Features

Introducing Geonotes for iPhone and Android!

The Geonotes App is here for iPhone and Android!

Today we’re annouching something big! An update to the Geoloqi app. This demo app is the update to the app we released over a year ago. Since then, we’ve released geofencing and real-time SDKs for iPhone and Android.

Time for an Update!

Geoloqi's Geonotes for iPhone
It’s sometimes hard for us to find time to work on apps directly, because our focus is on building a great geofencing platform for mobile development, which is a lot of work.

We wanted to revamp our Geoloqi demo app to take advantage of the battery and accuracy improvements in the SDK, and also provide a way to have people subscribe to the free geo layers that we like to make in our spare time.

Last month, we finally got a chance to sit down and re-write our demo app to use the new SDK, and the result is here: the new Geonotes app from Geoloqi!

With the Geonotes app, you can finally provide battery-safe location context to your daily life: Instead of having to pull out your phone and slowly dig up information every time you need it, your phone becomes your sidekick. When you are in a certain location, it will provide information that is only useful to you when you are in that location.

Get it now for iPhone and Android!

Geonotes is available now for download in the App Store and Android Market. Download it now, add some geonotes, subscribe to layers, and see how fun it is to have location-based knowledge work for you!

Activity Stream

Now all of your geonotes and layer notifications show up in a stream on the app!

Geonotes: Location-based Reminders

For example, when I went shopping, I would always forget to buy bananas, and then regret it when I didn’t have any for breakfast the next day. So with the Geonotes app, I have created a reminder for myself that reminds me to buy bananas when I’m shopping, so I don’t forget.

Layers: Location-based Content

You can also subscribe to Layers, which are plugins to the Geonotes app that provide information for you based on your location. For example, the Wikipedia layer will provide links to articles and a brief description when you walk by places that have Wikipedia pages. I turn it on when I’m visiting new cities, because it’s a great way to get a tour of the city just by walking around.

There are many other layers, including one that notifies you when there was a nearby earthquake. And the Pinball Map layer, which will let you know when you’ve walked near a place that has pinball machines!

And because it’s powered by the Geoloqi Platform API, developers can program with this content to their hearts content. Using Geoloqi’s developer tools, you can make your own layers to add interesting geo-location content. For example, instead of leaving a Geonote to remind me to get bananas, I could program it to provide a shopping list when I’m at the store.

If you make any interesting layers, let us know! We’ll add it to our global list of layers.

Real-Time Tracking

Genotes only does ambient background tracking. To enable real-time tracking, use our GeoTracks app, available for Android (and iPhone, shortly).

Want these features in your apps?

Check out the Geoloqi Platform. With SDKs for iPhone and Android, you’ve got the majority of the market covered. Or if you want to develop for both devices at once, try the Geoloqi module for Appcelerator’s Titanium platform!

Download Geonotes!

Geoloqi’s Geonotes for iPhone

Geonotes for Android on Google Play

Posted

Sat Nov 19 2011, 12:12pm

By caseorganic

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Features

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Geoloqi – Now with GPX Export!

Geoloqi with GPX Export

At the request of many, we’ve added GPX Export functionality to data in Geoloqi! Now you can export GPX data from the history tab on the map page in your Geoloqi account, as well as directly from the API.

What is GPX?

GPX (the GPS Exchange Format) is a light-weight XML data format for the interchange of GPS data (waypoints, routes, and tracks) between applications and Web services on the Internet. GPX has been the de-facto XML standard for lightweight interchange of GPS data since the initial GPX 1.0 release in 2002.

Downloading GPX from your profileGeoloqi with KML and GPX Export
Simply log into Geoloqi and click on the History tab.

You’ll see two options: Download KML and Download GPX.

Downloading GPX data from the Geoloqi API
Add location/history.gpx to the end of the call to download GPX.

You can see more history options in the Geoloqi API Documentation.

Building a Real-Time Location-Based Urban Geofencing Game with Socket.io, Redis, Node.js and Sinatra Synchrony

How we planned, built and tested a truly real-time location-based game with Socket.io, Redis, Node.js, and what we learned along the way.

MapAttack Gameboard on an IPhone 4
Over the past few months, we spent the majority our free time building a real-time game as a test for our location platform, Geoloqi. We built the first prototype of the game at a hackathon over the course of two grueling days. It’s also where Aaron and I met Kyle Drake, who is now part of the Geoloqi team.

We called the game MapAttack! due to its map-based nature. Two teams compete to capture the most points on the gameboard. The gameboard, in this case, is the city streets of the neighborhood the players are in.

MapAttack is a game based on capturing and conquering geofences. For the uninitiated, a geofence is a virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area. Geofencing is used with GPS tracking devices, notifying a control station when a person or vehicles enters or leaves an area. Traditionally, geofences have been used in heavy industry for tracking fleets of trucks and other moving objects over time.

Instead of tracking trucks, we set each geofence up with a point value that would give players points for entering geofences. The idea was that a virtual map would be set up on top of the real world, and players on red and blue teams would try to capture all of the geofence points in the game before the other team. To capture a point, the phone would have to detect when the player entered the fence, determine the point value of the fence, notify the player that he received the point, turn the geofence the color of the team, and then add the point to the player score and the overall team score.

MapAttack Test Game at the Portland Park Blocks

Why Build a Real-Time Geofencing Game?

The purpose of MapAttack was three-fold. First, we wanted to create a game that allowed people to physically interact with the real world instead of a computer console like a first person shooter or a real-time strategy game. Second, we were inspired by playing a real-life version of Pac-Man called Pacmanhattan, invented by graduate students at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU in 2004. We played it at Portland’s WhereCamp conference in 2008, and we wanted to see if we could make a GPS version of the game, as Pacmanhattan relied entirely on phone calls and physical maps. Finally, we were building the Geoloqi platform at the time and needed a good demo of our streaming socket API.

An Iterative Approach

Taking a game from a static map to real-time, where all of the players could see each other moving on the phone and on the browser was an enormous challenge. In the beginning, the game was full of errors and bugs and required a lot of setup time.

When we tested the game with real players, the web browser tracking player movement was lagging behind the game 10-15 seconds depending on network speed. In addition, all of the players’ phones also had to poll to get updates, which means players would see a delay of 10-15 seconds even for their own position on the map. To make matters worse, some of the slower phones were basically choking on making that many network requests.

We knew that there was a better way to build the game, and that we could make it actually work in real-time. We knew that it wouldn’t be a 16 hour task, but one that was a pretty solid undertaking. We were up to the challenge and began working on it on evenings and weekends for the next few months.

Building a More Advanced PacManhattan

Kyle Drake and Aaron Parecki Working on an Early Iteration of MapAttack!Unlike a real-time GPS-based game played on smartphones, PacManhattan relied on players making phone calls to remote operators updating their location on a physical map and then relaying the newest game state back to them.

Our challenge was whether a game similar to PacManhattan could be run entirely automatically through GPS updates from the phones. When we began thinking about this idea, GPS wasn’t readily available in most smartphones. We had to wait almost 3 years for the technology to exist.

Testing the Game

Playing MapAttack! on the StreetWe tested the game with friends at conferences and around Portland along the way. Each time the experience was better, but it wasn’t good enough yet. Although we were making progress, we still didn’t have a real-time experience, and that was what we were aiming for.

When we brought the game down to Stanford University it was functional but still lagging behind. There was still a lot of work to be done.

This post is about the technical challenges we ran into during game development. While we had gained a lot of experience with location-based technologies from working on the Geoloqi app and platform for the last year, MapAttack! posed new challenges we had to overcome.

In early September 2011, we had our final test of the game and we finally achieved our goals of a truly real-time game. It took a lot to get there, and we’d like to share it with you.

Technical Challenges

Map Attack Loading Errors on iPhoneHere is an overview of the problems we had to focus on in order to build the game.

  • Handling the detection of users entering and leaving 200+ geofences concurrently.
  • Handling the volume of location-updates from all the phones in a given game (20 or more users per game).
  • The gameboard itself. We made our own in-house game editor that allowed us to quickly draw geofences on the map and assign them point values. Before we made the game editor, we had to hand code latitude and longitude markers into the database. It was extremely tedious and inefficient.
  • Changing the geofence state based on player movements.
  • Allowing each phone and web browser watching the game to be able to see the movements of players and the geofences changing color in real time. Every phone in the game sends its location to the server, which broadcasts that data to every other phone and browser watching the game.
  • Handling errors and differences in GPS technology on different smart phone models in order to ensure a fair gameplay experience. See below for a comparison of GPS data tracking on an iPhone 3GS vs. an iPhone 4.

Differences in GPS Hardware

GPS signals are known for reflecting off of tall buildings in urban settings. This causes inaccuracy and inconsistency in location data. It is less-pronounced in newer phones, but it greatly shows in older ones.

GPS Comparison in iPhone 3GS vs. 4
Users with 3GS iPhones would miss more points than players with iPhone 4s. Solving that problem required finding urban settings with buildings less than 5 stories high in which to draw the gameboard.

Pre-Streaming API

Before we finished the Geoloqi streaming API and before we started using Node.js and Socket.io, everything was based on polling for new updates. Phones reported their location at 5 second intervals and the browsers would update the game board in 5 second intervals.

Before the streaming API, every time we wanted to get location data from the phones to the server, the process consisted of opening a new connection, sending a bunch of redundant information headers in the request, and then closing the connection. This had to be done in the same way again and again, every five seconds for every phone for the entirety of the game. This resulted in a ton of redundant information and protocol overhead and resulted in a great drain on battery life of the phones as well.

In the worst case scenario, the browsers were lagging behind the game 10-15 seconds depending on network speed. What was worse was that the phones also had to poll to get updates, which means players would see a delay of 10-15 seconds even for their own position on the map. And some of the slower phones were basically choking on making that many network requests.

MapAttack Server and Phone Architecture Diagram

Enter Socket.io, Node.js, Redis, and Sinatra Synchrony

Socket.io

Socket IO: the cross-browser WebSocket for realtime appsSocket.io is a cross-browser web socket implementation allowing us to do real-time data updates on the browser and also supports older browsers. We can use the latest technology without requiring all of our users to update to the newest browsers, thanks to Socket.io falling back to older technologies in older browsers. This allow us to do instant updates across browsers and the phones in the game.

Node.js

Node JS Node.js is Evented I/O for V8 Google’s Javascript implementation for Chrome, implemented with a reactor pattern, that enables for large amounts of asynchronous data traffic.

We use a Node.js server to stream the location data from the phones to the Redis pub/sub channel. It publishes to Redis, and another Node server subscribes to that redis channel. Our Node.js server receives updates from the phones using a custom protocol similar to Google’s Protocol Buffers, which is essentially a very compact binary JSON.

When a browser wants to start streaming data, it connects to the Socket.io server and that server then subscribes to the Redis pub/sub channel. The Socket.io server sends that data via Websockets to the browser, falling back to Flash or long-polling if Websockets is not available.

In essence, Socket.io allows us to use Websockets, which are completely new, but also allows this to work on older browsers thanks to the fallback tricks.

Redis

Redis: an open source, advanced key-value store. Redis is an open source, advanced key-value store that has support for message queues using something called publish/subscribe, or pub/sub (not to be confused with PubSubHubbub).

From the higher level what this lets us do is handle the difficulty of sending data to all of the phones in the game and the browser in real-time. Every phone in the game sends its location to the server, which broadcasts that data to every other phone and browser watching the game.

One of the interesting things about the publish/subscribe system is that with a traditional system you have to maintain connections and iterate through each in order to pass data through them. The alternative would be that if you had 10,000 users you’d have to iterate through an array of 10,000 connections, which would be very slow and prone to locking up on socket problems.

Pubsub Action

Using Redis pub/sub is like starting a radio station. Once it is turned on, people (in this case, browsers) can just listen in. This allows us to do real-time data updates to clients (browsers and phones) at a massive scale.

Sinatra Synchrony

Sinatra Synchrony for Ruby by Kyle DrakeSinatra::Synchrony is a small extension for Sinatra that dramatically improves the concurrency of Sinatra web applications. Powered by EventMachine and EM-Synchrony, it increases the number of clients your application can serve per process when you have a lot of traffic and slow IO calls (like HTTP calls to external APIs). Because it uses Fibers internally to handle blocking IO, no callback gymnastics are required! This means we can just develop as if we were writing a normal Sinatra web application.

Sinatra::Synchrony allows us to do asynchronous programming (ala Node.js), except that it wraps the callbacks in Fibers (which are basically co-routines in Ruby). This allows you to do synchronous programming while taking advantage of asynchronous code. Aside from being easier to program this way, it also allows us to switch to a different concurrency/parallelism strategy if we need to. Kyle Drake developed Sinatra Synchrony specifically for MapAttack. Drake’s work became popular after he made a presentation on Sinatra::Synchrony at PDX Ruby.

The MapAttack Game Server

Finally, there is the MapAttack Game Server. In this case the Game Server is a simple database that takes care of storing the player point data that is displayed on the map and on the phones as players grab points in real-time.

International Testing

MapAttack! International Game Test in Sweden
We felt good enough about the game last week to take it on its first international test in Sweden. It passed with flying colors, although there were issues with not having enough time during the coffee break to finish the game.

Augmented Event and MapAttack in Sweden
Thanks to Michaela of Augmented Event Sweden who helped us run the game remotely, and Sony Ericsson who donated 10 Android phones for players to use for the game. We learned that the game runs better as part of a conference session or longer break time session. While the technology is solid, we’re still learning about the human element of the game. It takes about 10 minutes to download and get into groups before heading out the door to grab points at the same time. The game isn’t as fun when there’s only 20 minutes available to both set up and play it!

What We Learned

We learned that, while difficult, it is completely possible to create a truly real-time gaming experience with geofences and location-based technology. We didn’t know if it was possible when we started, and didn’t think too much as to how difficult it might be.
MapAttack Game at Stanford University
The whole thing was a very iterative process fueled by feedback and help and struggles, but also this lingering feeling that we were doing something that was important in some way. We keep going because playing the game felt awesome and exciting. It felt almost like being a kid again. We knew that as long as we had fun playing the game, we knew we were moving in the right direction.

Source Code

We made the source code for MapAttack available for download. You can download or fork the source code for MapAttack here. If you build anything interesting with it, please let us know!

Upcoming Games

We’ll be bringing MapAttack! to WhereCamp Portland on October 7-9, 2011. We’ll give an overview of the technology there as well. If you plan to be in the area, please join us!

Host Your Own Game

Get in touch if you’d like to host your own game. We’re working on making the game freely accessible to more than just us, and if you’re interested it will likely motivate us to work on that aspect of the technology.

Feedback

Have you tried to make your own real-time location-based game? If so, how did it go? What did you struggle with? What did you learn? I’d love to hear your thoughts. We have a great respect for game makers, as what looks like something very simple is often very difficult and invisible under the surface.

Cheers, and thanks for reading! You can follow @geoloqi on Twitter, or contact us at @playmapattack or http://mapattack.org if you’d like to schedule a game!

Posted

Sat Apr 2 2011, 2:14pm

By caseorganic

Categories

Features
News
Tutorials

Tagged

New! Embed a Geoloqi map on your site or blog with a custom widget!

If you’re a food cart, tour group, cyclist, canvasser, or any other type of person who might benefit from sharing your location, you can now embed a Geoloqi map on your site!

Here’s how to do it!

Embedding a Geoloqi Map on your site or blog

Go to your map screen in Geoloqi and click on the “Share Link”.

When the link is created, click on the embed icon </> to the right of the link.

The embed code will automatically be created! You can customize the size by any sort of pixels you’d like. To include a live updating map on your site, simply copy and paste the embed code into your HTML! 

Embedding a map into a WordPress page or blog post is easy. Note that you can only embed Geoloqi maps into your own hosted WordPress website and not a wordpress.org site. Simply click on the HTML button in your post editor and paste in the embed code. You can change the dimensions in code if you’d like your map to be larger or smaller.

When you publish your post you’ll see your map! Visitors to your site will be able to watch you in real time. If you turn off your tracker they won’t be able to see your location anymore!

Embed a Map into a WordPress Widget!

To embed a map into a WordPress widget, simply copy and paste the embed code into the widget editor in your WordPress account or site. Click “Save” and load your site to see the map!

Here’s what a sample Geoloqi map in a side widget on a WordPress site:

Privacy

Worried about privacy? Don’t worry, when you turn off the Geoloqi tracker the map will turn blank and won’t show your current location.

Enjoy using Geoloqi! If you embed a map in your site let us know! We’d love to see it.

Geoloqi for iPhone now in the app store!

After nearly a year of planning, testing and development Geoloqi for iPhone is now in the app store!

This is the first version. Many more features will be added over time. Thanks to everyone who helped build, test, design and suggest features! There will be more to come, including more layers, a layer builder, advanced Geonotes and more in upcoming releases.

You can download Geoloqi for iPhone here.

Geoloqi in the app store!

What is Geoloqi?

Geoloqi is a private, real-time mobile and web platform for securely sharing location data. Features include Geonotes, automatic Foursquare checkins, and private real-time GPS tracking. Geoloqi gives you full control over you privacy. Share your location with those you want to for a limited time.

The GPS tracker runs in the background, and has full tracking settings. Choose from high resolution tracking, battery saver mode or your own custom settings. Worried about battery consumption? You’ll get a warning when your battery gets too low.

Geoloqi for iPhone

Features in this release:

  • Automatic Foursquare Checkins for your favorite places
  • Send Geonotes from the phone or website.
  • Location sharing
  • Facebook integration (share your location easily on Facebook)
  • History – see your location history on the website!
  • Anonymous tracking – want the ultimate privacy? Track and send your location anonymously!
  • USGS Earthquake layer – get notified of earthquakes within 250km of your location

Uses

* Share your location by Email, SMS, Twitter and Facebook, or copy the URL and paste it anywhere.
* Set a time for the link to expire and choose who to share it with. The system is completely private and easy to use.
* Your friends don’t have to have Geoloqi on their phones to receive your location updates! * Simply send your location sharing link to them and they can view your real-time location updates on a mobile friendly browser, allowing you to send your location to anyone with a smartphone!
* When your location expires, people won’t be able to access it, keeping where you are private!

Geonotes – Send a message to your future self!

* The Geonote option allows you to leave a message in a location and have it Emailed, texted or pushed to you when you get to that location.
* Send yourself a Geonote at the store so that you remember what groceries to get, or leave yourself a note at work reminding yourself of an important task.

Use Cases

  • Track your location as you run, or allow your spouse or loved ones to see your trail.
  • Biking or motorcycling? Visualize the entire trip! As you track yourself, you’ll be able to see a trail of where you’ve been over time.
  • Relax and automatically check yourself into your favorite locations as you go about your day! Use the layer feature to subscribe to geocoded data in real-time!
  • Build your own layer using the Geoloqi API! iPhone app works with Geoloqi’s website, allowing you to share location and send Geonotes from the web.

Future features

  • Inbox for Geonotes — don’t like getting Geonotes by Email? Miss a push notification? Geonotes will have their own home inside the app.
  • Semi-automatic Foursquare checkings — choose from a list of places and easily check in when you get to a place.
  • See friends on Twitter who use Geoloqi and leave them geonotes.
  • Better mobile map and sharing!
  • Layer creation tool. Build your own layers!
  • See your friends as layers
  • Android app

Press

Read more about Geoloqi on Forbes, CNN, JWT’s 100 Things to Watch in 2011 and ReadWriteWeb.