wired

I’ve been seeing more and more articles about location applications and interesting uses of GPS technologies lately, and I really think that 2009 will be the year that many of these applications move into the mainstream. People are moving onto smarter phones, like the iPhone and Android devices, that use GPS data seamlessly in applications.

I also ran across an interesting article from Wired this morning: Inside the GPS Revolution: 10 Applications That Make the Most of Location. It looks at a bunch of less well known applications used on phones to locate police traps, wake you from a nap at your train stop, play location games, adjust phone settings based on location, and more. I was a little sad not to see IceCondor on the list, but the Wired article still covered some interesting applications.

Now that we have a beta version of the Shizzow API out, I am anxious to see how people use location data, GPS, and other technologies in applications that interface with Shizzow.

Michael Calore talked about how location-based information is becoming a requirement for web applications in a recent Wired article:

In 2008, location-based information ceased being a fancy add-on and instead became a requirement of any serious, successful web service.

Hit a button on your laptop or phone to tell a web service where you are, and it tells you what restaurants are close by, where the new Bond movie is playing (and when, and if there are tickets left), and which of your friends are within shouting distance if you need a date.

(Quoted from Wired News)

Mobile devices with GPS, Geode, and location applications have become more prolific in 2008, and we expect this trend to continue in 2009 making location-based services even more important.

We have big plans for Shizzow in 2009 to take advantage of this trend. We’ve been pretty quiet in December, but only because we have been hard at work behind the scenes. The API is being completed, and code is being refactored to make room for the API, which should be ready for beta testers in the next week or so.  We have plenty of ideas for applications that will use the API to make it easier to shout from your iPhone / desktop and ideas for integrations with other applications.

Leave a comment here if you are interested in using the API to develop applications for Shizzow.