Right Deal Right Now

Usefulness of Location based Service and its various applications

ankit1kumar — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:35:25 +0000

Usefulness of Location based Service and its various applications

In the last post we tried to understand the concept of Location Based Services and its underlying technology. We also looked at the various components & the infrastructural requirements of operating such a service. But for the end user what I feel is most important is the kind of utility this entire infrastructure provides to the user. The user is primarily concerned about 3 fundamental questions: “Where am I? Where are my friends? What is around me? (Steiniger, et al)” And I believe these are the questions that an LBS offering should try to address if it is to be useful to the user. The interesting fact is that when individuals are in an unfamiliar environment, their behavior and needs often become quite predictable. For example: when in a new city

Source: Foundations of Location Based Services, Steiniger, et al.

people mostly are on the lookout for a place to eat, somewhere to obtain cash, a taxi stand, and so on. When abroad, there can be additional requirements such as finding local tourist attractions, locating a hotel, getting around the place, foreign exchange, etc. Likewise while driving there can be more specific requirements, such as help with finding a route, information on the nearest gas station or details of breakdown services.

I also find the classification scheme for service usage scenarios proposed by Reichenbacher (2004) quite meaningful. According to this classification all location based user needs can be characterized into 5 fundamental mobile actions – figuring out where the user himself is with respect to somebody or something else (locating); users may search for persons, objects or events (searching); users may ask for the way to a location (navigating); or they may ask for properties of a location (identifying); or they may try to look for events at or nearby a certain location (checking). Some of these scenarios also involve time and not just geospatial information, since they are dependent upon the state of entities or events as well.

The various applications of LBS, I think also give us a good idea of the usefulness of location based services. The GPS devices are one such application that comes to our mind first but there are a variety of scenarios & a number of applications, where LBS play/can play a major role. As defined by Wikipedia, LBS is a form of information and/or entertainment service, that can be accessed with the use of mobile devices through the mobile networks and one that utilizes the ability to determine the geographic location of the mobile device or in other words the location of the consumer. This idea of the position of the device & hence that of the consumer has opened up avenues for new kinds of applications to be built that make use of the LBS concept and that are accessed through a mobile phone. These applications, as seen in the figure below, can be broadly categorized into Navigational, Informational, Emergency, Advertising, Billing, Management, Tracking, Gaming & other Leisure/communication centric applications.

LBS application categories

Source: Foundations of LBS (Steiniger, Neun and Edwardes)

Thanks to such applications, users can now get real time weather information, get movie show times at nearby theaters, browse recommendations for nearby restaurants, get detailed turn by turn navigation directions, locate nearby stores, receive local news & traffic alerts, find friends in the vicinity, learn about special deals & discounts at nearby stores, etc., all without having to type in the address of their present location.

One of the most exciting & futuristic applications of LBS that I have come across is that of Augmented Reality. In the next 5-10 years, researchers are planning to pull graphics out of the phone or computer display and integrate it into real-world

Augmented Reality – Source: How Stuff Works, 2005

environments. This innovative & stimulating technology will further blur the line between the real world and the computer-generated virtual world by enhancing what we see, hear, feel and smell. In contrast to the virtual environments that we see today through a variety of display devices, in augmented reality we will be able to see the real world around us, with the relevant computer graphics superimposed or composed with the real world. In this technique, the real world instead of being replaced is supplemented with information from the virtual world. The devices that can be used to realize this scheme will be on the lines of “see-through” devices, the ones that might possibly be worn on the head, and the ones that will overlay graphics and text on the user’s view of his or her surroundings.

The possibilities are virtually limitless and as more & more businesses begin to appreciate the power of Location Based Services we are going to witness a variety of interesting applications taking advantage of these services in ways previously unimagined.

Location based services – introduction, technology and workings

ankit1kumar — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 11:50:27 +0000

Location based services – introduction, technology and workings

It was only my Day 7 in the United States; staying at my friend’s place in Radford Court adjoining the Lake Washington in Seattle, I decided to give a surprise visit to some of my other friends in Redmond. Equipped with the navigational instructions that I took from Google maps, I rented a car and embarked on my 1^st driving expedition in the US (yes – without a GPS). It was indeed a pleasure driving an automatic transmission car on nicely paved tarmac with everyone driving in their own lanes – quite in contrast to what I am used to experiencing back home in New Delhi. Soon I was on expressway 520 & was speeding at 70mph. The speed limit I guess was 55mph, but who cares it was my first drive in the US & I was loving it. It wasn’t too long before I overshoot one of the expressway exits and my excitement soon ended. Getting a bit worried, I decided to take the next exit and rely on my own sense of direction to somehow get back on the original road that I had planned to take. But the road I took swirled quite a bit and it was almost a mile before I could reach the next intersection. Surely by then I had lost all my sense of direction and was wondering where to go next. Welcome to America!!

Had this happened in India, I would have easily parked on the side lines & enquired any pedestrian for instructions, or better, simply rolled my windows & asked the guy in the car next to mine for advice while being caught in traffic. But not here in the US! It’s not that the people here are not helpful, but it’s simply because there aren’t many pedestrians on roads, or the traffic simply doesn’t move slow enough for one to be able to speak to the person in the adjacent vehicle. Nevertheless, I ended up calling my friends in Redmond for help, the ones I had originally planned to surprise that Sunday morning. Ok, I now appreciate why people in this country always carry a GPS. But what is it in a GPS that makes it such a utilitarian device? Is it the technology or something else? To back up a step further, why am I sharing my experience with you today?

Well, I recently got an opportunity to work as a Marketing intern for a Seattle based company which is utilizing Location Based Services to deliver a mobile phone based solution that enables businesses to reach out to their target customers at a right place & at a right time. As a result of my research in this area I have come to appreciate the power of the underlying principle that such services operate upon, and the advancements in the mobile technology that is driving the adoption of such services by an increasingly large number of businesses. In this series of posts, I want to share with you my understanding of some of the above areas and I will start by introducing Location Based Services (LBS), its workings & the underlying technology. We will then take a look at the usefulness of LBS and the various applications that make use of such services. Next we will examine how mobile communications technology has provided a platform for businesses to advertise their offerings or to market their services. Eventually we will cover the concerns surrounding the LBS and the usage of mobile services as an advertising and/or delivery mechanism. To conclude, I will like to discuss a few success stories around some of the companies that have successfully incorporated both LBS & mobile advertising in their business models and how they are able to offer more effective services to their customers & end users.

So what makes GPS such a useful device? Of course the technology is the driving force but the real power comes from the underlying principle that the device operates upon – the principle of Location Based Services. Location Based Services or

LBS are a means of offering the requisite service to the user based upon his or her geographic position at a given point in time. By keeping track of the user’s whereabouts at a particular instance, the system provides the most relevant information/service to the user depending upon his/her most current known position. According to Brimicombe, 2002, LBS is the intersecting space between the 3 technologies – the Internet, the Geographic Information Systems and the Mobile Telecommunications technologies. Interestingly, the LBS concept is not new and it has been in use for a number of years now in the form of GPS devices that we use in cars for navigation. The GPS device communicates the user’s current geographic position and the system delivers the instructions back to the user for reaching his destination, often in the form of appropriate road markings on the spatial map to follow.

There are 5 basic components that are required for delivering a location based service, according to Steiniger, Neun & Edwardes (Univ. of Zurich), namely the Mobile Device, the Communication Network, the Positioning system, the Service Provider and the Content Provider.

Source: Foundations of Location Based Services, Steiniger, et al.

Mobile devices: These are the tools that a user uses to request the needed information. The results can be given by speech, using pictures, text, etc. Possible devices are PDA’s, Mobile Phones, Laptops, etc. but the device can also be a navigation unit of car or a toll box for road pricing in a truck.

Communication Network: The mobile network that transfers the user data and service request from the mobile device to the service provider and then the requested information back to the user.

Positioning Component: For the processing of a service user position can be obtained either by using the triangulation methods in the mobile communication network or by using the Global Positioning System.

Service and Application Provider: The service provider offers a number of different services to the user based on user’s interest & user’s location. It is also responsible for processing the service request.

Data and Content Provider: Service providers will usually not store and maintain all the information which can be requested by users. Therefore geographic base data and location information data will be usually requested from the maintaining authority (e.g. mapping agencies) or business and industry partners (e.g. yellow pages, traffic companies)

Clearly all the above components play a critical and essential role in the delivery of location based service to the end user. The user needs a mobile device as an interface to access the service. There is a need for a communication network that enables real time communication between the user, the service provider and the positioning system. Then of course are the positioning system – providing the up to date location of the user, and the content/data providers – supplying the basic information on varies entities such as local businesses that can be of value to the service providers. I think it is the interoperability between the mobile, positioning & communications technologies that has created new opportunities for service providers who are creating innovative applications & devising interesting ways to create value out of the available content and offer more attractive & useful services to the consumers and the businesses. In the next post I will like to through some light on the usefulness of LBS offerings and discuss the various kinds of applications that can be built to take advantage of LBS.

Right Deal Right Now Engineering Effort

rdrn — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 04:23:35 +0000

Right Deal Right Now platform is quite big. A few days ago we run analyzed code complexity using a tool from http://www.locmetrics.com/ and were surprised how big the project has grown. The entire code base including iPhone, Android and Symbian S60 client, the backend, frontend and relational database scripts comprises 3190 files! The total number of physical executable lines of code (SLOC-P) is almost 300,000 lines. SLOC-P subtracts all comments and blank lines.

Symbol	Count
Source Files	3190
Directories	1184
Lines of code (LOC)	392784
Blank Lines of Code (BLOC)	53728
Physical Executable Lines of Code (SLOC-P)	290483
Logical Executable Lines of Code (SLOC-L)	155218
McCabe VG Complexity (MVG)	29690
Code and Comment Lines of Code (C&SLOC)	3055
Comment Only Lines of Code (CLOC)	48573
Commentary Words (CWORD)	247319
Header Comment Lines of Code (HCLOC)	6932
Header Commentary Words (HCWORD)	26585

The project break down is shown below.

In the next blog post, we will talk about Right Deal Right Now’s architecture & design, how we enable fault tolerance, redundancy, backup, monitoring and more. Stay tuned.

Right Deal Joins Fight Against AIDS with Dining Out for Life

rdrn — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:27:04 +0000

Who knew that the fight against AIDS could be so delicious? The Right Deal Right Now team is very proud to announce that we are partnering up with Dining Out for Life to support people living with HIV and AIDS.

Set to take place on March 25, 2010, Dining Out for Life brings together over 200 of the best restaurants in the Vancouver and Whistler area, raising money for the fight against AIDS. All of these participating restaurants will be donating 25% of their food revenues that day to A Loving Spoonful and Friends For Life.

A Loving Spoonful provides free, nutritious meals to men, women, and children living with HIV/AIDS in the Greater Vancouver area. Last year, it provided over 100,000 meals to those who need it most.

Friends For Life is a wellness centre that aims to support people living with life-threatening illnesses, providing complementary and integrative therapies like massage work, yoga, and Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Further contributing to the cause, Sumac Ridge Estate Winery will donate $1 for every bottle purchased at any BC restaurant and liquor store during the month of March. Stella Artois is among the list of major sponsors too.

Among the participating restaurants are A Kettle of Fish, Burgoo Bistro, Hy’s Steakhouse Whistler, Memphis Blues, Simba’s Grill, and Urban Fare. To get a full list of the participating restaurants, download the Right Deal iPhone for free via the App Store.

What’s more, every time that you redeem one of the mobile coupons using the Right Deal iPhone app, Right Deal will donate $1 to the cause. What better way to support the fight against AIDS than with some wonderful meals at some of the best restaurants the Vancouver area has to offer!

Mark your calendars for Thursday, March 25, 2010 and join the Dining Out for Life Facebook page for the latest news and updates on the event.

Release 1.2 is ready with Yelp integration – thanks Yelp!

rdrn — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 01:53:25 +0000

Our new release is now available and integrates with Yelp. It took us quite some time working this out and the folks from Yelp were very helpful. Thanks Yelp!

Right Deal is in the iPhone app store

rdrn — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 16:29:16 +0000

We released our first product to Apple’s iPhone app store: Right Deal – Mobile Coupons. It’s a location-based mobile coupon app, so it shows you what’s coupon deals are available nearby. You can use the coupons right away (yes, no paper coupons in your pocket or purse), by simply showing them to the merchant. We’ve worked with the merchants directly or reviewed their deals to make sure that they’re for real. We took a long and hard look at what was already out there in the hot mobile coupon space and tried to improve on it.

We added categories to help organize the deals. There are restaurants, retailers, and other service providers with great deals just an app click away. For each deal, we’ve also got Right Deal coupon ratings, so you can use the power of the community to help you decide on the deal for you.

There are some very exciting features coming, so keep on checking with us and let us know how we’re doing on our support community.

Right Deal Right Now opens new office near Shanghai

rdrn — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:58:15 +0000

RDRN officially opened its office in November in a beautiful spot outside Shanghai in the Suzhou Industrial Park (SIP). The SIP office has gorgeous lake views in a collegial setting.

Suzhou office reception

The team has been extremely busy bringing our service online and setting up shop, in the heart of China’s next Silicon Valley.

For those of you interested in visiting us, reach out anytime: contact(at)rightdealrightnow.com.

Check out the view from the lobby and our reception where the team is getting started. Our team was busily working towards the beta launch and getting ready for the opening ceremony during this photo op, so we didn’t catch them in all the shots.

View from the lobby

we’re signing up merchants in Vancouver …

rdrn — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:41:22 +0000

we’re signing up merchants in Vancouver BC!