The Download Blog

What if your nightlife agenda was dictated not by text messages, phone calls, or your city edition of Time Out, but by a shifting pattern of dots on a Google Map?

As absurd as it may sound, a New York company called Sense Networks thinks that's the solution. On Monday, the company emerged from stealth mode and simultaneously released an "experimental" product called CitySense, an urban navigation product that puts a new spin on the hot market of location-based mobile networking.

A Citysense map of San Francisco.

(Credit: Sense Networks)

Backed by hedge funds rather than the venture firms that typically fuel tech start-ups, Sense Networks wants to do a whole lot more than just tell you where your friends are. Rather, the company plans to use its database of location-based information--sourced not only from people who download its mobile client but also from previously untapped resources like taxicab GPS logs--to create both consumer- and enterprise-oriented products. It's calling that mapping technology "Macrosense."

CEO and co-founder Greg Skibiski described Macrosense to me as a platform for crunching and analyzing location-based data in real time. That has major implications for the retail and financial services industries, he told me. If it's accurate, it could be a huge asset for predictive markets--as well as possibilities for some cool consumer applications.

The first of those, Citysense, has been unveiled along with its more corporate sibling. Currently available as a free download for BlackBerry and iPhone handsets, Citysense displays what look like heat maps to show where the most human activity is going on at that moment, down to the street intersection; future releases of the product may make those locations even more detailed, but Skibiski said that's not yet decided due to the important issue of privacy concerns.

In its initial alpha phase, it's limited to San Francisco. Other cities, including New York, are in development.

Citysense can also show you where, based on historic data, the most "unusual" levels of activity are going on. You then have the option of looking up nearby businesses on Yelp and Google Maps, or bookmarking locations on Socialight, thanks to external APIs built in.

Then, using the location-aware technology built into the handset, Citysense eventually begins to "learn" where you spend most of your time, and as the product grows beyond San Francisco, eventually it'll be able to suggest nightlife options to you in cities around the country--all this without taking any kind of user registration information.

That's a crucial talking point, considering some people are inevitably going to find Citysense and its brethren more than a little bit Big Brother-ish. Skibiski stressed to me that it's not for meeting people, it's for "meeting" places: No personal information is mined, users have the option to completely erase their past navigation histories if they wish, and there's no way to track other users in the system, he said.

Citysense, with its focus on "unusual activity" and machine learning, might be a bit too wacky for the average BlackBerry user, but that's not a big deal for Sense Networks. The company plans to profit primarily from business clients purchasing deeper data from the Macrosense platform; Citysense and all future consumer applications are intended to be strictly icing on the cake.

Updated at 2:30 p.m. PDT to include more details about how location information is displayed and gathered in JuiceCaster, and more specific information about the feature's launch.

First came mobile social networks, then came geotagging. Since location-based features take advantage of your ever-portable mobile phone to pin your activities to a place, we weren't surprised to learn that on Wednesday JuiceCaster (reviewed) added automatic geo-anchors to its multimedia sharing service.

Soon JuiceCaster photos and videos that are auto-posted to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger, YouTube, and other sites will share the individual's street name and city. Friends who keep a close eye on geotags can use that to gain contextual understanding of the scene or use it to "bump into" friends nearby. In an important distinction, JuiceCaster's location feature is designed to be optional and visible only to confirmed friends.

The city and state appear on the player shown on CEO Nick Desai's JuiceCaster page.

(Credit: Nick Desai)

A final tidbit called "Who was here?" attaches further meaning to a place. Selecting it from the menu will call together a list of photos and videos for that most-wanted location. You'll be able to browse through the content or add your own. You'll also be able to seek out geotagged photos and videos by location, which may muscle up JuiceCaster's searching accuracy.

JuiceCaster's new location-based functionality will become available "shortly" for GPS-enabled cell phones running on the BREW platform before rolling out to other carriers' GPS phones.

At CTIA 2008 in Las Vegas, I took a look at LiveContacts BuddyFinder, Web app that launches on April 15.

I tried it out with a non-GPS phone, and in the process moved to Germany.

To clear a little confusion, BuddyFinder and LiveContacts are two sort-of related names for the app, which is itself the free branch of the better-known FindWhere, a Dutch company with a much more useful, robust service--tracking people down (kids, an elderly parent, a wayward spouse) through their devices. FindWhere includes lost phone recovery, emergency alerts, and notification services if the device goes outside your specified bounds.

Of course, the free BuddyFinder doesn't do all that. Instead, it installs an app to the phone (with yet another name) that utilizes either GPS or cell phone triangulation on select smartphones, and broadcasts the location to FindWhere's servers. The app's only role is to play transmitter. Buddies then see your location mapped online after every five minutes or location change. That's wonderful for plotting a route somewhere for demonstration purposes, or to prove that you actually did go to the library to study, but it's less useful if you're interested in finding a pal while you're out and about.

From the looks of it, BuddyFinder is a rather late, rather feature-slim arrival to location-based friend tracking that's similar to a lot of other services out there, including Loopt, Whereboutz, Rummble, and Whrrl, and even FindMe, which didn't impress me on all accounts, but works nonetheless.

To differentiate BuddyFinder from the competition, the press materials call the Web and cell phone app combo "the only truly free buddy finder service on the Web." I see what they're getting at, since some of the other services rely on data transfers to update your location on your phone, where BuddyFinder tracks you from your PC for free. As I mentioned, it's hard to see how being limited to the PC is a perk, even if there is no data charge. Besides, much of the audience for location-based services already subscribes to an unlimited data plan, so it's difficult to see a real detraction there.

Still, if you're seeking a geo-tracking service, there's no harm in looking at BuddyFinder. You can sign up for the beta now, or wait until April 15th for the full release.

Typing your starting point on a typical cell phone search tool can get tedious, even if you've got a high-end device with a QWERTY keyboard. A GPS-enabled cell phone can wipe those tears away, but since about 85 percent of handsets do not have GPS, most users are out of luck.

Google Maps for Mobile with My Location draws enough information from local cell phone towers to figure out where you are and then uses that information to launch a search. The idea is it saves you search time and manual effort. How well does it work? Get a glimpse in the First Look video .

You should note before downloading that Google Maps for Mobile sends anonymous radio information back to Google. If you don't want to become lab research, you may disable the entire feature from the Help menu. However, you would miss out on the most significant new keypad shortcuts.