Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/70379
Tomorrow = Integration Now imagine a similar day with an advanced smart- phone operating system (OS), where interaction among apps is seamless to the user. The alarm goes off automatically based on the cal- endar schedule. In fact, it's 30 minutes earlier than originally planned because of rain and fog on the Peninsula—a reminder to leave early because of traf- fic. The colleague we're meeting in San Francisco is a Twitter addict, so we'll just get the phone to update his Twitter-feed if we're running late. We get to the city and get routed to a parking lot with available spaces—our calendar shows we're only in the city for a couple of hours, so we get a special fixed rate. We pay directly on the near-field communication (NFC)- enabled phone and don't have to wait in any lines or find change for the machine. We end up grabbing lunch at a Thai place we've been to before—they see we're in San Francisco and send a coupon for that day. One click, and a lunch reservation is confirmed. Another alert on the way home tells us the wire- less router we looked at online was on special at the Best Buy right next to the freeway, so we reroute and grab that on the way home. Traffic is terrible, but automatic updates to Facebook keep the family up-to-date. Much of the underlying technology to support this already exists today, but it's not seamlessly integrated into the OS. All of this can happen with little direct user interaction—based on calendar and location informa- tion, relevant data and content can be pushed to users in an integrated, easy-to-consume way. Where We're Headed Although location-based services (LBSs) are increas- ingly ubiquitous, they're still in the early stages of evo- lution. Global smartphone penetration is less than 10 percent today; as this continues to increase, LBSs will evolve and become increasingly sophisticated. In addition, today's LBS ecosystem is very frag- mented: we check-in using Foursquare, we look for reviews on Yelp, and we navigate using TomTom. Apps such as Glympse fill niche gaps in the LBS ecosystem. With a community of more than 60 million users, TomTom collects more than 6 billion anonymous GPS measurements each day. An image shows the volume of data collected across the United States, which TomTom is using as one source to continuously update its map and develop new products. JUNE 2O12 / WWW . GEOPLA CE . COM 27