dailywireless.org » Location Services Mobilize

Location Services Mobilize

Friend-finding cell phone service Loopt is now available on some Verizon Wireless, notes C/Net. Starting in April, Verizon will offer the Loopt service for $3.99 a month on 20 popular data-enabled phones

Loopt uses GPS chips in phones to pinpoint a subscriber’s location; then users can broadcast that location information to friends or family. Subscribers can sign up for alerts to find out when other Loopt friends are near or tag photos and send them to friends with location information attached.

The company has been offering the service on some Sprint and Boost Mobile phones for more than a year. The service on Sprint costs $2.99 a month.

Competitors to Loopt include uLocate and MapMyTracks, which use GPS instead of cell-tower triangulation.

Location-based services are expected to generate a lot of money for carriers in the future. Already, most major mobile operators are offering some kind of location-based service, such as GPS-enabled navigation or tracking. Helio, a mobile virtual-network operator, offers a tracking service that’s similar to the one offered by Loopt. Other carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and Alltel, offer tracking services for parents who want to keep tabs on their kids.

Of course it’s hard to compete with free.

Earthcomber is a free service that will help you find special interests by location. You tell Earthcomber what you want to see, eat, do…and it will look for all of those things as you move about.

Earthcomber also lets you tag a business for location and description. You can choose what you want — businesses that are nearby - or share discoveries and map mutual worlds of interest. Movies on the Move, for example, is great if you’re out with your friends and suddenly decide you want to go see a movie.

Earthcomber’s mobile site has applications designed especially for Nokia and Blackberries and for the iPhone. It’s a guide to anywhere, right in your hand. Company founder Jim Brady explained to DailyWireless this week that they are planning to add video clips and other features shortly.

Location services are expected to be a big component of mobile social networking. In February, Yahoo announced that people could sign up for “proximity alerts” on its OneConnect service to let them know when friends using the service come within a certain distance of one another. And Loopt has been working with Facebook and MySpace.com to integrate its technology into those mobile Web sites.

Skyhook Wireless, a provider of the Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS), has MyLoki, a new location sharing service that feeds your Loki location to personal blogs and social networking sites like Facebook. Loki works on Wi-Fi enabled laptops and cell phones. Yahoo’s new Fire Eagle service is already integrated with Loki to simplify location updates. Findware lite is designed for the occasional user and offers the ability to track devices purchased from Findware with no monthly fees.