I’ve posted before about better pin-pointing of location from devices on the move - and it’s a subject that has long been close to my heart. But thanks to AdViking to drawing my attention to Greg Sterling’s post last week about the inclusion of Geo-tagging in Windows 7.

It’s a natural development from Geode’s firefox plug in - and will further refine the capabilities of tools like Feedjit I noted before.

But this really is going to be an interesting one to watch on the privacy boards: if your operating system will be able to pinpoint your (fairly) precise location - and you’re on, say, a corporate network - then the implications for employers (for example) to check up on all kinds of things gets much more potent.

Now, let’s put this together with some of the commentary last week on Google’s decision to use searches related to ‘flu’ to identify areas where epidemics might arise. One of the more interesting responses came from The Register:

“The problem, (Marc) Rotenberg says, is that data aggregation calls attention to specific data stored on Google’s servers, making it that much more vulnerable to, say, a subpoena or a national security letter. “Let’s say that instead of Flu Trends, Google’s doing SARS Trends - tracking a very serious communicable disease,” he explains. “If there’s a big SARS upsurge somewhere, the government would be at Google’s door asking where did that data come from.” “

So this goes a step further: it’s not just about what you type into Google, I wonder if this could lead to any information on your computer being fed back to the authorities and then triangulated back to a pretty accurate location. What will the privacy/amnesty international take on that be? I watch with interest…

Tags: EPIC, feedjit, firefox, flu trends, geode, google, mozilla labs, windows 7

Handy?

Seems like the nice folks over at Yell have flipped into the 21st Century, having dropped the door-drops like a soggy slab of toast. I haven’t tried this out yet, but I will.

I’m a fan of the Google Maps mobile app, which replaces the (paid for) apps I used to have on my WinMo and Palm OS devices in the past, complete with the benefit of ‘current location’ from the mobile network. I appreciate GPS may be ‘better’, but in London this is quite sufficient… as it was in Brighton recently.

The Yell app will have to be pretty good to better that… though I do see ample places where it could be improved, I’m unconvinced that either Yell or Google will make those improvements any time soon… but I’d love to hear thoughts from anyone else who’s used either/both?

Tags: google maps, GPS, local, mobile, smartphone, yell, yell mobile

Paul Dacre

Peter Wilby, over on the Guardian’s site, is complaining about Paul Dacre (editor of the Daily Mail and set for much grander things as he celebrates his 60th birthday this week) complaining about the BBC. Apparently Dacre’s comments are ’self serving’ (and worse).

Now there’s a surprise. Editor of major news outlet gives speech in which he says something that is true to his (and his employers’) interests. Hold the front page.

The various titles down at Wapping seem equally happy to take a poke at the BBC whenever possible too. Both the Times and the Sun (and their respective Sunday iterations) have been known similarly to attack Auntie on sometimes flimsy grounds. Witness the News of the World’s (pernicious? self-serving?) lead last weekend about the amount of money paid to top execs over at the BBC. I noted that no mention was made on the packages paid to senior execs over at Wapping - or indeed at sister company Sky.

So does Dacre have a point? The Daily Mail is part of a larger group that has a large swathe of regional papers (Northcliffe Media) who are falling on harder times at the moment, not least because of the rise of decent online content, and the BBC is investing heavily on 65 ‘ultra-local’ websites. This won’t help Northcliffe Media any - and it’ll be interesting to see what they try to do with their ‘ThisIs…’ brand website extensions to those local papers.

It is Sandlines’ view that the local markets are the next really interesting battleground online. I’ll be watching with a great deal of interest. Who knows, perhaps something will come out of it that actually helps the people these sites are trying to reach - and the advertisers who are trying to talk to them. Sandlines lives in hope.

Tags: BBC, daily mail, guardian, local, newspapers, northcliffe, paul dacre

Over on Razorshine, my old pal Kanani has been shopping - in the real world - and hoping that Google would help him. As the organisation dedicated to ‘…organi(sing) the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” this is perhaps not an unreasonable expectation. Especially when, as Riaz says, the new Westfield Shopping Centre has linked to Google Maps to show us how to find them. Ah well.

It raises a question that someone asked me a couple of weeks ago over a pint - and which has come up several times recently: is it possible to go up against Google and win?

Privately, many inside Microsoft would say that perhaps it isn’t - at least for Microsoft.

So if you’re going into business doing anything around the ‘organisation’ and provision of information, does that mean you should pack up and go home?

No.

Google does an outstanding job most of the time - but they are not perfect, or infallible. And, for all their 16,000+ employees, they still cannot do everything. At least, not all right now. Pick the right one of those areas and you’re in business… perhaps.

Then there’s the new semantic search technologies that are touted as the foundation of a ‘web 3.0′ world. Google, of course, will play in this sandpit, but it’s a different approach to presenting information than that which is hard coded into Google’s corporate psyche, so the jury is not quite in yet as to whether they’ll rise to the challenge.

Of course, there is also the entire ecosystem that has sprung up around the way Google makes money. One friend of mine calls this ‘feeding the monster’. Shopping comparison and much affiliate marketing could be described as falling into this bucket. And it’s a healthy one, even in a downturn.

But one of the more interesting perspectives is coming from a book I’m reading at the moment - Randall Stoss has published a near-insider’s view of Google in ‘Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know” ( I link to the ebook, but you can get it on Amazon too). And it’s a compelling view. Doubtless I will mention it again over the coming days.

It’s curious in how it compares Google’s ‘open’ view of the world with the essentially closed environment that social networking (well, mainly Facebook) is once again introducing to the web.

Just as Google wins the legal battle to index the content of pretty much any published book it likes - and extend beyond the virtual world - it’s curious that its biggest threat may well come from the web itself. Food for thought.

Tags: google, google books, google maps, Microsoft, planet google, randall stross, razorshine, semantic search, web 3.0, westfield

I was checking out the latest from over at Cheeze’s excellent marketing blog and spotted, almost incidentally, a really cool app sitting in the sidebar: ‘Live Visitor Feed‘ by Feedjit.

Apart from a small detail in error (it believes my London suburb is in Kent… it’s not, it’s London and it would more likely be Surrey anyway) it’s pretty interesting.

I’ve noted before that local targeting is challenging in the UK… local IP’s are much more difficult to pin down outside the UK, or at least they were. But Feedjit claim that they “…can determine the geographic locations at the city level of 90% of your website visitors.” That’s pretty impressive.

Now the interesting question is what we are going to DO with this information? I have some ideas… for another post.

Tags: cheeze, feedjit, geode, location

Yell.Com: no to doordrops

No, not the end of Yellow Pages deliveries (yet), but I saw today that Yell have pulled out of a recently launched (August) venture to compete with asrecommended by publishing a consumer car insurance guide. The pilot went well, and 1.5 million copies a month were thudding onto doormats - and the plan was to grow that to 40 million.

My doormat is sighing with relief.

I think I hear the odd environment lobbyist cheering somewhat, too.

Can a magazine really be the right way forward to promote insurance…? A ’service’ that means, almost by definition, that 11/12 of the audience will find it irrelevant each month as they are not in the renewal cycle. What on earth were they planning to say each month?

To paraphrase the old adage, “I know that 92% of my ad budget is wasted, I just don’t know with 92%.”

Tags: direct mail, door drop, local, relevance, waste, yell, yellow pages

So another entry to the buzzword bingo chart, Forrester Research have published a report under the heading ‘Ubiquitous Marketing’. Whilst it’s not quite James Lee Burke, it is nevertheless a good read… and plays well with Sandlines’ manifesto.

Taking an inevitable cue from Minority Report, this research identifies a few key trends that ring very true:

• consumers don’t much like - or trust - advertising
• marketers are finding it tougher to make advertising work
• people move about, and as they do, their needs change

Their conclusion? Marketing needs to be contextual, reciprocal and successive. In other words, we need to morph marketing broadcasts into something that looks more like a service: relevant and useful, building on previous exchanges.

Digital marketers who have embraced the concept of marketing as a conversation should rejoice: their stock will rise yet higher.

Consumers should, also, be happier - if it leads to fewer, more welcome marketing messages. Broadcast or ‘one size fits all’ marketing starts to look more and more like spam every day.

Tags: engagement marketing, forrester, research, ubiquitous marketing

Those ARE real people down there... just click and see!

Sandlines is idly pondering his No. 1 FAQ, namely “what happens next”?

I wrote a few weeks back about buzzword inflation in the form of Web 3.0, as a framework for speculation. For me, one of the key elements is going to be the increase in relevance online. And a key driver for relevance is location.
Location has long been a tricky beast to observe on the web. Local IP addresses (especially outside the US) are difficult to get right, leaving declared location (via registration data) the nearest thing we often have for an answer.

But people are pesky things, They’ve an irritating tendency (at least, irritating in this context) to move about - i.e. changing their location, therefore their criteria for relevance shifts with them…. pub vs office vs coffee shop vs living room etc.

That said, they’re pretty ingenious too. Witness the invention of devices such as the iPod Touch (on which I wrote this post) or the iPhone - or other (gasp) smartphones, PDAs, laptops, UMPCs or even the Asus EeePC. All with internet capabilities of varying levels of usefulness and usability.

And guess what? They are terrific at pinpointing location. If I use my iPod Touch with WiFi and go to Google Maps, it puts me within 500m of my actual location. And not a cellular transmitter in sight. So, an opportunity for better (ie more relevant) search results for web users; better targeting options for advertisers… a better online experience all round.

That still creates challenges: how do you generate the content that provides relevance online? It’s easy enough to get macro level local content, but the more granular stuff is much harder to obtain. Businesses old (Yell.com) and new (UpMyStreet, KnoWhere.co.uk) try, but I think it’s unrealistic to expect traditional approaches to editorial to fill the gap. You need to generate community - for communities. In other words, user generated content: reviews, listings, groups etcetera. It is happening, but there’s still a way to go.

Location is going to be critical to the Web 3.0 future. Watch this (local) space.

Tags: iphone, iPod Touch, local, location, relevance, social networking, ugc, user generated content, web 3.0