TagSpot Blog

Haven’t you ever wondered how something like the web has been able to change our lives so much in such a short period of time? I mean, the general public has had access to affordable Internet connections for what, 15 years or so. And as soon as this connection entered our houses, so did all sorts of services and usages: email, chatting, online auctions, e-commerce, and the list goes on, and on, and on…

Actually, we often confuse two very different things: the Internet and the Web. To make it short, the Internet is a physical network, made up of cables, routers… and WiFi radio waves! The Web is a totally different beast, it’s completely immaterial, it’s a virtual world of information and intelligence that spreads and circulates on the physical network of the Internet. And it’s not the only one. The email system is another virtual thing on top of the Internet. Even if you access your mail with a webmail like GMail or Hotmail, behind the scenes, it’s another application.

Let’s focus on the Web for a moment. My theory is that the biggest technological revolutions are based on the simplest concepts. The WorldWide Web (WWW) fits in that definition. There is one main concept behind the web as we know it: hypertext. The idea is that the Web was designed as, and still is for the most part, a knowledge network. Our collective knowledge and information is stored in web resources and all those websites are connected together via links, or to be more precise, hypertext links. It seems so natural to us today that it’s hard to imagine how such a simple idea can be the source of such a revolution. But just think about it for a minute: without hypertext links and websites, knowledge was stuck in books, on paper, and the only way to reference another book is with a bibliographic reference. And when you want to use that reference, you have to understand it, parse it in your mind and physically get to where the other book is stored. With hypertext links, it’s over. All you have to do is to store content in a virtual form in web resources, and create Unique Resource Locators (URL) for each and every piece of knowledge, and BOOM! Hypertext does the rest. Hypertext enables interconnection of knowledge pieces on the Web.

The truth is, the Web was designed at a time when there was no such thing as a mobile network. The Internet on which the web resided was mainly based on landlines and fixed connections. Which implies that most of the communication standards that make the Internet tick were not ready to handle mobile communications. For example, one of the most important standards, the Internet Protocol (IP) that defines the format for Internet addresses and how messages are routed from one point of the network to the other was not suitable: there weren’t enough available addresses to cover so many devices, and there were plenty of problems related to security and connectivity. That’s precisely why this standard, the language used by Internet nodes to communicate with one another is currently being upgraded worldwide to a new version that should cover for these new issues. But what about the Web?

Now that the Internet is progressively reaching our mobile phones, of course the pipes are open for existing usages like Web, email and others to invade our pocket. But are they really adapted? Think of email for example: the way it was designed, you have to connect onto the Internet and retrieve messages from your mailbox. But that’s not the way we expect messages to work on mobile phones. With Short Message Services (SMS) we’ve become dependent on being warned when there’s a new message for us. That’s why some companies like RIM and their Blackberry device have become so famous: they offered a new service called push-mail, which is really just a workaround to handle the limitations of an old system.

For the web, the differences are even bigger. Some are limitations of our mobile devices: the typical screen is much smaller than the ones we use on the traditional web, the keyboard is less comfortable too. Others are limitations of the Web itself and the basic concepts underneath it: for example, when you use your computer to access a resource on the web, your physical location is not relevant, which is why web addresses (URL) don’t embed that information. When you use a mobile, your location IS relevant, and more and more devices are able to retrieve your location. Wouldn’t it be great if that data was integrated in your service requests, so that the information you get takes into account not only the information you’re looking for, but also where you are right now? Oh and by the way, time becomes relevant too, right?

That’s precisely what I call “Hypercontext”. It’s like the next level of hypertext, a way to interconnect information not only based on it’s location, but also on the time and location when and where it was requested.

But what’s the point in terms of usages, you might ask. Well, let’s talk of advertisement for example. For years, we’ve been told that you can access many services on the web for free because they are funded by advertising. At the end of the day, we all have to make a living, so somebody has to pay. And if advertisements get on your nerves, then it’s a trade-off: you have to take the premium version and pay for it. So it’s either visual annoyances or charging. The question is why are advertisements so annoying? Well, most of the time it’s because it’s not very relevant, and since you’re so invaded by irrelevant information, you tend not to look at them anymore, so they become even more annoying in order to catch your eye just for a second. Some actors like Google have gone a long way in improving this situation with their AdWords. When you search something on Google, the results include ads that are related to the topic your searched for, hence it yields better results for announcers and it doesn’t need to be that annoying. But on the mobile, even Google Ads are annoying again, because they don’t take into account where you are and the time when you make a research. That’s where hypercontext comes into play: forget about parasite ads that pollute your precious small screen space! Now ads are valuable information that is embedded into the results you get from a service.

More importantly, the Web is mostly based on information. It was designed for users sitting in front of a static screen, not for active mobile users moving around with a device in their pocket. Hypercontext takes care of that major difference too. Since it embeds your location and time, it gives you access to hypercontextual actions. When you look for a movie theater in TagSpot, you get information about all the theaters near you, that are currently open, and you can directly buy a ticket for a given movie. That’s Hypercontext, that’s TagSpot!

Many people talk about “the Mobile Web”, a trimmed-down version of the Web as we know it, that will offer the same possibilities as the ones we have on our computers. And since there are three times as many mobile users as traditional Internet users, then it’s seen as a huge business opportunity to spread even more annoying ads. My point is: we have to be more creative than that. The mobile web is just not enough. It’s merely a transition technology. The real revolution shall be based on a new but very simple concept, and now you know about it. Hypercontext.

There are already a few devices and applications that allow you to access semi-dynamic Point-Of-Interest databases, like TomTom and its MapShare technology. Some websites also make it possible to download POI lists onto any GPS device. The problem with those services is that you have to synchronize your device with a remote source in order to retrieve a batch of points of interest.

And what happens if the restaurant your PND lead you to has been closed since the last time you synchronized? And what about highly dynamic information like promotional events or parties?

The thing is that most of POI sources are made for devices without a network connection. TagSpot relies on the fact that it is built for mobile phones and smartphones and uses a network connection to retrieve the information you need and nothing more. And since it is not based on a local database that you have to synchronize, each time there is a change on the server, like a closed restaurant, a new party or anything, you can retrieve this information almost in real time. No need to synchronize, no need to worry about whether your device database is up-to-date, no more greedy application that eats up your whole device memory.

Technically, such a connected service is nothing new, but in the world of POI-based services, it opens up new possibilities like locating temporary events.

Of course, this network connection has a cost, especially on mobile networks where data connectivity is still more expensive than the one you have at home. But since the original iPhone came out, most mobile network operators have released unlimited flat-rate data plans. Hopefully data connectivity will become cheaper and cheaper as our mobile usage evolves. Anyways, TagSpot is not a mobile website, it’s an application that loads raw data, without all the images and useless data. So it loads only the data you need, nothing more, and in a very optimized form. So in the end, using TagSpot is relatively cheap compared to a mobile web or WAP site.

I haven’t seen any official figure so it’s just an intuition, bu I have the feeling that most people go to a specific restaurant because a friend told them about it. For some categories of “places-to-go”, word-of-mouth seems to be the primary source of attraction.

And it is perfectly understandable: when you have too much information to integrate and process, so many available options, you’re better off trusting someone you know. The way it usually works is through social relationships, you meet with people, someone in the group knows a good restaurant and leads the whole team there. And if you appreciate the experience, maybe next time, if you remember it, you will recommend this place to other friends of yours.

Mobile communication networks make it easier to use this recommendation mechanism since you can also get in touch with “influential” friends anywhere. But you’re still forced to disturb them, force them to remember, integrate the partial information they give you with data you have in order to find the place… there’s gotta be a better way!

That is exactly what TagSpot tries to do: bring word-of-mouth to a whole new level. You can save your favourite places with their GPS location, comments and other information, so you don’t need to remember about them. And you can share it with everyone so that people you know and who trust your opinion can use your recommendation without disturbing you. And by integrating information from all the users as well as official data, you have everything you need to find the right place at your fingertips… and in realtime!

We’ll talk about real time in TagSpot next time.

“Mobile”… You hear that word a lot those days, and it’s easy to forget what it really means, especially in terms of the services users can have access to when they are… mobile!

In first approach, something that is mobile is something that moves, right? So logically, a mobile service is a service you provide to moving people. Now what does it mean in terms of service characteristics? What does it change compared to a more traditional online service like Amazon or eBay.

Well, it changes at least 3 important things:

1. Users are probably not in front of a traditional computer. Maybe they are using a laptop on a table at Starbuck’s, but most probably they’re using a cell phone of some sort.
2. You don’t know where your user is, and his/her location can be meaningful.
3. The user is probably heading somewhere and our service might provide him with information about where he’s going.

Let’s call those level 1-2-3 of mobility.

Level 1 is very often just a transformation of an existing online service so that it can be accessed anytime, anywhere, from a mobile device like a cell phone. That’s the case of Facebook for the iPhone for example. Most of what we call the mobile web relies on mobility level 1 since it’s very hard for web or WAP sites to know your location unless you tell them explicitly.

Level 2 is what we often call Location-Based Services (LBS). Most of the time, such services are applications that you have to install onto your phone or come pre-installed when you buy it. Those applications use one or several location methods to know where users are and take that location information into account to provide users with location-aware information. For example, there are some mobile games that allow you to locate other players, or mobile social networking applications like Loopt, or weather services.

Finally, level 3 is about considering both your location and your intentions to move as interesting input to provide you with very relevant and targeted information. Once again, it’s almost impossible (at least for service providers who don’t have direct access to the mobile network infrastructure) to locate users from within a mobile browser. So you need your users to install special software that can query the network, an embedded GPS receiver or a Bluetooth GPS device to locate you precisely enough. And of course the service has to be intuitive and take into account the information users have and don’t have about where they’re going.

As you have probably guessed by now, TagSpot implements mobility level 3, as it relies mostly on an embedded GPS receiver OR an external Bluetooth GPS device to locate users, and by extending the concept of word-of-mouth, it provides users with both relevant and valuable information about wherever they’re going. We’ll talk about word-of-mouth next time.

From a technical point of view, the Global Positioning System (GPS) is at least three things:

• A satellite constellation covering all points of Earth surface at any time.
• A receiver chip that sees some of those satellites and is able to locate me.
• An application that makes it possible for me to use that location for something.

However, from a user point of view, all of that is mixed, the first 2 levels are hidden and the only thing that really matters is the application. And the problem is that today there is only one mainstream application using location: personal navigation.

Personal Navigation Devices (PND), like the GPS in your car, allow you to drive directly to a predetermined location, like an address or a Point of Interest (POI). And of course, that’s a very common use case. The first thing I noticed when I bought my own PND is how it really improves your driver freedom: when I needed to go to a place and didn’t know how to get there, it really had to be important to overcome the fact that I had to plan the whole trip on Mappy or something. Now obviously the possibility to just get in my car and let my GPS lead my way, even if this way has to change because the road is blocked or something, is really amazing.

But what if it was not the only application, what if there were other obvious use cases that we just don’t dare to imagine today. The truth is that the combination of location and connectivity opens really interesting perspectives. The thing is that not only can you move around with a connection to the world in your pocket, but this connection can also use your location to improve the relevance of the services it offers. That’s true mobility.

Does a tree make some noise when it falls in a forest if no one is here to hear it?
Is it really interesting to be able to use mobile services if they don’t know where you are and where you’re going?

I’ll talk about true mobility in another post, but in this one, I just wanted to insist on the fact that GPS is just a technical way to locate you. And this possibility can be useful for so much more than just personal navigation. TagSpot IS another application on top of GPS, and you will see how it unleashes the full power of a truly mobile service.

Yesterday, the whole team gathered around a white board (well not so white actually) to talk about what is TagSpot, what defines it. So I thought it could be interesting to share our conclusions and possibly get your feedback about those characteristics.

This post is the first one of a whole series about TagSpot characteristics.