AppWorks o2 Oslo- Summary of Mobile Tech Conference

App works olso location everywhere 05.2011 rf slideshare

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OSLO- Appworks is one of the leading mobile conferences in Scandinavia (organized by Mobilen.no, famous for their Telecruise conference that takes place on a cruise ship) and it was a real pleasure to speak about Location-Aware apps during the 1-day event at the end of May.

The conference attracted a great mix of mobile entrepreneurs, developers and 'big guns' like Samsung, LG, Blackberry, Nokia and HTC, with a conference format running in parallel to a workshop format (Klubbscenen).

Location-based services were one of the main items on the day's agenda, so it was perhaps provocative of me to kick off my keynote by stating that Location-Based Services were extinct today. The reasons for stating this is that location is no longer a service but a feature that is embedded everywhere. You can see my full slide deck above, by the way, and check out the other themes I presented.

Location on mobile is also firmly in the mainstream today -with Facebook in particular achieving what Foursquare couldn't.I'm a big believer in the fact that contextual search (with mobile apps knowing what I'm more likely to be interested in according to time of day, previous searches, ambient temperature etc) will unlock the full potential of location. It is still early days for this, but as Google (and others) invest in research in this area and processing power on mobile devices keeps increasing, we will see some real examples of this soon.

There were some great presentations at the event by other speakers - I particularly enjoyed the ones by John Valentine (from SCVNGR), Megan Miller (on usability of iPad apps) and Ola Larsen (from RIM). Ola showed a video that I thought was pretty cool, on Hyper-Augmented Reality. You can see the video below and get an insight into what one version of the future of AR could be like. Enjoy!


Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

AppWorks Oslo- On Embedded Location and Location Privacy

OSLO -I will be speaking about 'Location, Location, Location' at the AppWorks Conference at Latter at Aker Brygge in Oslo on the 24th May and will join John Valentine from Scvngr, Christophe Joyau from Nokia and Mette Lykke from Endomondo in the first conference session on "Location Based Services".

This is interesting, as the first point I will be making in my presentation will be that "Location Based Services" are extinct. Readers familiar with my blog will know that I have mentioned this point before. What do I mean by this? 

The point is not just a semantic one. We are now in a world of "location everywhere", with location becoming a pervasive and embedded element of mobile. In fact, you could argue (and I certainly do) that location has gone mainstream. Cue Facebook Places and Twitter, for example.

While location today is powerful, it is still lacking an edge. That edge could come from adding context to location, and so provide a cooler mobile experience (including predicting that you are about to head for a restaurant or go shopping).

Location privacy has been and continues to be a very hot debate. Expect this to remain the case 40 years from now. At the same time, it won't matter. The new digital native generation considers this a moot point. To get free digital services, it goes without saying that some invasion of privacy is required (even if it is only to better target 'harmless' ads).

At the same time, players in the mobile ecosytem can buffer themselves against the worst privacy storms by using common sense. The main rule being, don't store users' private data unless you really have to.

I will be covering more points in my presentation-those who will be there, look forward to meeting you. For the others, please check back on my blog for the Slideshare version.