Location – Attendees Become Aware

Last week Mobile Manifest staged our latest event based upon Location Based Services (LBS). The Round Foundry Media Centre in Leeds were our kind hosts for the evening session, which was attended by a broad section of attendees who came to hear how location API developer tools could be implemented into mobile app development, and see some working examples.

Setting president for the evening was event sponsor NAVTEQ’s Technical Consultant Mike Moore, who provided an in-depth insight into NAVTEQ’s Network For Developers, and their suite of tools and resources to access their huge array of location API’s including Point of Interest (POI), and Visual Content. Mike showed some impressive growth figures – Navigation would rise to 351 million users, with search discovery through location soaring to 422 million users by 2014. Mike’s full presentation is embedded below.

Next up on the agenda was Jorg Hosel who made a sterling effort for the event by travelling from Berlin for the evening to represent Nokia Maps. Jorg a Software Engineer for Nokia provided details on Nokia’s tool sets across their QT, JavaME, platforms and how developers can tap into the API’s at Nokia Developer.

Yeadon based Bolser gave the event the first show of location examples through their work developing the 2011 V Festival App. Bolser’s 2010 V Festival app became an award winner, giving them scope to expand 2011 version to include LBS further. Digital Director Richard Carter shared how this location app needed a great deal of crafting, and on-site configuration, as ‘The site doesn’t begin to take shape until about a week before the festival, so pin pointing where things will be can be tricky’.

Sameer Ballewar from Samsung showcased Buddy Fix – an open source social & location application creator. Developed internally at Samsung, Buddy Fix provides the basis to create integrated social and location services, to mange social networks and locations through their platform.

Wrapping up the showcases was Dom Hodgson from Hodgetastic, Pizzapowered and Leeds Hack, who gave an entertaining demonstration of #hometourist a previous Hack project that utilises the Twitter Hashtag and geo located devices or postcodes to populate a map. Dom had the audience tweet live their comment and the tag, where participants could see their comments and location appear live on the big screen. The showcase provided a mindful example on the power of location.

Following the presented sessions the all important networking gave attendees the opportunity to discuss their LBS plans, current projects, and chat over a couple of beers.