Wait, what the heck is geofencing ? No, it’s not some virtual sword fighting app for your phone. Geofencing, or a geofence, is exactly what its name implies – a virtually fenced-off geographic location. When this concept is applied to mobile phones, it refers to a device’s ability to receive automatic alerts or notifications when entering, leaving or moving within a specific geographic area. Location Labs , providers of location services for mobile developers, announced earlier this week the release of its library that will allow iPhone developers to build geofencing apps thanks in no small part to new features included in the new iOS 4.0. Sponsor Location Labs’ Geofence Library for iPhone As the company points out, location services on mobile devices have been hindered both by differences in location technology standards, and the significant drain on the device’s battery caused by its use. With the introduction of background applications with iOS 4.0 and increased battery performance in the new iPhone, Apple has created a fitting platform for geofencing apps, the company says. One aspect of background location capabilities in the new OS is and API that notifies apps “based on configurable accuracy and distance change filters,” which is a highly-accurate “always on” battery drainer, says Location Labs. A new service, the “significant change location service,” uses less power but the lower accuracy and frequency makes geofencing useless, delaying notifications by several hours. “With the iPhone, we employ a combination of the standard and significant change location services, intelligent interaction with the iPhone backgrounding and suspending logic as well as local awareness of proximity to the geofence boundaries,” the company said in a blog post Wednesday. “Together these allow us to offer a high quality firing latency guarantee (measured in minutes) while keeping impact on battery life to a minimum.” What This Means for Location Apps To get an idea of how geofencing technology could improve on existing location-based applications, just look at the current popular apps. Apps like Foursquare and Gowalla could implement this infrastructure to allow users to automatically check-in when entering the geofence of a particular location. I can’t even count the times I’ve been out and forgotten to check-in at various locations, robbing myself of precious Foursquare points. With geofencing, I could have been automatically checking in as I went from place-to-place, or perhaps a push notification would have reminded me after I was within the perimeter of the geofence for a certain amount of time. Additionally, geofences could allow for a feature of location apps that Robert Scoble advocated for earlier this month . As Scoble points out, it is helpful to location app users if they can tell if their friends are still at a location, and determining how long users spend in businesses can have a significant impact of location-based marketing. “For instance, I hate shopping so I’ll only spend four minutes inside the Gap, if I go at all. But there are many people who will linger there for hours,” he said. “If you are another clothing store, which customer is more valuable to you to get to come to visit your store? Me or that other customer?” Other interesting ideas for geofences include connecting mobile devices to house lights or air conditioning units to automatically activate them when users approach their homes. Friends could even be notified when they are within a certain distance of one another. The possibilities for geofencing applications are enormous with this new library from Location Labs. Photo by Flickr user KWDesigns . Discuss

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What better timing than a cross-country road-trip, and the beginning of my effort to become a fully-mobile blogger, for Trapster , the iPhone app that keeps track of road hazards, speed traps and even roadkill, to update with background location for iOS 4? The update means that, as me and my traveling partner-in-crime make our way across the length of the Volunteer State today, we’ll be constantly updated on the various snags and snares awaiting us. Or will we? Sponsor Trapster is one of the first applications we’ve heard of (outside of location-based check-in service Loopt ) to bring background location to the new iOS 4, and it means a world of difference for an app like this. In theory, the app will check your location against a database of user-submitted road hazards and notify you when one is near. It’s like having a radar detector that alerts you to not only speed traps, but roadkill, red light cameras, check-points, brush fires, flooded roads, closed roads and more. And by being able to run it in the background, we no longer have to choose between cranking some tunes on our Last.fm app and knowing what lies ahead. The only problem, so far? It certainly isn’t that my 1995 Astro Van got me pulled over for going too fast as we passed two unmarked police vehicles sitting on the highway median, clocking every passer-by. No, it was that we did so completely unaware. There was no ding, no alert of any kind. We discovered as we drove along that this was a two-fold problem. First, we didn’t look into all the settings to make sure that “known enforcement points” were set to alert us. So, that’s a first step for any new installs of Trapster – make sure it’s set to alert you to the appropriate hazards. But even more importantly, the GPS was way off. Time and again, as we drove down the highway it showed us in a different location heading a different direction. We’re not sure we can blame this on anything other than AT&T and the iPhone itself, as it’s been a consistent issue with location apps, from Google Maps to Gowalla, along the way. Beyond that, when it knows where we are and sees a hazard, it works just fine. We wouldn’t imagine that I-40, just outside of Memphis and with a perfect 3G signal, would be too far out to get accurate GPS results, but maybe this app is better for city roads with strong cellular signals than anything else? Just like you should trust your tried and true senses before following your GPS into a lake , we’d recommend using Trapster to augment what you already have – driving skills and common sense. Discuss

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Late last month, China implemented new standards aimed at preventing “state secrets being disclosed and uncertified maps published online.” A major component to this push was a requirement that all online mapping efforts be housed in mainland China and we wondered at the time how this might affect companies like Google. According to an article today in China Daily , 18 domestic firms have gotten the okay for providing maps of China to Chinese users, but the list of approved providers is not yet available. Sponsor While The Next Web reports that Google and Baidu are not among the approved companies, China has yet to release the list of companies selected from the pool of 30 applicants. According to an analyst quoted in the China Daily article, however, Google looks unlikely to be among them. “Among all the foreign vendors, Google may have some trouble getting a license because currently all its servers that provide map services are outside China,” Ren Yanghui, an analyst of research firm Analysys International, told China Daily. The regulations went into action this month and gives Chinese authorities the right to shut down mapping providers that fail to get a license by the end of the year. Google told Reuters that it is looking into the new regulations and how it affects its efforts in the country. “China recently implemented a wide-ranging set of rules relating to online mapping. We are examining the regulations to understand their impact on our maps products in China,” a Google spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. As Chad Catacchio from The Next Web pointed out, crowdsourced mapping solutions such as OpenStreetMap could face the biggest problems in being shut out of the Chinese market entirely. The new regulations could also have a major impact on location-based service applications, such as Gowalla , FourSquare and Yelp , which often use Google Maps as a backbone to their service. Discuss

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With the launch of iOS 4.0 on the iPhone yesterday, Apple fans were treated to several new features, like multitasking and custom backgrounds. Unfortunately for iPhone users, Apple (which develops the iPhone version of Google Maps in house) didn’t provide iOS 4.0 users with any new mapping features with which to play. Android users, however, will be happy to learn that Google has pushed an updated version of its Maps app for Android into the marketplace today, adding enhanced support for Place Pages and transit times for trains and busses. Sponsor Google is looking to bring some of the features found on the desktop version of Google Maps onto Android with this latest release. With version 4.3, Android users will now be able to see transit times for local public transportation – at least where it is supported . Just as on the desktop, users can select a local rail or bus station and see when the next arrival times are. This could be very handy for people traveling from out-of-town looking for the best place to catch the next train on their phones. Additionally, when searching for businesses within the app, users can now see more detailed accounts of how customers have rated the location. For a restaurant, various comments about food, price, sanitation and atmosphere are categorized together for quick viewing. Whatever people mention the most about a business will filter towards the top, making it easier to make a dinner decision. If I were an Android user I might personally stay with Yelp for making such decisions, but the easily scannable reviews from Google are a handy feature to add to the maps app. Discuss

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Location-based computing is a trend ReadWriteWeb has been tracking for some time. But Apple’s update of its privacy policy this week emphasizes location’s arrival in mainstream of consumer communications. “To provide location-based services on Apple products, Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services.” Sponsor Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs spoke about the company’s relationship to privacy and location information at the D8 Conference at the first of June. “We take privacy extremely seriously…Privacy means people know what they’re signing up for.” That said, it would be nice if Apple were more specific on how long its partners are allowed to retain your information. This process, of passing a user’s information to an app like Gowalla , for instance. But by expressing it as part of Apple’s explicit privacy information gives location the company’s imprimatur. Location is here to stay. Discuss

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