I was a cub scout in 1969.  We had compasses back then, but I was deprived.  The floppy disk, the word processer and video games were not yet invented.  How times have changed.  Scouts today can earn so many new cool badges, including a geocaching merit badge.

That’s right, the Boys Scouts have gone location, and it is taking the troops by storm.  You thought the location buzz at SXSW was at a fevered pitch?  Check into your local Boy Scout jamboree and “be prepared,” geolocation is the campfire rage.

Merit Badge

Perhaps too many scouts were bringing smartphones on their orienteering trips. Or too many scout leaders were checking into FourSquare during campouts.  Or perhaps the Boys Scouts is continuing its long tradition of preparing our youth for the future.  Whatever the reason, Chief Location Officer “likes” this merit badge.

What does the geocaching patch signify?  It means a scout has “acquired the skills necessary to safely take part in the world of geocaching.”  (Chief Location Officer didn’t realize geocaching was so dangerous.)  Of course, you still have to learn how to use a map and compass.  But doesn’t that patch look cool?  Like a Nintendo DS video game.  Location can be fun.

When I was in the scouts, earning a badge was no picnic.  The geocaching merit badge is no slouch either.  What do you need to learn to earn a geocaching badge?

• Precautions necessary to have a safe time while searching for geocaches
• Geocaching etiquette and how the principles of Leave No Trace apply
• Geocaching terms
• How GPS technology works
• Steps for finding and logging a cache
• How to use geocaching.com, the official online home of geocaching.

• Click here for the PDF of the final, official requirements.

Chief Location Officer applauds the Boy Scouts of America for recognizing that our youth are growing up in a world where mobile location plays an important role, whether it be in the woods, in school, in business or in our daily lives.

The merit badge includes one of the best taglines in the location industry: “Leadership with Direction.”

We could all use some of that.

Thanks to Bryan Wendell and John Churchill of the Boy Scouts of America and Simon Salt for the heads-up on this location badge.

Friday:  Women in Wireless Lounge Party

 Saturday: AT&T Mobile App Hackathon

Sunday: Ambient Location and the Future of the Interface

Monday: Location Tracking: Threatening or Value-added?

Tuesday:  ISIS Lounge  Mobile wallets in action!

Get your daily fix of location.

Locaid Extends Leadership as the Largest Location-as-a-Service Company by Expanding Reach to 165 Countries for Mobile Enterprise Apps

Locaid announced commercial availability of Locaid Global Cell-ID™ at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday. This new feature, accessible via Locaid’s Location-as-a-Service (LaaS) platform, allows enterprise mobile developers to acquire carrier-certified, permission-based location on their devices in over 165 countries around the globe. Read more...

WYLESS SELECTS LOCAID TO PROVIDE DEVICE LOCATION FOR M2M MANAGED SERVICES

Locaid, the world’s largest Location-as-a-Service company, and Wyless, the leading global M2M managed services provider, today announced an agreement whereby Locaid will provide location-based services to Wyless customers and partners across the globe. Wyless will be integrating Locaid’s Location-as-a-Service (LaaS) into Porthos, Wyless’s award-winning management platform. Wyless customers and partners will soon be able to access “on demand” location details of their Wyless-enabled M2M devices throughout the U.S. and Europe. Read more…

Carriers like AT&T are the reasons companies like Twilio and Locaid exist.  We are the “Walmarts of network APIs” to hundreds of thousands of developers.  It’s hard to work directly with a carrier, all that national infrastructure stuff transporting billions of transactions per minute needs process, controls and protections to keep the lights on.  But AT&T is smart, it knows it needs to innovate and be developer friendly.  John Donovan, AT&T CTO, wants to deliver tens of billions of API calls to developers on his network this year. Bravo.  And he is innovating by asking developer-friendly, one API platforms like Locaid (for location) and Twilio (for communications) to help bridge the innovation-perception between “Ma Bell” and “those upstart developers.”  It’s working.  Locaid is now the largest network location transaction platform for hundreds of these developers who want safe, privacy-protected access to the carrier location goodies.

So while Jeff and I agree on many fronts, I still give a shout out to AT&T as an innovator.  They continue to offer a disruptive technology.  According to Clayton, AT&T is creating new markets and value by exposing their APIs through companies like Locaid and Twilio.  This innovation replaces their existing value in the network (closed APIs) that Jeff properly explains.  John Donovan is disrupting his own legacy innovation.  That is impressive.

Clayton would say that, in fact, Locaid and Twilio aren’t disruptive innovators at all (boo hoo).  His thesis is that we are actually “sustaining innovators,” that is, we are not creating new markets, but we are evolving existing ones with better value.  While our investors might not find that as sexy, there is huge opportunity in creating value in between the wireless operators and the mobile application developer market.  Based on our respective successes as API storefronts for developers, Clayton would also label Locaid and Twilio as “Transformational Sustaining Innovators.”

Because no developer is going to go back to the old way. Do you miss ordering a CD from a carrier, getting it in the mail, downloading it on your PC and syncing it through a cradle to your phone?  Didn’t think so.

Thank you, Ma Bell.  For innovating with and for us.

Rip Gerber, CIPP

Why would Chief Location Officer celebrate privacy? In today’s mobile society, we are always on the move and always connected. We have agreed to a new evolution of commerce — if Adam Smith and Charles Darwin had a baby theory together, they would call it Cambrian Explosion of the Invisible Hand. Every moment we trade bits of information about ourselves for free services and entertaining apps.   Think you haven’t written a huge check to Facebook lately?  Think again.  On average we Americans spend over 54 billion minutes on it every month. That’s 8 hours a month for you, reader, during which your information, activities and popularity are paying for that “free” service.

This new economic contract only works when we are providing users with information, choices and controls around privacy.  And that’s why I studied all of last year and was ultimately accepted into the elite ranks of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), after passing several examinations to earn a Certified Information Privacy Professional accreditation. I am proud that I am the first mobile CEO to earn such a distinction. Now I can put CIPP on my business card. (I’m still waiting for endorsement solicitations from Nike and Allstate).

How are others celebrating data privacy in 2012? Over the past six months I’ve gotten many more calls from CEOs and mobile developers on the topic of location privacy. There is common concern in these discussions — that “industry” needs to pull together to properly protect consumer privacy all while providing innovative new services consumers want.  Location and privacy is not just a mobile issue. Whether its smartphones or credit cards or FastTraks or connected toasters, we live in a cyber-society in which location data is ubiquitous. Our customers need to trust “industry”, for if they don’t, our customers will call upon the government to enforce such trust. Whether it is the recent Supreme Court Decision (United States v. Jones) for GPS trackers of the proposed bill from Ed Markey for a Mobile Device Privacy Act, those of us in “industry” need to celebrate privacy and get our collective act together to preempt crude if caring Acts from Congress.

Happy  Birthday Data Privacy Day.

Happy Birthday Data Privacy Day

You share January 28th with some of the best: Elijah Wood, Sarah McLachlan, Jackson Pollock, Saint Thomas Aquinas and the United States Coast Guard. Data Privacy Day at 3 years: glad to see you can now feed yourself, recognize sounds in your environment, and jump with both feet.

Here are some ideas for the best mobile gifts for the people on your “Naughty List” that you can easily send using your Android or iPhone this year:

Groupon for Jenny Craig
Send your annoying colleague or boss who could lose a few pounds a groupon for Jenny Craig.  In fact maybe there’s a great teenager stocking stuffer deal from Texters Anonymous.

Photo of Yourself
That girlfriend or boyfriend who dumped you in high school and wants to friend you on Facebook? Nothing says, “Thinking of you at the holidays,” more than a photo of yourself. Since mobile devices go everywhere with you, why not?

(Dis) Advantage Subscription to AOL

Slow down Spamma’s chain letters and kitten videos with an AOL subscription, or wrap up one of those start-up CDs and slide it under the tree.  It’ll keep Granny occupied troubleshooting “awful software, inaccessible dial-up numbers, rapacious marketing, in-your-face advertising, questionable billing practices, inexcusably poor customer service, and enough spam to last a lifetime.” That’s an actual quote from PC World.

Worthless Mobile Apps
These applications give new meaning to “there’s an app for that.” For the especially  annoying someone on your list who can’t put down their Android or iPhone, consider one of these apps:

iFireplace – Your rude cousin can take the “yule log” with him or her any time and anywhere he or she goes. Experience it here.

iTan – Give your weird Aunt Ruby a tan in her pocket but she’ll have to get the color she wants from another cancer causing source however. Experience it here.

Spin the Bottle – You’re crazy, single co-worker who loves to frequent bars on Monday nights can use this one. Experience it here.

Online Offer to A Self-Help Seminar
That irritating friend who is constantly giving you copies of “The 7 Secrets to Success” or “The Secret” could use an online offer to a fire-walking, secret-seeking, spandex-wearing seminar in Arizona.

Artwork by Your Kids
The finger-painting of the Mona Lisa that looks like a frog in a monk’s robe (not that I have one in my garage behind the chainsaws), the purple blob representing Barney, or the stick figure with a mustache can all be easily emailed to your friends or posted on their Facebook wall.

Credits to Farmville, Castleville, or Any-ville
These highly addictive games that spread like a bad disease are the perfect way to get your in-laws off your back. They’ll be so consumed with growing their farms, kingdoms, or whatever that you won’t have to hear from them ever again!

The Cell Mate
There’s no better way to say, “you really annoy me” than to give someone one of these. Although, The Cell Mate would have been really awesome in a Miami Vice show back in the 80s.

What’s the best gift for someone you love? Use mobile giving to donate money in the name of your loved one.

But there is something retail (and other less prudent) marketers ARE spending money on these days. Location.

Now there’s hard evidence that proves it: more and more advertisers are putting hard cash into mobile ads that include location data. Gigaom recently reported on this (shocking) phenomenon, stating that mobile publishers and developers are getting 3.8 times more for ad impressions, that include location data in the last three months.

Wonder why Facebook bought Gowalla? Location. Why location? Location-based advertising targets customers where they are and delivers results. When you combine relevance with location, you get a powerful combination. At the same time, marketers may be cheap, but they are smart. The good ones think through any location-based strategy, the technologies, the consumer impact (I advise a few really big ones, so I know). A very good synopsis on dealing with this elephant in the room can be found on Mobile Marketer: Location-based Advertising without the Fear. This blogger brings up some great questions that you can review with your team as well as some opportunities to leverage location in a non-intrusive way.

The location demand is only going to continue to grow as advertisers see real revenue boosts from location-based ad campaigns. How are you going to use location to ramp up your business?  You cannot be more Scrooge-like than a retailer when it comes to marketing spend. Yet even those guys are opening the wallets for location data. Are you missing something?

1. Understand that You and Your Company are Part of Something Bigger. You are going to get much more out of it and you’ll be more successful if you invest in ecosystem around you. Give back
2. Invest in Your Team. Put the right team in place and nurture them because they are an investment in your success. Sometimes we forget the human beings and only invest in the products.
3. Embrace Change. You need to be resilient as a company and there will be a time when you have to change directions. It’s no so much a big vision change but the strategy might need to take a radical shift.

If you look at Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerburg, they all followed these cardinal rules. The formula for becoming a billionaire is not so complicated when you think about it. I’ll check back with you all after I’ve hit my first billion…

I recently read that 90% of marketing managers plan to use mapping technology in the next year. That’s according to Google’s Enterprise Division and Vanson Borne. Nearly half of marketing professionals using the technology (46%) said that it improves productivity, and one in five (21%) are using it to combine different sets of data and spot patterns, agreeing that this would not have been possible without being able to visualize information.

Location-based marketing is rapidly becoming a popular strategy and I expect it will become the norm sooner than later. When you think about it, there is a location component to many marketing campaigns. Where are customers located? How do you reach them when they are close to your product or service? Can you devise timely promotions based on location?

If that many marketing managers are planing to use mapping, why aren’t you part of the 90%?

Looks like a company in the UK may have found a potential solution. Using a smartphone rigged with a new CSR chip and software, the company recently demonstrated its SiRFstarV and SiRFusion indoor location technologies at a recent conference in San Francisco. To some degree, CSR still relies on GPS to determine your position. But it also gathers real-time information from other satellite systems (Galileo, Glonass and Compass) and combines that data with info pulled from Wi-Fi and cellular radios, along with multiple sensors such as accelerometers, gyros and compasses. It all gets fused together with mapping and other data, to help figure out your precise whereabouts.

Nokia is already in the midst of developing this technology on its mobile phones. There’s a huge opportunity for companies that want to create inside mapping databases (hint, hint…Google). Who else is going to take location indoors?