This app helps users to organise a get together or events with their friends. When a user wants to know where his friends are, this new app makes it very easy for him to do so.

Users just have to invite their friends through this app, and when they agree to join, both sides will be able to see each others’ locations.

In order to use this app, the user has to sign up using his phone number. Then he can invite all his friends through his contact list and also tell them the reason for the invite.

At this time he can also specify the amount of time for which this invite will hold good. Once that time limit is up, the invite expires automatically and the location sharing stops automatically.

The friends receive a text message with all the details on their Windows Phone. Those who decide to join in will be visible along with their location on the map. The map can be extended or narrowed down to include a larger or smaller area as required.

All those who accept the invite will be able to see each others location. The participants can also update their status through messages. To see a particular person status update, one must click on the user tile of that person. To see the status of all participants, one must click on the People tab.

A person who wants to stop sharing his location has to tap ‘leave’ on the People tab. He can also send his friends a status message to indicate that he is leaving the group.

At present this app is available only on the Windows Phone in the U.S. but is likely to be added to other devices in the future.

This activity is likely to become very popular as it has been found that 73% of users engage in mobile social networking on a daily basis.

The report indicates that total U.S. mobile ad spending is set to grow from the level of $790 million in 2010 to $4 billion by 2015. In addition the report also predicts that the mobile local ad spend will go up from $404 million in 2010 to $2.8 billion in 2015.

In effect this means that while local ad spend currently accounts for about 51% of the revenue, it is set to go up to about 70% by 2015.

Mobile local advertising is defined as that which targets users in specific locations or contains location-specific calls to action.

While mobile ad spend is likely to go up mainly due to the easier availability of smartphones and increased web usage, local ad spend is set to grow due to increased ability of mobile phones to be aware of location of the user.

This increased capability of mobiles, will not only lead to increased advertising by big brands but will also encourage the small and medium businesses to advertise on mobile, through display, search and SMS formats.

Local Advertising can be further divided into National-local and Local-local advertising.

National-local advertising is done by big brands and agencies, which target the local population of a given area.

On the other hand, local-local advertising is done by the small and medium sized businesses.

This local-local sector of the mobile advertising business is what is set to grow at a very fast pace thanks to the availability of facilities provided by features such as AdWords, Foursquare etc. This will eventually lead to the large growth of mobile ad spending.

When users click on ‘Deals’ they are shown a list of the special offers that are currently available in their locality.

Microsoft has started this feature in association with DealMap, which features deals from sites like Groupon, Living Social and Restaurant.com. The feature will offer about 200,000 deals across 14,000 cities.

Since the feature has only just been launched, the service is going through some teething troubles. For instance, a few of the deals being offered have already expired or the deal information may not yet have been optimised for mobile access. Given a little time, it is quite certain that these problems will be ironed out.

While the new service is compatible with both iPhone and Android based handsets, it is, quite surprisingly, not compatible with Microsoft’s own Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system. This incompatibility arises because the service is is built on HTML5, which is not compatible with Windows Phone 7. It is expected that Microsoft will soon add an update that will allow users to access this feature through the Windows Phone 7 and Internet Explorer 9.

Irrespective of the minor shortcomings of this feature, Microsoft is undoubtedly one up on their rival Google as Google has not yet got a similar feature. It has been rumoured, though, that Google plans to launch a similar service called “Google Offers” very soon, which might explain why Bing rushed to get Deals out in the market before it was fully developed to support Microsoft’s own devices.

Microsoft also plans to start a similar service in association with eBay.

Using the local section on m.bing.com users can now find a lot of information that they might need when they are on the go.

Bing provides users a list of suggestions for their local area. The suggestions are based on popularity and also vary according to the time of day. For instance, if a user is conducting a search in the morning hours, the suggestions will give priority to restaurants that offer breakfast and coffee shops. On the other hand, in the evening hours, places such as pubs and nightclubs will be ranked higher.

These results are based on either GPS-determined location of the handset or via mobile phone location triangulation. Users can also the select the radius within which they want to conduct the local search. In areas that are crowded or heavily congested, users can use a smaller radius and in open areas they can use a larger radius.

The listings offered on Bing mobile can also be displayed on a single map for convenience.

To make use of the local suggestion facility, users must click the ‘Local’ link on the Bing Mobile homepage. They will then be presented with a list of nearby places grouped under various categories such as restaurants, schools, shopping malls and theatres.

After selecting the appropriate options the user can save them in the Favourites column. Thereafter the user can just clicks “What’s nearby” and find a list of places of interest in a given radius.

These listings can then be seen on a map, and they can even be forwarded to friends via email, so that users can easily discuss their options and decide where they wish to go.

A growing number of users access the mobile Internet every day and a large number of these users also make purchases via their mobiles. At the same time, a growing number of smartphones and feature phones now ship with integrated GPS receivers.

Continued growth in usage of both the mobile Web and mobile geo-positioning systems will definitely result in an increasing use of the combination of these services in the form of mobile local search.

When smartphones were first introduced, the cost of the handset and other technological accompaniments such as the user interface, processors and GPS was extremely high. Thus, only a few people could afford to use these services.

Now, however, the cost of these products and services has dropped considerably, making it more affordable for consumers in general to use such services. These features have also become more user friendly, further encouraging buyers to make use of them.

Many location-based services and location-enabled apps are also being developed to exploit the boom in mobile social networking. Mobile apps that tie-in social networking with geo-location awareness are growing in popularity with phenomenal speed.

Juniper’s study predicts that browser-based services will continue to dominate local search, but applications from app stores will also hold a large share of the information services market.

The total revenues from all mobile location-based services is predicted to be in the range of $12.7 billion by 2014. Advertising will account for a large portion of this revenue, but it may not be the primary source of revenue.

Juniper Research has arrived at these findings based on interviews, case studies and analysis of information available from the leading organisations in the mobile industry.

The study was conducted through an online questionnaire, answered by 4,000 users and through a behavioral study across 2 million users.

The results show that the number of people depending on digital sources for local sources is increasing along with the number of digital sources available.

Thus search engines have now become the primary source of local information, while the print media seems to be declining.

The number of local business searchers who own print directories has gone down from 89% in 2008 to 84% in 2009. The use of Internet Yellow Pages however has been increasing steadily.

While the online media is obviously prospering, the offline media also continues to hold a fairly steady following especially among users over 45 years of age. 40% of this section of users, uses the print directories, while only 24% of them use search engines by choice.

Social media and mobile searches are also growing sources of local business information and thought hey account for only 1% and 3% of market share respectively, they are definitely on the upswing and marketers would do well to keep this in mind.

Not surprisingly, Google Maps has improved their market share of local search from 15% in the fourth quarter of 2008 to 24% in the second quarter of 2009.

The usage of consumer ratings and reviews has gone up from 22% in 2008 to 25% in 2009 among Internet Yellow page searchers, and has gone up from 22% to 27% among general searchers. While the overall usage of ratings is only 24%, it goes up to 57% during the business selection process as users depend on these reviews while selecting companies whom they wish to do business with.

The availability of smartphones has also increased the use of mobile search. While only 19% of regular mobile users use mobile search, 60% of smartphone users do so, and this may well become the primary source of local search in time to come.

However it was necessary to plan out the travel strategy, from home or office itself, where one had access to their desk top.

Google has now decided to change that. They have lately introduced a new version of Google Maps, which is accessible through mobile phones, in most of the important cities of North America. This will now allow users to check out public transport routes while on the move and take instant decisions regarding their travel plans.

This new version of Google Maps, for mobiles, has some additional features incorporated in it. For e.g. one can check out the timing of the first and last trip for the day on a given route, and thus plan ones schedule accordingly.

Another feature called “My Location” allows users to set the starting point of their trip based on their current location. The availability of this feature depends on the handset being used.

Users can also find out if there is a traffic jam on certain routes, or the location of the nearest coffee shop, late night restaurant etc.

Other features such as fast searches, star ratings of businesses etc. Are also available on BlackBerry and other Java-based phones.

One can download this facility from http://www.google.com/gmm from the desktop or mobile.

This facility should also be accessible on other handsets in the near future.

Dr. William Webb, head of research and development at Ofcom said that data from mobile phones can be used to study various things, and this is just the beginning. For instance this data can help prevent epidemics of infectious diseases or traffic jams.

The current study found that most people usually move around within a 10 kilometer area.

Researchers at Northeastern University in Boston, MA think that if all mobile users submitted data to the research labs at leading universities, it would provide a lot of useful information.

GPS surveys have earlier been used to track human activity, but this is an expensive process. The movement of dollar bills has also been used to track human movements, using information from experiment sites such as wheresgeorge.com – the study showed that human beings move about randomly – but since money exchanges hands frequently, the results of the experiment were not very reliable.

The study involving mobile phones covered about 100,000 people from across Europe. Each subject’s location was recorded every time he/she made or received a phonecall, through the mobile base station from where the call was relayed. All participants’ anonymity was well guarded by means of security codes. Also, the exact location of the person was not traceable as each mobile tower serves an area of almost 3 square km.

Patterns began to emerge within the first 3 months of the 6-month experiment. Professor Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, who was working with the team, says that most people move only between 5-10 km. Some people however move hundreds of kilometers regularly.

Power Law distributions

Movements of most people follow a pattern known as the Power Law, which is also commonly called the 80/20 rule. In other words, the vast majority of people move within a small radius but a fraction of the general population travels a lot, and contributes to the bulk of travellers worldwide.

Another significant revelation from this study was that people return to the same places repeatedly. According to Barabasi, this is good because, model builders can follow a basic rule book. “The intrinsic similarity between individuals is very exciting and it has practical applications.” This information could be used to monitor the spread of contagious diseases such as Avian flu, and help traffic planners.

Uses of mobile movement tracking

Mobile phones have been used to construct a real time model of traffic in Rome, and Microsoft is working on a project to help people select the ideal route to work. The methods employed by this experiment can also help the police to track criminals, and parents to keep tabs on their children.

Projects and services, such as this one, that rely on sensors on mobile handsets are bound to increase with time, and it will certainly be easy for miscreants to misuse this facility by stalking people. The concerned authorities will have to be extremely cautious before providing the public easy access to such services.

The information collected by these mobile road sensors will be relayed to the driver of the bus and, through wireless means such as mobile phones, wi-fi and WiMAX, to centres where the data collected can be processed and appropriate action taken when necessary.

Patrice Simon, the project coordinator says that efforts are underway to develop a means to detect some kind of problem occurring on the bus itself, such as a fight breaking out. According to him, the devices, though small, are very powerful and should enable creation of systems that can directly inform the police in case of problems.

This project is a Pan-European effort costing 3.83 million Euro. The effort is headed by the University of Applied Sciences in Germany and the Institute for Transport Services in Hungary.

On board units on the new breed of buses will be able to check the road surface and simultaneously analyze the air for fog, rain and smog. The devices will be pollution resistant and can adjust rapidly to environmental changes such as tunnels, bridges or dark roads. It will also be possible to judge traffic conditions around the bus, through a video camera, to spot unauthorized cars in the bus lane, the number of vehicles in adjoining lanes, speeding vehicles, traffic jams and accidents.

While the system is currently in development primarily for government usage, the same technology could very easily be extended to start providing the general public a lot more location specific information in the future, and could make a much wider variety of current information available, greatly expanding the breadth of services that can be offered by mobile local search services.