he co-founded skobbler GmbH, being responsible for business development and legal matters. He is also a board member of the OpenStreetMap Foundation.
CrowdOptic, a maker of crowd-powered mobile applications for live events, and the Location Based Marketing Association (LBMA) have joined forces to develop and promote new focus-aware mobile technology for fans at live events.
Part of LBMA’s mandate is to foster research, innovation and pilot projects that push the boundaries of place-based marketing. Through this initiative, LBMA has partnered with several top-tier global brands carefully selected from among LBMA’s large network of marketing affiliates to introduce the new technology to consumers. The technology will be introduced in a series of test launches at major entertainment events throughout the summer, before making it widely to marketers in the fall, the association said.
Focus awareness combines traditional GPS-location awareness with data on where mobile users are aiming their smartphones. Focus-based technology enables new kinds of apps in which users aim their phones to engage with one another as they watch events simultaneously — for example to connect, chat or vote on the shared subject of focus. Focus-awareness also allows marketers to chart the shifting momentum in crowds.
The partnership comes as demand grows among LBMA’s network for mechanisms to enhance context-awareness in mobile. Marketers want to know how many phones are engaged with their apps as events are happening (heat), who those users are, where they are looking, and how the crowd’s engagement is dynamically changing moment to moment — all capabilities of CrowdOptic’s technology.
“Our vision of the future is new apps that dynamically adapt based on knowing what activities people in a crowd are watching and engaging in, as well as joining people with shared interests together, right there in the moment,” said Asif Khan, founder and president of LBMA.
“Focus is an emerging mobile category that will play a significant role in the next generation of location services,” said Brent Iadarola, Global Research Director of Mobile & Wireless Communications at Frost & Sullivan. “In contrast to augmented reality, which combines location and mobile Internet search to provide information on landmarks in static environments, focus-based services enable the tracking and tagging of objects (or individuals) in moving or dynamic environments. By enabling mobile users to point their phones at moving objects or people to access real-time information about their subject of interest, this area of technology in which CrowdOptic is a pioneer clearly presents some very unique and lucrative avenues for hyper-targeted marketing promotions, advertising, and mobile coupons.”
CrowdOptic is in use around the world in apps that enable users to “aim their phone” to act or interact — whether to discuss, report or discover other people based on their shared focus. The company powers a range of applications which vary from finding friends in a crowd, to aiming a phone to vote, to aiming to alternate views of a live broadcast, to aiming to connect with athletes and celebrities at live events. The technology works both through an app and anytime without an app, by historically mining the standard metadata tags embedded in shared photo images. The mechanisms used to acquire context beyond location include continuous streams of GPS, compass and triangulation algorithms illuminating common points of focus between mobile users.
The LBMA will begin to introduce these projects which leverage the CrowdOptic platform for top global brands beginning in the summer of 2013.
About LBMA – http://thelbma.com/
The Location Based Marketing Association is an international group dedicated to fostering research, education and collaborative innovation at the intersection of people, places, and media. Our goal is simple: To educate, share best practices, establish guidelines for growth and to promote the services of member companies to brands and other content-related providers. The over 600 members of the LBMA include retailers, restaurant chains, agencies, advertisers, media buyers, software and services providers, and wireless companies.
Did you just watch Jaws? Are you worried your trip to the beach might be interrupted by an unwelcome guest? Now you can go online and see if any great white sharks are visiting nearby waters (the tagged sharks, at least.)
The Ocearch Global Shark Tracker is a global project to tag and track the navigational patterns of great white sharks in the world’s oceans. The team is currently tracking nearly 40 sharks. The team of scientists have 15 minutes to pull a shark from the water, tag it, and release it, a process which was highlighted in an ABC Nightline feature.
Ocearch’s founder is Chris Fischer, former star of the History Channel reality TV show “Shark Wranglers.” Ocearch is “seeking to attain groundbreaking data on the biology and health of sharks, in conjunction with basic research on shark life history and migration,” according to its website.
On the Shark Tracker, sharks that have been tagged appear as bright colored dots. Orange means a ping is less than 72 hours old, green means a ping is less than 30 days old and blue means a ping is more than 30 days old.
Pole Star has launched its new indoor location platform, NAO Cloud. NAO Cloud simplifies the deployment of indoor location solutions by introducing an automated deployment process that dramatically reduces time-to-market and the costs of indoor location-based services, Pole Star said.
NAO Cloud integrates the NAO Campus Software Deployment Kit (SDK), and enables customers and partners to deploy NAO Campus, Pole Star’s indoor location solution, in just a few hours, by using cloud-based software tools as well as positioning databases already available and shared by worldwide partner program members.
In addition, third parties will have access to NAO Cloud’s crowdsourcing capabilities, eliminating field interventions for a simpler, faster and more affordable deployment and maintenance process, Pole Star said. Behavioral analytics or geofencing are also supported by NAO Cloud to maximize the monetization of value added location-based services.
The NAO Cloud platform targets a wide range of businesses such as venue owners, advertising platform providers, application developers, global solution integrators or network operators. NAO Cloud makes deployment, integration in mobile apps and maintenance of indoor positioning services a simple process, from a single venue to a worldwide multi-site coverage, Pole Star said.
“The indoor location services market has reached maturity. Multi-venue owners, marketing agencies and major telcos understand the challenges and the value of hyper-local information and real-time interactions with customers and related Indoor Location Analytics. Indoor positioning is the core technology that brings high value,” said Christian Carle, CEO of Pole Star. “NAO Cloud is the result of years of innovation and deep market experience through very large and complex field deployments around the world.”
In 2012, Pole Star achieved several major innovation milestones, such as the integration of Bluetooth Low Energy and Inertial Sensors in its NAO Campus fusion engine, in addition to Map Data, Wi-Fi and GPS signals. The dynamic combination of these technologies provides today the best indoor location performance results in the market, while addressing any type of building and minimizing network infrastructure, deployment and maintenance costs, Pole Star said.
The NAO Campus solution is now available for more than 80% of the smartphone market, compliant with Android and iPhone devices and embedded in consumer applications on the Google Play Marketplace and the Apple App Store.
Today, Pole Star’s indoor location solutions have been deployed in more than 43 million square feet, in 15 countries such as airports (Paris Charles de Gaulle), shopping centers in Europe and North-America, museums and department stores. In 2011, Pole Star opened its North American headquarters in Palo Alto and has expanded its international presence in 2012, building deep partnerships with companies in Europe, North-America, Asia, Australia and the Middle East. Finally, at the end of 2012, in time for the holiday season, Pole Star launched, its “living lab” mobile application, Mall Buddy, that covers 9 of the biggest malls in Silicon Valley, from San Francisco to San Jose and demonstrates the worldwide extension capability of Indoor location services.
