Posts Tagged ‘geofencing’

Posted

Wed May 15 2013, 12:12pm

By Aaron Parecki

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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 May 22 2012, 3:03am

By caseorganic

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Unleash the Next Generation of Location with Geoloqi for Titanium!

Geoloqi's Location Module for the Titanium Platform

My co-founder, Aaron Parecki, and I share a belief: Things happen in places. We all carry around incredibly powerful mobile phones in our pockets, and we spend all our time interacting with them and not with the world around us. We believe that location services should be an invisible trigger for actions that take place on the device or in the cloud.

Aaron and I set out to start a company that would help developers create calm applications that recede into the background and only present themselves to users when they have contextually relevant actions or information to share. Our hope is to get people to look up from their screens and go about their daily lives.

The reality is that building a location service within an application is complex and time-consuming.

The Old School Way

You have to figure out how the different mobile platforms handle location features, how you’ll enable push-messaging in these different environments, how to set up a system for storing the geodata, how to create a method for tracking and analyzing the data, and, most importantly, how to make your location app accurate without draining the phone’s battery.

We founded Geoloqi to hide all the complexity of developing a location service “under the hood”. Geoloqi has published a robust, next-generation, location-based platform that makes it easy for developers to add location context within their mobile apps.

Geoloqi to the Rescue!

One of the primary problems with location-tracking apps today is that they have a tendency to drain smartphones’ batteries by always running the GPS in the background, or constantly pinging cell towers. Titanium Geoloqi Module Geoloqi uses algorithms that know when to turn the GPS on and off, which preserves battery life. For example, if your app is using a geofence, it knows that the GPS doesn’t have to constantly be running unless the user is near that geofence.

Another problem has been enabling individualized geotriggers. Unlike first-generation location services that use geofences as filters to determine which group of users to send a broadcast message to, our advanced platform allows your application to push messages and execute events to a single end-user at the moment they cross into a geofence, dwell within it, or depart the zone.

Use Cases

Geoloqi Visual Trigger Editor
The opportunities these geo-triggered events enables are limitless:

Retail

Imagine a large retail chain that is able to push their (opted in) loyal customers a message as they enter the store, not only welcoming them to the store by name and providing them with loyalty points for their visit, but also integrated into the chain’s CRM system to allow the app to mention that their favorite item is on sale that day.

Hospitality

Imagine a hotel chain that automatically recognizes that a patron has pulled into their parking lot, automatically checks the user into the hotel, and has their room key and paperwork waiting at the front desk by the time they walk in from the lot.

Deals and Rewards

Alert users to nearby deals by sending them a push notifications when they are within a few blocks of an offer! Use an existing database of offers or use the Geoloqi visual trigger editor to create custom ones. Or, use Geoloqi to give virtual currency for their favorite mobile game if they visit the a venue or store.

Tourism

Tourism boards can create location-based tours of historical information that will send messages to users about points of interest as they travel around a city or state.

Home Automation

Trigger a home automation system to turn the lights on when a person gets home, and automatically turn off when one leaves.

The Geoloqi Titanium Module

The Geoloqi Titanium module enables persistent/ambient background location tracking, intelligent battery management, and transitions smoothly between location sources such as carrier signals, GPS and Wifi for true real-time tracking. It also provides rich location and dwell-time analytics, giving your clients the ability to analyze and take action on location data.

At Geoloqi, we are excited to give you the tools to easily make location services that are present when your user needs them and invisible when they don’t.

Two free months of Geoloqi when you sign up today!

Thanks to Appcelerator’s sponsorship, if you download the Geoloqi Titanium module before June 30th you can try it for free for two months, and experience how Geoloqi takes care of the hard parts of geo for you.

Geoloqi/Titanium Webinar

Geoloqi CTO Aaron Parecki and Appcelerator CTO Nolan Wright will be doing a webinar at 11Am PST on May 29th, 2012. Check out Appcelerator for details or register for the Webinar directly. You can also follow @geoloqi on Twitter.

Posted

Thu Feb 23 2012, 5:05am

By caseorganic

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Geoloqi Launches Powerful Next-Generation Location-Based Service Platform

Enterprise and Developers Can Now Create Real Time Applications and Services That Meet the Growing Demands of the Mobile Workforce and Consumer

Geoloqi Location-Based Mobility Platform

PORTLAND, OR – February 23, 2012 – Geoloqi, a powerful platform for next-generation location based services, officially launches today along with its language agnostic SDK for iOS and Android, and proprietary API. Geoloqi offers a complete stack of geolocation tools, including geo-fencing, messaging, security and analytics, that empowers the enterprise, government and developers to unlock the full potential of real-time location-based services and easily layer geolocation onto any device or application.

The Geoloqi platform disrupts first generation location services by offering a complete, cross-platform, language, device and carrier agnostic platform for enterprise applications and IP-connected devices. A contextually aware solution, it enables persistent background location tracking, intelligent battery management, and transitions smoothly between location sources such as carrier signals, GPS and Wifi for true real-time tracking. Additionally, Geoloqi provides rich location and dwell-time analytics, giving customers the ability to analyze and take action on location data for the first time. The platform also provides sophisticated security settings with easy opt-in and opt-out features to ensure safety and privacy practices are automatically updated at any time. Enterprises and developers can now easily create solutions for the mobile workforce and consumers with improved productivity, functionality, and logistics for any wireless climate.

An upwards of 50 billion connected devices will be on the market by the year 2020 according to Ericsson, including wireless phones, cars, home appliances, GPS devices, cameras, and myriad other devices for businesses, government and consumers. According to Pyramid Research, the location-based services market is expected to grow to $10 billion by 2015. ABI Research has also projected location analytics to also grow significantly, and estimates it will become a $9 billion market by 2016. The market for next-generation location has barely been tapped.

A Closer Look at the Next-Generation Location Platform: Geoloqi

Below is an in-depth list of the complete features and functionality that Geoloqi’s platform provides via its SDK and server-based solution.

Device/ Language/ Carrier Agnostic:

Geoloqi offers a language agnostic, cross platform SDK with native support for iOS and Android, and is fully portable to Windows and embedded systems. The platform enables customers to easily add location to any device, on any platform, and deliver it through any carrier or system around the world.

Geofencing/ Battery Safe Trigger Zones:

The Geoloqi SDK enables accurate, customizable geofencing, auto-check ins, and automatically manages a device’s battery life while using location, so users can run the app all day without significant battery drain.
Battery-Managed Geofencing from Geoloqi

Hosted Spatial Storage:

Spatial storage allows you to create and store places, messages, and geofences. Create private places, quickly import datasets, search for nearby places and automatically sync relevant data to users. Geoloqi is optimized for use with real-time applications and battery-safe operations.
Location-Based Storage, Context, Points of Interest

Rich dwell-time and location-based analytics:

Geoloqi provides deep, real-time analytics on users and their location data and history and allows customers to create custom reports. It provides rich analytics and visualizations for tracking users, geofences and message conversions, place dwell time, visitor metrics, and more.
Location-Based Analytics for Mobile

Real-Time Location Tracking:

Geoloqi makes it simple to implement full-featured, real-time tracking in and out of doors, with minimal time and effort. Geoloqi offers SDKs for iOS, Android, Javascript, Ruby, PHP and more.
Real-Time Location-Based Tracking

Location-Based Messaging:

Push messages to end users upon arriving, dwelling or leaving a place, as well as based off of time or day or a user’s speed. Messaging works with any carrier and enables notifications for iOS and Android, SMS and Email for all devices.
Location-Based Messaging for Mobile Devices

The Market to Date

To date, there has been an obvious disconnect between what developers, carriers and enterprise companies can offer business-to-business and business-to-consumer mobile products and services. Current location technologies have been pieced together by small vendors with limited functionality or built by in-house teams that do not have core location competency, making it challenging to develop reliable location-based applications and services. Very few companies have been able to take advantage of the possibilities that an advanced geolocation platform can offer. Today, Geoloqi can power truly mobile businesses, products and services with its next-generation location platform. Geoloqi solves all of the pending issues with first generation products like carrier dependence, privacy, development time, battery drain, and language silos.

Executive & Customer Quotes

“There’s no denying that we now live in an increasingly mobile world. Geolocation has the potential to become an indispensable part of our lives,” said Amber Case, CEO and founder of Geoloqi. “But in order for geolocation to be a valuable service to end users, the technology needs to be invisible yet opted into, private, and secure. There are incredible business opportunities and mobile advancements in markets like retail, security, healthcare, government, to a name a few. We’re inspired by the kinds of applications and services our customers are creating with Geoloqi and to be part of the tools that drive mobile innovation forward.”

“With Geoloqi, we’re able to track our personnel in real-time, anywhere in the world, on any device, ultimately saving lives in the process,” said David Ayres, of TATE, Inc. “For example, men and women working or traveling in high-risk areas will receive an emergency alert if they enter a dangerous area of a city or town. Geoloqi has taken safe geolocation to the next level.”

Going to SXSW Interactive?

SXSW Interactive 2012 - Amber Case KeynoteFounder and CEO Amber Case will be a keynote speaker at SXSW Interactive in March, where she’ll take the stage to discuss more implications of next generation geolocation, and have some exciting giveaways. To learn more about Geoloqi and unleash the power of location today, visit www.geoloqi.com.

About Geoloqi

Geoloqi is a powerful platform for real-time location based services, and makes it simple for enterprise partners, OEMs and mobile developers to quickly add rich geolocation functionality to apps and devices. It provides a complete, real-time toolkit for tracking, messaging, battery management, geofencing, storage and actionable analytics, with a language agnostic SDK and proprietary API. Founded in 2010, Geoloqi is based in Portland, OR and backed by Portland Seed Fund and TIE. For more information on Geoloqi, please visit www.geoloqi.com or follow @geoloqi on Twitter.

Media Contact
Vanessa Camones & Jennifer Lankford
theMIX agency for Geoloqi
[email protected]