Hacking Online Applications for Location Awareness
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Hacking Video for Location Awareness

Finally, the realm of video is one in which true video interactivity will likely be limited in the near future until wireless technologies increase effective bandwidth. However, it's possible for half-duplex video services such as on-demand video to be deployed in select wireless mesh networks. Through the use of VLC, an example of a location-aware video applications that can be built today includes:

• On-demand video, whether for retailer advertisements, public service announcements, or tourism information. SAP/SDP can be used to offer geographic-limited video channels, both traditional and on-demand, for ads best suited by video (sports tickets, concerts, etc.), public service and emergency response announcements, and tourism information.

Integration of Text/Chat, Voice, and Video Location-Aware Services

In conjunction with a personal profile, or even a tag cloud generated from a user's online blog or RSS subscriptions, the end user's exposure to text/chat, voice, and video interactions can be filtered and customized. Text/chat, voice, and video data can be tagged, either explicitly or implicitly, through simple frequency and sentence-structure analysis or more involved algorithms. At increasing levels of customization, variable pricing based on variables such as customers' profiles, retailer inventory, and retailer delivery schedules can also be offered to improve sales efficiency.

Summary

Fundamentally, the technologies exist to offer location-based services that can effectively extend the reach of retailers while simultaneously encouraging a greater level of interpersonal interaction. With the proliferation of these predominately push-based technologies, a need for filtering mechanisms is necessary for realistic navigation of information. As with other online technologies, though, convenience of personalization must be balanced against privacy, a particularly important concern in geographically based services.

Want to Learn More?

Join us at our two Bird of a Feather sessions at the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony conference, January 24 through 26 in San Francisco. We'll be detailing the unique challenges and capabilities of building location-aware services on a new mesh networking infrastructure, one specifically designed to support stable connectivity in highly mobile networks. We will also lead a hands-on discussion of how a wide variety of technologies can be hacked to support location-aware text/chat, voice, and video services. An example case study will be undertaken to see the business case underlying a specific text, voice, and video mashup application and the resulting system will be available for open use by participants through their laptops, PDAs, and other networked devices.

We are also maintaining a blog at www.meshify.com, where we are detailing some of the lessons learned, both philosophically/theoretically as well as implementation-specific, from building location-aware applications.

Christopher Ngan is a co-founder of Aeria LLC, a startup focused on commercializing a new patent-pending, highly survivable wireless mesh algorithm.

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