It looks like the first runner has crossed the finish line in the race to bringing background location functionality to the iPhone, and the winner is Loopt , an early entry in the location-based services arena. Aside from multitasking (or pseudo-multitasking, if you will) and those helpful organizer folders, background location was one of the most anticipated features of iOS 4, and Loopt clearly shows us why – even though it’s just the tip of the background-location iceberg. Sponsor Persistent location means one thing – you don’t need to interact with your iPhone and let it know that you want it to check your location and give you information based on that data. Instead, you can allow your iPhone to consistently monitor your location in various apps and when it comes across a certain set of conditions, notify you. In the case of Loopt, this means that you don’t have to walk around town checking in at every location you go. As Kim-Mai Cutler of Venture Beat writes, “users can now continuously share where they are with specific friends so they don’t have to constantly “check-in” to places. If a friend happens to be nearby, the app will send you a push notification alerting you. (They can still do check-ins for acquaintances and a broader group of friends, however.)” As we wrote when we first heard about background location , the “list of ideas for background location are endless”, from time- and place-specific advertising to the types of notifications we’ll see from Loopt. Something like Urbanspon , so you can know when deals pop up around you for happy hour? Or maybe a traffic notification app that can alert you to a jam on the highway your driving ahead? What if Craigsphone could look up apartments as you travel around town and let you know when you near one meeting your requirements? Outside of the LBS arena, what apps are you excited about having access to your location in the background? Discuss

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In the wake of the financial meltdown, a new set of financial regulations proposed by Senator Christopher Dodd aimed at plugging the “too big to fail” loopholes could have some negative side effects for the angel investment community. According to a report from the Seattle-based site TechFlash , Dodd’s bill would require that angel investments be approved by the SEC, a process that could take as many as 120 days to complete. Sponsor But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The enormous reform bill (some 1300+ pages) also gives the SEC the ability to delegate regulatory authority to state governments on investments it deems too small in size or scope. Angel investors themselves could be place under the regulatory microscope as well; the bill wants to raise the income level it takes to become an accredited investor, perhaps even doubling the requirement. Not only would this bill make the process of attaining seed-stage funding more difficult, more expensive, and more time consuming, it goes against the government’s goal to create jobs in America. If these regulations become law, fewer startups will get funding because they won’t want to deal with the lengthy SEC filing process. Instead, more innovative ideas will go by the wayside, startups will not get funding, and jobs will not be created. Furthermore, by raising the requirements to provide angel funding, the pool of investors will shrink, which will only exacerbate the problems facing the nation’s already floundering venture capital industry that is only recently seeing signs of recovery . In a letter sent to Senator Dodd earlier this month, Mark Heesen, President of the National Venture Capital Association, and Marianne Hudson, Executive Director of the Angel Capital Association, together outlined their grievances with the bill and its danger towards the VC industry. “Venture capitalists often invest in companies that were supported by angels, so ensuring that regulations for accredited investors do not harm this capital source is important,” said Heesen and Hudson. “In addition, as more and more venture capital firms co-invest with angel investors and angel organizations, the state preemption of securities regulations could extend to a large number of businesses, from start-ups to others that need capital for growth.” What do you think of this bill? It seems to me the sections mentioned above will be in direct conflict with the Startup Visa movement which most of the startup community seems to be on board with . The distinction seems obviously clear: encouraging foreign entrepreneurs to start their companies in America will create jobs, and this new bill from Senator Dodd will prevent the creation of jobs by thinning out angel investments. Let us know your thoughts below in the comments. Discuss

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The first thing we think of these days when someone mentions “location-based services”, or LBS, are the mobile social platforms we’ve gotten used to “checking in” to wherever we go – Gowalla, Foursquare, Brightkite, MyTown and the like. But looking forward in the LBS market actually requires us to look back to feature phones and a GPS-less existence. According to Jason Finkelstein, the director of product and marketing at LBS solution-provider WaveMarket, we are looking at a “truly horizontal market” that can be “applied to dozens of different types of businesses”. But first, there are a number of hurdles to jump over. Sponsor Finkelstein spoke today at the South By South West festival in Austin, in a workshop entitled ” LBS 101: Geolocation On The ‘Horizon’ “, explaining that location started out with car-based GPS services before moving onto “personal navigation devices” and finally ending up in the smartphones that nearly 20% of the population carries around in their pockets. LBS 101 Right off the bat, Finkelstein argued one of the largest uses of text messaging is to find out friend and family location. Fifty-five percent of SMS messages, he said, ask some variation on the simple question of “Where are you?”. “The peer-to-peer privacy model is complicated”, he said, explaining that the solution is not simple. A federal mandate in 2000 made it so that any time someone dialed 911 from a cellular phone, the cell tower used would have to be reported. In 2005, the requirements were made more stringent. It’s those two things that became the background of the LBS market we see today. “The future, which is more or less here”, Finkelstein explained, referring to check-ins, Facebook widgets, notifications when friends are nearby, GPS-indexed local search, location-aware advertising and marketing, crowdsourced traffic systems, location-aware messaging applications and security prevention applications. Market Fragmentation and the Future of LBS “Location data is not just a dot on a map – there is a whole lot of more rich data,” Finkelstein said. Part of what LBS app developers will have to deal with in moving into the future, he said, involved handling various networks with different kinds of location information, device fragmentation and application types, whether SMS, downloadable apps or Web-based applications. “The downloadable app is not the entire universe,” he said, explaining that SMS systems might be much more accessible to the 80% of the population that do not have GPS-enabled smartphones. “For most people, downloading something is a hurdle.” To get past some of these issues, Finkelstein said, and provide LBS to both smartphones and feature phones, developers can use “Assisted GPS”, which is a “hybrid using GPS satellites and cell tower signals”, triangulation and cell ID, with varying levels of accuracy and latency. “If you want to address the mass market, you have to address all of this stuff,” said Finkelstein. “You can’t build a mass market service… really.” Between handset types, network and platform fragmentation and carrier coverage, the solution for developers is not clear. Location aggregators, such as Veriplace (a service provided by Finkelstein’s company, which he admitted as “shameless self-promotion”), are one solution for developers looking to get beyond these complicating factors. But a constant theme throughout the panel was that with all of the hype over LBS, we are still in infancy stages in the LBS market. Discuss

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