When a technology is in its relative infancy, it can sometimes be a bit odd and a bit difficult to say exactly where it’ll be when it’s a teenager, or heck even an adult technology.  I feel in many ways, we’re in that infancy for consumer based GPS.

That said, currently it is a little on the difficult side to predict where GPS technology will end up in the hands of those aforementioned consumers.  You can’t really say if it’ll grow even more popular for only certain uses, of if it will just be a sweeping, blanket technology that we grow to see as second nature.  On the side of the latter, I just found a sweet new use of GPS that involves a new principle called “biomapping.”  Basically, with about 80-100 volunteers hooked up to devices called Galvanic Skin Response devices, an “emotional map” of an entire square mile can be formulated that can show, emotionally speaking, how a specific area might feel.  WOW.

Properly studied and applied, this technology could help show how crime is perceived in areas, helping to gauge how safe or unsafe a neighborhood might be, which in turn could help law enforcement change their tactics, or investigate if it really IS more dangerous or just higher population density.  Basically, these emotional maps can show us a great deal about, well, a great deal.  From Travel to Security, the emotions of people inside certain areas can create landscapes of feeling.

Ok, with that last sentence, I’ve officially excited myself, and gotten even more happy that I work for a company like WHERE that is at the cutting edge of the innovative application of GPS technology.

I can’t speak for everyone, everywhere, so I am not going to even try.  What I can do, however, is speak for myself and my town, and for me and here our weather man is wrong A LOT.  I watch the news at night, I check his forecasts, I plan accordingly…Most often, I plan wrong.

Enter WHERE Local Weather Widget.   Turn phone on, load up WHERE, Hit the Local Weather Widget, instantly get the specs on the weather going outside before I even lift my head from the pillow.  SWEET.  Now, I can check out what’s to come without relying on my wrong-altogether-too-often weather man.  How nice is it not being the dude carrying an umbrella in 94 degree cloudless skies?  How nice is to not be wearing shorts, flip flops and a tank top when it’s pouring and unseasonably cold.  Priceless friends, Priceless.

Phone on, WHERE on, Local Weather on, you’re good to go.  Try it, you will start to wonder what the heck you did without it up til this point.

Happy Monday friends, countrymen/women and anyone else from anywhere else browsing this lovely page.  Hopefully the weather where you are is as nice as it is here, and with that, there’s probably a pretty good chance people’s clothing is matching the weather.  That said, I just found something, well, Weird that has to do with this whole mobile phone revolution.  How about a Playboy Cell Phone  Yikes.

All I know so far is Playboy is planning a Playboy-themed phone in the near future.  Not sure if they are going to go with Motorola, LG, Siemens or someone else for the actual production, but what I do know is, it better support WHERE!  I swear, just when I think I’ve seen it all, this pops up.  Imagine riding on the subway somewhere, or sitting in an airport and looking over to some dude holding a pink and black Playboy phone.  Wow.

Head over and check out the article on the Playboy phone, get a good laugh, then head back to WHERE and dive into some sweet Widgets!

If I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a million more times, good press, is good press.  I just did some browsing of Google News and what did I stumble upon?  A pretty sweet article that not only mentions WHERE and our Widgets, but gives us some solid praise.  New York Times folks…that’s BIG!

The article is extremely appropriately titled, “A Guide to Anywhere, Right in Your Hand,” and is about just that…new GPS services that literally give you a guide to anywhere, at any time, on your own mobile device.  Some other GPS services are mentioned but the area that really makes WHERE shine is the fact that the phone uses the GPS to automatically figure out where you are on this spinning blue globe.  That means, no manually typing in your Zip Code, no typing of your town, just turn it on and it’s ready to roll.

Head over and read the ink in the New York Times then head back over here to WHERE and get you and your shiny cell phone signed up!  Don’t wait for tomorrow, the next day, or some cool new day in the future, do it now and love it.

Ever had that feeling that GPS might just be a flash-in-the-pan service?  Thought it might dwindle and the popularity wane?  Think again folks, think again.

I just read an article that kind of shines a little light on just how big, BIG really is.  Take this little gem of info, for example:  GPS purchases are expected to bring in over $4.1 BILLION dollars in sales in 2007.  That’s billion with a “b”, not an “m.”  Part of this success comes from the high satisfaction rate (around 80% right now) for people who invest their money into GPS products, part of it comes from the extremely high interest the technology is receiving.
The good news for us, in this new analysis, is the fact that 33% of future GPS buyers want to buy their GPS in the form of a GPS-equipped cell phone.  The GPS cell phone is the largest and fastest growing threat to stand-alone GPS devices, and for good reason.  With companies like WHERE developing awesome widgets that show you just about ANYTHING you’d ever need to know right on your cell phone and in real-time, it’s not hard to see why!

First off, I just said Where WHERE, weird. Something struck me today as I was logging into my WHERE account…with all the hullabaloo about privacy, security and the stigma surrounding information collection these days, why does WHERE collect your phone number and email address? In short…what gives?

Lucky for me, you, your friends, family and even those people you treat like friends and then talk bad about when they leave, there was a brilliant answer to that very question in our very own FAQ section. Leave it to me to ask myself questions that 1) I already know the answer to, and B) Are already answered on this very website. It’s Monday, give me a break.

At any rate, there is a very great reason behind the collection of those two pieces of info, and before I show you what our snazzy FAQ says about it, let me re-iterate the very first line of that Answer: WE DO NOT SPAM. There, now you know, so you can sleep a little better tonight. Alas, here is why we collect those gems of information:

“Don’t worry, we DO NOT SPAM.WHERE collects your phone number on the web site so we know which phone you are using when you manage your widgets. Some widgets may also use your phone number to send you opt-in text message alerts about things you’ve chosen to hear about.WHERE collects your email address as an extra layer of security so that you can request a new password or PIN. We may also send you occasional emails regarding system updates. At times, we may also send you notice of new features unless you choose to opt-out of marketing communications.For more information, please check out our Privacy Policy.“

Imagine for a moment if a company like Sony, after releasing the PlayStation 3 had a way to let you go into their software and develop amazing, simple, and fun games on your own?  Imagine if the XBox 360 let you do that?  How many companies, honestly, let you create and develop your OWN new additions to their product?  Not many friends and neighbors, not many.

That said, lets look into this whole Do-It-Yourself WHERE Widget thing.  First and foremost, it’s easy!  Here, straight from the ol’ WHERE website:

“Think days, not months.
WHERE is the quickest way to launch your GPS enabled application on a major carrier.
If you can code it on the web, you can code it on a phone.
Write mobile applications using your server and your database without any knowledge of mobile                   programming or phone porting.
GPS is on us.
Launching and developing on WHERE is free. ‘Course we already said that.”

The Developer section of our website has sample codes, menu tags, and even stock WHERE images to use in your next great app!   Head over, read up, and please, ask as many questions as you possibly can or want to.  We’re here to help you figure out how to jump head first into this pool.

I’m a mobile warrior, you’re a mobile warrior, we’re all mobile these days and the simple fact that you’re on this site, right now, reading about being more mobile just proves my point even further.  With all this rushing around, traveling, coming, going, flying and driving, you need to know all the details that help get you from point A to point B.  The whens, wheres and hows become infinitely important.

That said, this week my favorite WHERE widget is none other than the Airports/Flights widget.  I used it last night, in fact, to find out whether or not my girlfriends flight from Denver would be on time, or a bit late.  As usual, it was a bit late and because of that, I wasn’t the idiot that shows up an hour before the flight lands and is forced to eat junk out of the vending machine to stave off boredom.  Thanks WHERE!

According to the widget description, the Airports/Flights widget does this:  “Look up maps driving directions weather forecasts nearby hotels restaurants gas stations and more for over 500 airports in the US. Get daily flight times and real time flight info (powered by FlightView) for any inbound or outbound flight between two airports.” In a word…sweet.  So fellow mobile warriors, rejoice in the beauty that is knowing things ahead of time.  Ahh, refreshing isn’t it?!

I think I’ve mentioned it a few times on this blog that we are very clearly living in a high-tech world.  What is routine, normal and even a bit archaic at times for us, to older generations is mind-boggling.  I think, in a way, a service that exists online kind of sums up this rapid generational change, and that is online dating.  Imagine our grandparents back in the day meeting each other online, weird huh?

That said, a recent trend that’s been emerging in the whole Twitter day and age, is that of GPS dating services.  Yes, you heard me right, there’s a service out there that actually uses your GPS location to alert you of other single dating service users in your vicinity.  The service is a paid one, so what I think would be great, is if one of YOU developed a new WHERE Widget that did something similar.

What do you think?  Passing trend or is this how our children’s children will be meeting their future significant others?  Time will tell…in the meantime, you tell me?

You’ve heard the old adage that “any press is good press,” well I want to go a step further than that and say “Good press is good press.”  That said, I just found some pretty sweet ink over at the O’Reilly Radar that goes beyond just a casual name drop of WHERE, and instead does a bit of a review.

Basically, he got a demo of the WHERE system, the Widgets, and just how everything works.  Looks like he enjoyed it, thought pretty decently of it, and to be honest, we couldn’t appreciate it more!   The comments on the post say it too, that this is extremely powerful stuff.  Hit the nail on the head there because this IS truly powerful stuff.  By allowing YOU, the user, to develop your own Widgets for what you see necessary, it puts you in the drivers seat.  Just imagine, your Widget could be in the hands, and on the phones of millions of users.

At any rate, head over and read the article, then come back and join WHERE…as I said, we need you!