Geoloqi Blog

Posted

Mon Mar 3 2014, 3:15pm

Categories

Esri Geotrigger Service Launches – What Geoloqi Customers Should Know

We’ve recently launched Esri’s Geotrigger Service, which is the new and improved version of Geoloqi’s technology.

The original Geoloqi service will be retired on August 19, 2015 (18 months from the time the Esri Geotrigger Service launched). We encourage current Geoloqi customers to migrate to Esri’s Geotrigger Service soon to take advantage of all the improvements.

Why use the new Geotrigger Service?

Geoloqi is now part of Esri, based in Esri’s R&D Center in Portland, Oregon. Most of our time and energy this past year went into improving our Geotrigger Service, which provides better GPS accuracy, ease of use, longer battery life, and attractive pricing. We also added the ability to create complex polygon triggers, and we built the Geotrigger Faker, which is a graphical tool that allows you to simulate the location of fake or real devices in order to better test and debug your app.

What about pricing?

The Geotrigger Service is one of the many features offered through ArcGIS. You can start a 30-day free trial right away. Subscriptions begin at $20 per month and you get 2,400 Geotrigger events per month. This represents a significant price improvement over the Geoloqi plans, as the new Esri plans offer three times the number of Geotrigger events.

Can I get help migrating?

If you haven’t migrated to the Esri Geotrigger Service by the end of 2014, we will have some migration tools available for you to help you switch over before the Geoloqi service is deprecated on August 19, 2015. You can also email [email protected] anytime for more information about how to migrate to the Geotrigger Service.

Have you been beta testing?

If you’ve been beta testing Esri’s Geotrigger Service, you should update your applications with the latest versions of the iOS and Android SDKs. There have been numerous upgrades to reliability and functionality throughout the beta period, and it is important that all applications use the released SDKs for best results and efficient technical support. For applications using the Android SDK, it’s also important that the Google Play service be installed.

We appreciate your using Geoloqi, and we think you’ll like the improved Esri Geotrigger Service even better.

For more information, check out the Esri Geotrigger Service web page, documentation and FAQ. If you have any questions, please email us at [email protected].

Posted

Tue Nov 19 2013, 5:17pm

By caseorganic

Categories

API
News

Tagged

Beta Launch of the Esri Geotrigger Service!

Today we launch the public beta version of Esri’s Geotrigger™ Service! This allows developers to add location awareness and location-based alerts to apps for iPhone and Android. There’s so much excitement around this particular service—of the many we provide to developers (think geocoding, routing, geoenrichment, and of course maps).

How does it work? An invisible area on a map has an action or message associated with it. When your mobile device crosses into the “trigger zone” the Geotrigger Service sends a location-based message to that device, or even notify your server for custom events.

Here’s what you need to know:

The Geotrigger Service runs in the cloud. That means all you have to do is add the Geotrigger SDK to your application, set up push notifications, and associate your client ID with the service. Finally, define your geofences, push notifications into the service, and begin testing your location-aware apps.
The Geotrigger Service provides a new level of functionality for your apps! Now your apps can easily send messages to users when they arrive at or leave areas you define with a geofence. And, quickly gather business intelligence such as where people are and what time it is when the app is used.
Stop worrying about battery drain. Have you used a location-based app and watched your battery drain? Our service reduces battery drain when running location-based apps.
Free while in beta. ArcGIS Online subscribers are invited to try the Geotrigger Service API and its iPhone and Android SDKs for free until its final release in early 2014. We’ll use your feedback to shape the future of the service.
The sky is the limit. We cannot think of any industry that would not benefit from an app built using the Geotrigger Service. Here’s some examples:

Retail and Loyalty: Engage customers with personalized content and deals the moment they enter a store.

Real Estate: Send messages to prospective home buyers when their search criterion matches a home nearby.

Energy Management: Use your location to automatically manage power consumption in your home or office.

Tourism: Bring public attractions to life by informing tourists of interesting locations as they explore your city.

Public Alerts: Notify citizens about events such as road closures or civic emergencies based on past locations.

Ready to build your next app with the Geotrigger Service to your app? Check out https://developers.arcgis.com/en/geotrigger-service/

Posted

Mon Aug 19 2013, 10:10am

By Aaron Parecki

Categories

API

Tagged

Changes to Location History Storage for Geoloqi developers

Geoloqi is all about the real-time location data that supports the Geotrigger service, but we’ve been filling up cloud after cloud with extra data we realized our customers don’t really use.

Going forward, we will stop storing the raw location data points, and instead store the trigger history only – that is, the timestamp and latitude/longitude when a trigger is fired. New Geoloqi apps created after August 13, 2013 will not store location history, and in 30 days we will stop storing new location history for existing Geoloqi apps.

How will this affect my app(s)?

Odds are, it won’t. Unless your app needs to retrieve more than the last known location of a device, you shouldn’t notice a thing. Nothing besides location history is changing.

What if historical location data is important to me?

Do you currently use or plan on using your app’s historical location data? We can turn it on/leave it on for an additional charge/fee (as our normal pricing is just for our Geotrigger Service). Just let us know!

Exceptions

One of our customers uses Geoloqi to track where their app users are located currently, to send them Geotriggered messages, and to look at historical data on where they went, so we will continue storing historical location data for them and others on a case by case basis. The vast majority of our customers only need Geoloqi’s core technologies for their apps: Geotriggers, real-time location tracking, and geocoding.

What’s next?

We’re currently working on an updated version of the Geoloqi platform and an entire re-haul of the API. We aim to make the API easier to use, easier to get started, and require fewer API calls to run. In addition, we’re improving battery life, accuracy and stability of the platform as the number of devices, customers and users of our system grows. Over time, we’ll also be releasing special Geotrigger tools for ArcGIS users and customers, too! We’ll let you know when we’re ready to launch! Once the new API and SDKs are launched, we’ll be publishing a migration and update guide for existing customers, and will begin a wind-down of of the original service. We will provide at least one year (if not more) for all apps to update their SDKs to the new service.

Thanks!

Thanks so much for being a Geoloqi customer or considering using Geoloqi for your apps! We’re here to serve you, so if you have any questions, just let us know!

Posted

Wed May 15 2013, 12:12pm

By Aaron Parecki

Categories

News

Tagged

Here’s why we’re excited about the new Android Location APIs

The ArcGIS Geotrigger Service leverages the latest Android and iPhone technology, when these services improve, our technology improves. Our goal is to make the best cross-platform location services for developers, leveraging the best capabilities of the native location services available for existing consumer devices.

On the iPhone, we’ve leveraged the native geofencing APIs to offer improved battery life compared to using the GPS directly. On Android, there have been minimal location services available from the SDK, essentially limited to turning the raw GPS device on or off.

Three new location APIs were announced today at Google I/O. This is great news for anyone building location-based applications. We’ve been eager for Google to improve the Android location services.

Fused Location Provider

The Fused Location Provider utilizes all of the communication sensors in the phone including wifi, GPS, and cell network, while using only 1% of the battery that previous APIs used.

This is a new service that will greatly improve any application that uses location services. We will improve the ArcGIS Geotrigger SDK for Android significantly by taking advantage of the new Location Provider. Expect to see much better battery life on the Android Geotrigger SDK in the future!

Geofencing

The new Google Geofencing APIs allow apps to respond to the user entering or exiting a configured geofence. The API allows each app to define 100 geofences simultaneously.

This is great news for the ArcGIS Geotrigger SDK, since we will be able to leverage this service to provide better battery life and performance in the SDK. Previously we were limited to turning on and off the GPS device. Now we will be able to use the geofencing API in combination with our optimization algorithms to better provide our Geotrigger service.

Activity Recognition

The new Activity Recognition API uses machine learning classifiers to determine whether the user is walking, cycling or driving. Apps will be able to adjust their behavior depending on the user’s mode of transport. This is done in a very battery efficient way, no GPS is required.

We will leverage this new API to make further improvements to managing the native location services, and it should open up possibilities for some interesting new apps to be built.

The ArcGIS Geotrigger Service

The ArcGIS Geotrigger Service allows developers to easily manage Geotrigger rules with a simple cloud-based API, while also supporting geofences defined as polygons. You can configure an essentially unlimited number of Geotrigger rules in the API, and only the nearby ones will be synced to the phone, making it easy to handle the limitations of the native APIs.

Many of the battery life issues people experience are due to poor implementations of using the Apple and Android location services. It’s easy for a developer to leave the GPS on all the time, but that drains battery quickly. The Geotrigger SDK efficiently manages the native location services and optimizes the server communication required to send location data, saving battery life wherever possible.

The improvements to the Android location APIs are fantastic news and will result in improved Geotrigger services and a better experience for developers!

Aaron Parecki
CTO, Esri R&D Center, Portland

Amber Case
Director, Esri R&D Center, Portland

Posted

Mon May 13 2013, 8:20pm

By caseorganic

Categories

Events

Tagged

Come to the Esri Developer Social at Google I/O!

Esri is co-hosting a party with Stackmob and Voxeo Labs (Tropo) during Google I/O and you’re invited!

Hang out with us and enjoy complimentary food and drinks. This is a great opportunity to meet our partners, developers and customers. We’ll have developers and friends on hand to answer your any questions you might have about current and upcoming products!

Space is extremely limited (and almost full), so RSVP now to ensure your spot.

Esri, Stackmob+Tropo Developer Social @Google I/O!

When?

Wednesday, May 15, 2013 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (PDT)
Jillian’s
175 4th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

RSVP Link

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6451997097