News - Geoloqi Blog

Posted

Mon Mar 3 2014, 3:15pm

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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

Wed May 15 2013, 12:12pm

By Aaron Parecki

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News

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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

Tue Apr 23 2013, 4:16pm

By caseorganic

Categories

News

Tagged

Update on the Geoloqi for Titanium Module

We’ve had a great time making the Titanium module available for Geoloqi. As we move forward towards the next version of the Geoloqi platform, we’ve decided to consolidate our efforts around native SDKs and apps. We really enjoyed having a module for Titanium, but having a third SDK to maintain, develop and support takes our efforts away from providing the best SDKs for our iOS and Android. Although this may be disappointing news to some of you, we want to ensure the best quality of product possible, and ensuring that our SDKs work best on iOS and Android native applications is our first goal. As of this time, the Geoloqi module for Titanium has been removed from the Titanium marketplace, and starting July 2013, we will no longer be supporting Geoloqi for Titanium.

What does this mean for you?

If you have an existing application built with the Geoloqi module for Titanium, you’ll be able to continue using it until Dec 2014. We will continue providing support to non-enterprise customers through July 2013 and to our paying customers who are using the Titanium module through December 2014.

We’ll be releasing a new version of the Geotrigger platform and SDKs through http://developers.arcgis.com in June that will be available for native iOS and Android developers.

Update: Titanium Modules Now Open Source!

Due to interest, we wanted to make sure our community could still develop with the Titanium module. Below are links to the source code for the Geoloqi iPhone and Android Titanium Modules. Important! This code was not developed in house at Geoloqi, and is no longer supported by us. Due to time restrictions, we won’t be able to answer questions about this code. This code has been released under the Apache license.

iPhone SDK module for Titanium

Android SDK module for Titanium

Thank you,
Amber Case, Co-founder, Geoloqi

Posted

Mon Oct 15 2012, 11:11am

By caseorganic

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News

Tagged

Geoloqi is now part of Esri!

Geoloqi’s team and technology are joining Esri, the world’s leader in mapping technology and geographic systems, to bring powerful next-gen location and mapping technology to market for mobile and web apps.

Geoloqi HQ is now the the Portland Esri R&D Center! The two companies have joined forces, and we’re unveiling our first product together – a powerful new geocoding enhancement to the Geoloqi API. Geoloqi’s team, products and services will continue to exist and will be supported by the Geoloqi team.

In the future, Geoloqi products and services will be integrated into ArcGIS online and be available through a new developer-friendly pricing model similar to the existing Geoloqi model. The intent is to continue to improve products and services as they are rolled into the new combined platform. This will result in better support, user experience and sample code for developers, as well as an increasing number of opportunities for new and existing ArcGIS customers and new industry verticals.

Esri and Geoloqi Join Forces

What new features can we expect with the acquisition?

Post-acquisition, developers will have access to a geocoding service powered by Esri, provided through the Geoloqi API.

Geocoding service overview:

The Geoloqi API now supports geocoding & reverse geocoding. The ArcGIS SDK provides an alternative to Apple’s maps for incorporating a map into mobile app, with support for any device. We are adding the geocoding capability to our existing API.

Geocoding

When creating a geotrigger rule, developers can now provide an address instead of a latitude and longitude. Internally, the Geoloqi API geocodes the address using the ArcGIS Geocoding service and finds the latitude, longitude and chooses an appropriate size for the trigger. This service will be live at the end of the day on Oct 15th.

Reverse Geocoding

When retrieving information about triggers that have run, or the locations of devices, the information returned is now enriched with the city, state and country of the location by using the ArcGIS Reverse Geocoding service. We can also provide the street address for reverse geocoding.

MapKit Alternative

Esri and Geoloqi will offer a new mapping library powered by the ArcGIS SDKs for iOS. The release of the ArcGIS alternative to MapKit will allow developers to have more options for maps in iOS 6 and beyond. The ArcGIS iOS SDK provides developers with an alternative to MapKit, the default mapping library on iOS. The ArcGIS SDK provides access to high quality map tiles in a programming interface similar to MapKit.

Why is this awesome?

Many external geocoding services have strict limits on usage and licensing, and many don’t allow developers to store the results of the geocoding API call, only letting them use the data one time. With Esri, you own your own data. The results of the geocode can be used in conjunction with any other service.

How can we get it?

Enterprises and developers will be able to buy Geoloqi’s core features and geocoding service powered by Esri through Geoloqi’s website. See Geoloqi’s pricing page for details. In the future, all of Geoloqi’s features and products will be available in the same form through ArcGIS online with an improved and developer-friendly pricing model and feature set.

Who is Esri?

Esri develops geographic information systems (GIS) software that functions as an integral component in nearly every type of organization. On any given day, more than a million people around the world use Esri’s ArcGIS software. In addition, Esri has over 350,000 customers, serving many verticals. Esri was founded in 1969 by Jack and Laura Dangermond and employs 2,900 people worldwide.

Who are Esri’s customers?

Over 350,000 customers, serving many verticals.

How much did Esri purchase Geoloqi for?

Esri is a private company. The purchase price is undisclosed.

Follow Us!

You can follow @geoloqi and @esri on Twitter for more information.

Any other questions?

You can read more in the Geoloqi Acquisition FAQ.

And one more thing…

We’re keeping the dinosaur!