Educators have piloted Location-Based-Services as a promising aspect of mobile learning – but mobile services have not been up to the task. A London Times report that the mobile industry is about to make location-based-services reliable:
“Lots of people are working out ways of using Bluetooth or social networking or GPS to do these things,” says Helen Keegan, managing director of Beepmarketing and a mobile marketing blogger. “People are already working out some cool and exciting services.” . . .
Combined with mobile internet access, which liberates the web from homes and offices, location-based services – LBS – promise new ways of getting highly personalised information. Maps, directions, traffic news, restaurant recommendations, shopping price guides – the more this information can be targeted to a specific location, the more useful and valuable it becomes . . .
The technical ability to offer location-based services is not new, but fledgling products and services created in the past few years have faced so many obstacles that until very recently they stood little chance of mainstream success. Now, at last, the hardware and software is coming together, the network is more robust, the cost of mobile data tariffs is falling and consumer interest is beginning to grow.
People who gave up on the mobile web after getting frustrated with patchy signal strength, clunky phones and cumbersome interfaces are being lured back by slimmer handsets, slicker browsers and better websites.
Via MobHappy
