A day late, and a bit short, I am now at Stanford at AlwaysOn 2008. This is one of my favorite conferences in the tech year. Tony Perkins and his team do a sensational job of putting it on.
Great venue, great crowd and leading edge speakers. My flight down was a little late so got here mid-morning.
First panel that I am listening to is entitled “Who Will Make the Most Money from Location-Based Services?”
The panel is packed with very smart guys from Google, Qualcomm, Nokia and TomTom.
Question…who owns the information vis a vis location, is it the user? Are we trading off privacy for information. Uses will benefit from openness?
Every cell phone knows where it is, and will operators open up that info.
Funny how at events like this the conversation is at such a level that when you don’t have any clue as to an acronym, you are not sure which direction the conversation is going. E.g. “lbs”, Location Based Services…
WiFi is one means of geo-tagging. Interesting discussion of “eye-fi” card. A day in the life of a tourist, can now be tracked.
Physical location is a fact, e.g. you know that a tower is close because you can see it. Potential information that has commercial value, how does it get presented with lbs services?
Hard challenge to get the carriers to open up.
We have gone from the walled garden to the walled device.
Another interesting theme, how do phones borrow periferals? e.g. Phone talking to monitor?
Bottom line is that the sense of the room is that ones making the real money will be the carriers.
Comments