m-Travel.com and Travel Distribution News

Archive Category: LBS

Orange offers 2-way SMS 'find nearest' service

By Ken Smith | Editor, SmartTravelNews.com

LONDON -- Let's say that you're new to the city, or lost, or too far into the evening, and you are trying to find just one more place to party. If you are a subscriber to the UK's Orange mobile phone service, all you have to do is send the one-word text message "pub" to the Orange SMS short code 300, then a wireless navigation and location-based services system powered by Webraska will fix your location and reply with a text message telling you of the nearest pub.

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Navman launches Pocket PC navigation device

LONDON -- Navman-Europe is launching its Navman PiN Pocket PC, a GPS (Global Positioning System) device with integrated Pocket PC capabilities. This Personal Interactive Navigation device was described by the company as "where personal organisation meets state-of-the-art navigation, delivering everything you will ever need to coordinate your life and get from A to B without any hassle." The cable-free PiN comes with PAN European mapping, navigating the user throughout Europe whether driving in a car or walking city streets.

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Survey finds 50% of cellular users want LBS

BOSTON -- While application developers and the service provider community are focusing their resources on the deployment and marketing of infotainment services, "What Mobile Consumers Want," a new report from Strategy Analytics, indicates that the voice of the consumer -- and consumer demand for more practical services such as step-by-step directions -- is being overlooked. This information emanates from the Wireless Internet Applications (WIA) Service of the Strategy Analytics Global Wireless Practice, and is based on its latest end-user survey analysis.

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Motorola, Nextel announce location services

Motorola and Nextel Communications have announced several location-based services, ranging from voice-enabled driving directions to asset tracking solutions, that can now turn Motorola's GPS (global positioning satellite) enabled iDEN mobile phones into sophisticated workforce management and navigational devices for Nextel customers.

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Maporama offers digital street maps of Taiwan

PARIS -- Maporama, a French company providing location-centric applications, now has detailed street level maps of cities in Taiwan, covering more than 4,500 miles of digitally mapped roads, including Taiwan's capital city, Taipei, as well as T'aoyuan and Chun. In addition to its exclusive coverage of Hong Kong and Singapore, Maporama also becomes the only global provider of location-centric applications to offer detailed street-level maps of cities of Taiwan.

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Glick replaces Durocher as Webraska CEO

PARIS -- Webraska, a global provider of location-based services (LBS), has announced that co-founder and CEO Jean-Michel Durocher is being replaced as CEO by Barry Glick. Durocher will remain a member of the company's board of directors. Glick has served as chairman of Webraska for the past six months.

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New telematics product offers voice capability

CALGARY, Canada -- CSI Wireless has introduced Driver-Link, described as a new one-touch calling device that combines wireless and GPS technology to offer drivers valuable telematics and road assistance services, plus hands-free voice communication for enhanced safety and security.

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Traveldoo adopts Maporama's location services

PARIS -- Traveldoo Technologies, a European provider of electronic travel management systems, has announced the integration of Maporama's online location-centric services into its software solutions Traveldoo ShopSite, Traveldoo Portal and Traveldoo Mobile. Maporama is a leading provider of online location-centric solutions.

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Maporama joins UDDI e-commerce standards

PARIS -- Maporama, a leading provider of online location-centric applications, has joined the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration project (UDDI). This project is an industry initiative working to enable businesses to quickly, easily and dynamically find and transact with one another using a preferred application.

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10Best launches LBS content on AT&T's mMode

GREENVILLE, S.C. -- 10Best, an online and wireless travel content provider, is launching its 10Best Explorer on AT&T Wireless' mMode service beginning this week. AT&T's Wireless' mMode subscribers will receive a free 30-day trial to preview 10Best's recommendations for 309 cities worldwide.

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Webraska CEO proposes 'Laws of LBS'

PARIS -- Location-based services (LBS) for wireless subscribers are being launched around the world while there is hot debate across the telecom industry concerning conflicting demands for regulation, privacy concerns and free availability of subscriber location data. Webraska CEO Jean-Michel Durocher is proposing "Three Laws Of Location Based Services."

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MapInfo now covers 5 million km of Europe's roads

MapInfo has launched an enhanced version of Cartique, its road network map dataset providing seamless coverage for East and Western Europe. Described as "the most up to date mapping data of its kind," Cartique Europe 2002 now includes more than 5 million kilometres of European roads, a 44% increase over the previous version.

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Vicinity's location server added to AT&T's mMode

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- The Vicinity Location Server (VLS) has been added to the mMode service recently launched by AT&T Wireless. Customers in all AT&T Wireless GSM/GPRS markets can now use their wireless phone and VLS technology to find the nearest ATM, fast food establishment or other retailer. 

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Mapquest founder named Webraska board chair

MAISONS-LAFFITTE, France -- Barry Glick, the founder and former CEO of Mapquest, has been named chairman of the board of directors of Webraska, a worldwide provider of location-based services (LBS) and telematics applications and enabling platforms. 

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Webraska releases new version of location platform

MAISONS-LAFFITTE, France -- Webraska, a global provider of location-based services (LBS) and telematics applications and enabling platforms, has released version 2.0 of SmartZone Geospatial, which now offers in-vehicle wireless navigation, dynamic real-time traffic maps, address recognition, spatial searching, and routing.

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Navigation Technologies expands in Europe

CHICAGO -- Navigation Technologies is expanding rapidly in Europe, with launches in the past two weeks of real-time mapping for wireless location based services, a voice-enabled mapping system for wireless Internet, and the first digital navigation maps for the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

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Maporama has first i-mode LBS outside Japan

PARIS -- Maporama, a major provider of online and wireless location-centric applications, has launched a new service on an i-mode platform, calling it "the first market-ready professional location-centric product offered by a non-Japanese provider." The France-based company said that all Maporama customers can now integrate full-blown i-mode based location-centric solutions into their Internet services.

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Autodesk introduces multimedia messaging

CANNES -- Autodesk Location Services has announced the availability of what it calls the industry's first location MMS (location-enabled Multimedia Messaging Service) and location SMS (location-enabled Short Messaging Service) solutions. At the 3GSM World Congress in France last week, Autodesk described Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) as offering a dramatic increase in mobile-to-mobile messaging by enabling two or more media sources -- including sound, animations, and video clips -- to be integrated and sent along with text.

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Maporama starts location-based marketing

PARIS -- Maporama, a French company with the marketing claim that it is the world's largest provider of location-centric applications, has launched Maporama Marketing Solutions. The company announced that this is the first module in a series of mission-critical applications comprised in Maporama Enterprise Solutions. This new development allows marketing executives to take advantage of existing address data in order to strengthen and optimize marketing actions.

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AutoDesk to provide LBS for Telecom Italia

MILAN, Italy -- Autodesk Location Services has been chosen by wireless operator Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) to provide wireless data services. A rollout will begin this month using Autodesk MobileConnect to power Connect TIM, delivering navigation, concierge and mobile commerce services to wireless subscribers. Autodesk MobileConnect  extends to mobile devices the Connect telematics solution, developed jointly with TargaSys, a division of Fiat Auto. 

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WCITIES and Rocking Frog to develop LBS

LONDON -- Rocking Frog, a wireless data technology business currently in incubation within BTexact Technologies' corporate incubator, Brightstar, and WCITIES, a global location based information service provider, are collaborating to jointly develop applications combining WCITIES' location-based content with Rocking Frog's personalisation technology.

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SMS and location-based services in travel

By Tim Gunstone | CEO, EyeforTravel

LONDON -- SMS, is becoming the killer app of the wireless world. Just as we saw with e-mail in the Internet revolution, it is the massive uptake of SMS that has taken the marketing world by surprise, and now is the time to exploit it. Everyone knows that SMS (Short Messaging Service) is the ability to send and receive text messages to and from mobile telephones.

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Webraska, AirFlash merger creates global LBS firm

Webraska, a French-based provider of wireless navigation services and technologies, and AirFlash, a US developer of location-based technologies and services for network operators and wireless service providers, today announced they are merging to create a global leader in LBS (Location-based Services) applications.

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