Speaking … “On Deck: What’s Next in LBS?”

On July 29, Joe was invited to talk about what makes GeoSpot local search stand out from the field in front of the full auditorium of Bay Area wireless professionals at the Wireless Communications Alliance, Location Based Services event.



Other participating companies included Navteq, Nokia, Google and Yahoo.

Some of the comments:
WCA LBS Event by Eric, NAVTEQ Breakes Attendance Record at LBS SIG Event by Jeff Wagner, Location Based Services, the Good the Bad the Ugly by Deldaix (Just for the curious, we ended up among the "Good".)

Here is the actual video of the presentation.

Peter Braun

GeoSpot Local Search and Exploration Goes Mobile

And now GeoSpot search for "what is open" is available to mobile phone users!

You can search for businesses that are open now or at a time you want, use contextual navigation to find related POIs, see the location on the map, or simply use the one-click phone dial feature to immediately contact the businesses of interest. Just type in http://www.geospot.com/ on your mobile phone and enjoy GeoSpot on your own device.

We support pretty much any mobile phone that has a browser.
GeoSpot servers will provide the version appropriate for your mobile phone's screen size, whether it is iPhone, Blackberry, or any other.

We have received a great response from users and media and will post some of that here soon.

Peter Braun

GeoSpot Service with Searchable Open Hours Now Covers All of California and Nevada

The service which lets people search for businesses (restaurants, bars, and others) that are open "now" or at a specified time has been covering the whole of California and Nevada for some time. We just did not announce it and it was brought to our attention that we should not be keeping this "secret".

We started with the San Francisco Bay Area early this year but quickly started receiving requests to add other cities. And so we gradually expanded the "what is open" searchable hours to the rest of California including Tahoe, Greater Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, and other cities and to Nevada including Las Vegas and Reno.
Sounds like places where people either work late or party late.
Thank you for your feedback, keep it comming!

Peter Braun

Preview: GeoSpot Deep Local Search and Exploration Goes Mobile

...We will be launching Mobile Search soon. Check here frequently for more information...

What is Open After 10PM - GeoSpot Upgrades the Public Beta of Its Deep Local Search and Exploration Web Site

We just got out a press release showing recent improvements of the search here at prnewswire or you can also see it at our site.

Peter Braun

What Is Open After 10PM – GeoSpot Public Beta

With GeoSpot, you can find places that are open now or at a specific time (e.g. after 10pm).
But GeoSpot search goes beyond simple "open" and "closed" hours. What if the place offers multiple services and they do not open and close at the same time? In fast food outlets, the drive-thru may be still open while the dine-in has already closed. In supermarkets, the store itself may be open but the bakery department has already closed.

It has been over a month since geospot.com opened for the general public. We have been busy acting on your feedback and making the search more user-friendly and better.

So what is GeoSpot about?
There are many local search web sites, but none lets you search by open hours. They give you a list of places and then have you painfully check them, one by one, to find which ones are open. And they may not find any. We decided to solve this pain:

With GeoSpot, you can find places that are open now, at a specific time (e.g. after 10pm), 24 hours/day or search without specifying hours.

And the results are clear:
- the place is open, - the place is closed. But GeoSpot search goes beyond simple open and closed hours. What if the place offers multiple services and they do not open and close at the same time? In fast food outlets, the drive-thru may be still open while the dine-in has already closed. In supermarkets, the store itself may be open but the Bakery department has already closed. We use for places where some services are available while others are not and for places that will be closing soon. In cases where we do not have hours, we leave the place blank. Those may or may not be open. (We are hard at work to minimize the number of such places.)

Let's see how it works:
For example, are there bars open after midnight, midweek in Palo Alto, CA? Not many, and you can find them easily with our service.

In the evening, Starbucks are gradually closing. Which ones are still open?

Many stores have multiple departments and services and their hours vary. Do you want to find a bakery after 8pm? You may want to check Safeway, it closes late, but is the bakery department still open?

So far, we have focused on the San Francisco Bay Area and the food offerings - stores and restaurants and bars (well, bars are more about drinks...). We want to know how everything works for users before we expand to the rest of the US and other products and services. Tell us what you think at this blog or message us directly.

Have fun with it :)

Peter Braun

Starting the GeoSpot blog

After spending a long time at our computers behind closed doors in central Fremont (in the Bay Area, California) we are excited to have reached the phase where all this effort will now be put to the use.

The prospect of having real people other than us using our location-based services and making a difference in their day-to-day lives is surely exhilarating. Do we have the right answers? Are we focusing on where it matters the most?

We will use this forum to share with you our thoughts and aspirations about GeoSpot, where we are, what we are working on and where we would like to take it in the future. We plan to keep you posted here about all the exciting new features and capabilities as they will be added. And most importantly, we hope to hear back from you regarding your thoughts, shared or divergent experiences, as well as things that we could do to improve your GeoSpot experience.

We want this blog to be a two-way dialog rather than just a place for announcements. Tell us about your needs and experiences and how we can serve you better.

We will be releasing our service in phases and your opinion will help us to adjust priorities and functionality.

So, thanks in advance for your support and participation in this forum!

Peter Braun