Location Trends 2011 & Why Contextual Search is one step closer

I was due to present at Mobile Monday Oslo last week, when a Spanish air traffic controllers strike prevented me from catching my flight. I was going to present ideas from my book on Location Aware Apps (with co-author Murat Aktihanoglu, published by Manning-USA) as well as take a look at the current and future trends for location on mobile.

While my talk may have been postponed, I've decided to share the presentation deck I prepared here so that those who were looking forward to hearing it can at least get a flavour for it (see below).

My key conclusion: location today is everwhere. We can now archive the term Location Based Services (LBS) and think more of location-aware apps. I was listening to Marissa Mayer speak at the LeWeb conference in Paris a couple of days ago (via Ustream) and she made a point of stating that Google is working hard to make contextual awareness (or contextual search in Google-speak) a reality. 

This is great news, as I have been stating for the last couple of years that contextual awareness is the holy grail for mobile apps. I also mention this at the start of my book and explain why this is so. We are now a (big) step closer to achieving it...

"Location Everywhere" -Mobile Location Trends 2011

View more presentations from Ric Ferraro.

Marissa Mayer @ Le Web 09 Paris: Google Goggles & The Future of Search

PARIS -Marissa Mayer gave another closely followed fireside interview at LeWeb 09 in Paris this year, with Michael Arrington attempting (but failing) to get her to reveal more about the new Google-branded mobile phone (set to hit the market next year).

Marissa made it very clear that Google understands that search is evolving and particularly that mobile devices are becoming the key channel for accessing search. This ties in nicely with the launch of Google Goggles, a mobile software through which anyone can take a photo with the device and let Google automatically figure out what they are looking at.

Here is a short part of the video interview:

LeWeb08-Google's Mayer tips Local Search as key opportunity for 2009

PARIS-Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Product & User Experience at Google, gave an insightful view on various challenges facing both Google and its competitors in terms of Search.

Marissa pointed out that there is still some way to go to improve search (harking back to a previous interview she had given where she had stated that 90% of the work on search has been completed but that the last 10% was the tricky part).

One area where Google is looking to improve its game is in personalised search, with the recent launch of the Google Search Wiki seeking to test the waters in this area.

Another area, is search through devices other than the PC, notably through a mobile phone and, linked to this,voice-activated search.

Loic le Meur asked Marissa whether she thought any improvements in video search were in the pipeline. She answered that improvements are imminent in detecting voice within video and searching on this. However, graphic recognition (e.g.of a face in a video) is still a few years away partly due to YouTube's success and the proliferation of video content on the web.

Finally, and critically for companies in the LBS space, Marissa stated that "local search is one of the big opportunities in 2009".

LeWeb 08 Paris-Prologue and Photos

PARIS-LeWeb08 managed to pull off a great event in a time of economic uncertainty, and despite the heavy atmosphere associated with the global financial system, it offered rays of hope as well as advice on how to weather the storm.

Many industry heavy hitters, from Marissa Mayer at Google to Marc Simoncini of Meetic, Maurice Levy of Publicis and Martin Varsavsky, serial entrepreneur, gave their take on future plans and opportunities in the market.

Marc Simoncini gave a very entertaining talk on different dating habits he had to consider when launching his service in different countries in Europe.
For example, in Italy, women were not overt in their dating habits as they normally 'had to ask permission from their brother to date' while in Sweden, the Meetic offer of free membership for women was met with a 'why should it be free for us' reaction.