Stardust Global Ventures

Everybody is all up in arms over facebook places. Why? Confusion!

Let’s answer a couple of questions those of you who have never used location based services may have.

First of all if you’re using your computer, facebook places will not be told where you are or what you are doing. It doesn’t work that way.

Second, if you don’t use facebook on your phone you have no worries. Facebook places can’t possibly know with no input where you are or what you are doing.

Third, even if you do use facebook on your mobile device you still have to access the places tab and tell it where you are. For instance, when I am out and about in the world using facebook on my phone I have to open up the application and then manually open places and then type in where I am and it has to recognize that as a place or I have to tell it that where I am is the location of, for example, Lorenzo’s pizza. If I don’t tell it anything, it has no knowledge. GPS still has to be activated and linked with facebook in order for it to have any idea where you are.

The hype over facebook not being trusted is a whole other issue. I definitely understand there is little reason to trust facebook because they’ve certainly not done anything to garner trust. They’ve allowed your information to be public in spite of the steps you may believe you have taken to keep your privacy locked down. But location based services really are not smart. At least not right now. All of them, facebook included give you controls and you then set the privacy to whatever you choose. If you have facebook and don’t use it on your mobile device you have not one thing to fear. You don’t have to mess with your settings at all and it won’t matter one iota. You are as safe as you were before Places came to be.

EDIT: My friend Dameone Welch-Abernathy pointed out the one thing I forgot to mention. If you’re still really freaked out about all this, the one thing that guarantees you are not checked in is if you go to your settings and change other peoples ability to check you in where they are. Seriously though unless you have really skanky friends, they probably wouldn’t if they knew you didn’t want them too.

Location based services (LBS) are all the rage today. From Foursquare to Gowalla to Yelp and more, the ability to check in, network and share tips via smartphones has captivated the attention of early adopters worldwide.

For those of us who live each day by our smartphones, that’s great, but we’re still in the minority.  There are far more standard mobile phones worldwide that smartphones. And while momentum is increasing, standard cell phones will continue to dominate the global market in many parts of the world.

Even with smartphones, there’s another aspect to location that technology can improve and automate – indoor positioning. A few months back Kevin Tofel wrote on GigaOm about a company that’s been working on patent pending location both indoors and underground to from 1-40 meters. As good as or better than GPS…for any cell phone – even those not equipped with GPS.

That’s right, with solid triangulation algorithms Aunt Suzy’s old flip phone can be located accurately too.

Here’s some info from a current press release:

GloPos, the developer of a breakthrough software-only positioning technology that makes all mobile phones location aware — outdoors, indoors, and even underground – has confirmed an indoor positioning accuracy of 7.7 to 12.5 meters in an independent test of its software conducted by VTT, The Technical Research Center of Finland.

Testing of the outdoor, indoor and underground accuracy of GloPos software was conducted by VTT at the Helsinki City Center on May 20, 2010. The GloPos application ran on a standard GSM-only mobile phone.

The stationary indoor and underground tests show that GloPos is capable of non-filtered average positioning accuracy of 15.1-23.9 meters. 75% of the measurements present an average position accuracy of 7.7-12.5 meters. With filtering, the indoor accuracy of GloPos technology is as good as the outdoor accuracy in an urban environment with a normal GPS embedded in mobile phones. When comparing with state-of-the-art cell positioning (Google Maps) the average accuracy is at least two times better and in some cases even ten times better (indoors).

“This successful test lays the groundwork for making all mobile phones location aware and opens up exciting, new opportunities in the personal navigation, social location, mobile search and personalized mobile advertising marketplaces,” said Mikael Vainio, CEO.

For those who remember Jaiku at its peak, location based on tower triangulation was becoming very important. It allowed a user created database of locations that Jaiku users with Nokia phones and the client software could then tag locations for future use.

That’s right, the model behind Foursquare and Gowalla was in live use with Jaiku long ago. The GloPos value really stems from honing accuracy for handsets that aren’t GPS-enabled. Remember those handsets are still SMS enabled. SMS is hugely popular and widely used.

We don’t talk about text a lot these days, but in 2008, in the US we sent 95.4 billion text messages. And we aren’t big text users. Many countries make optimum use of the lowest common denominator handset.

The truth is the Internet and value we get from it is really strongest when we support the the most basic end device – a standard cell phone.

GloPos potentially enables more granular location tagging that we see today in LBS. We can identify location not just to the store inside the mall, but which floor of the store someone is in.

GloPos makes location more important that ever in the mobile marketplace. it’s more ubiquitous than the other technologies we use today.

GloPos technology requires only a cellular network to make all mobile phones location aware. No additional hardware like GPS or W-LAN is required on a mobile device for achieving accurate positioning.

GloPos’ patent-pending, self learning algorithms can calculate an accurate position fix even in places where no W-LAN access points are available or no GPS can be used (i.e. in shopping malls, subways, underground parking, airports, sports arenas, exhibition centers). GloPos works wherever cellular network coverage is available.

GloPos Technology does not consume any extra battery life while operating as cell information is already being used to stay connected. GloPos enables longer device usage versus GPS and W-LAN, allowing battery power to be used for more advanced applications and driving more powerful processors.

We’re really just beginning to uncover the power and the value of location. Companies like GloPos are going to keep emerging as they bring new strengths to what we can do with technology we carry in our hands already.