Verizon Wireless, the nation’s leading wireless service provider, and Loopt® announced today that Verizon Wireless customers can now access Loopt’s interoperable location-based service.
Loopt allows friends who opt in to be located by other friends to show where the friends are located and what they are doing via detailed, interactive maps on their mobile phones. Loopt helps friends connect on the go and navigate their social lives by orienting them to people, places and events. Users can also choose to permit sharing of location updates, geo-tagged photos and comments with friends in their mobile address book or on online social networks, communities and blogs.
“Loopt helps Verizon Wireless customers stay connected to friends and share their location in a fun and interactive way,” said Ryan Hughes, vice president of digital media programming for Verizon. “Loopt enhances our customers’ real world experiences by helping friends stay informed of their friends’ lives.”
“We are on a mission to deliver Loopt to consumers everywhere, and by offering our service to Verizon Wireless customers, we’re significantly closer to achieving that goal,” said Sam Altman, chief executive officer and co-founder of Loopt. “With Loopt, Verizon Wireless customers now have a powerful tool to navigate their mobile lifestyles and easily connect with people and places around them.”
Loopt, the social mapping industry leader, offers the most intuitive and effective privacy controls and security features for end users. Loopt is 100 percent permission-based and users share location information only with their known friends via private networks. In addition, Loopt users can easily turn location-sharing on or off at any time on a friend-by-friend basis or for all friends at once. Loopt regularly works with organizations such as the Family Online Safety Institute, ConnectSafely.org, the Center for Democracy & Technology, Progress & Freedom Foundation’s Center for Digital Media Freedom, and the Internet Safety Task Force.
Loopt is available today on select Verizon Wireless phones for $3.99 monthly access in the Tools on the Go, Featured Applications and Community shopping aisles in the Get It Now® virtual store. Customers need a Get It Now-enabled handset and Verizon Wireless digital service to access the Get It Now virtual store.
If you are ever wondering what this tech-gadget loving guy may be doing through the day, then check out my Twitter account. I’ll be using the site to also post some sites of interest and it will be a great place for you to get some “behind the scenes” stuff I may not get onto SvenOnTech. There are a lot of sites I go to in research for posts here but due to the time it takes to actually type the stuff out, a lot gets lost to the ether so to speak.
Beyond that, you’ll also get some of my witty commentary on just life. 
I promise, I’ll try to abstain from the gross, though I am a guy so sometimes I may stumble. So please accept my pre-emtive apology.
Oh, try to figure out what my account name, 7mary4, is about, too. I’d love to see if you can figure that out. (It’s not that hard to figure out with Google, folks. )
See you on Twitter…
GyPSii, the world’s leading geo-location and social networking service provider for mobile phones and Internet devices, is now available on the iPhone - Apple’s market-leading high-end mobile device. The iPhone has shipped more than five million units worldwide since its launch in 2007.
The new web-based GyPSii iPhone application integrates its multiple services into a single interface, making it easy for users to enjoy a wide range of new and exciting location-based features and services, along with social networking - all using the fluid, intuitive touch-screen user interface of the iPhone.
GyPSii also confirmed that it would produce a “native” version of its application using Apple’s Software Developer Kit (SDK) which is scheduled to be launched later this week, providing seamless access for all Apple users, from the desktop, to the iPhone.
GyPSii CEO, Dan Harple, said he didn’t want iPhone users who were keen social networkers to have to wait any longer for the only social networking platform specifically designed for location-enabled mobile phones to be available for their handset.
“We’ll work with the SDK as soon as it becomes available,” he said, “and then we will be uniquely offering both web and native versions of our application for iPhone users.”
GyPSii is taking advantage of its extensible product architecture enabling use of technologies (like Apple’s Safari) to make its advanced, geo-location features possible on the iPhone. In supporting these advances in web technology, GyPSii delivers an optimal location-based experience on a mobile device, or on a desktop computer, or even via a set-top box.
Some of the new GyPSii for iPhone features enabled include: Read the rest of this entry »
Remember how many new bands you found out about when Napster first torched the backbone of the Internet in the late 90s before Lars got to it? Ya, finding really cool bands that rocked and lived what they said, unlike Metallica. For the most part, those days are gone though you can venture on the ledge of legality with P2P software that have taken over the Napster file sharing duties of the last millennium if your luck runs high in Vegas. But for most, relying on radio, features like iTunes suggestion, and friends is about the only way to find a new flavor for your ice cream cone. Not anymore.
iLike is a social network that aims to bring back the discovery of the original Napster. With its iTunes plugin, you’ll be able to see what others are listening to and what your common likes are. Like the P2P networks, the more people online at the same time, the more diverse music can be found and the knowledge shared among you all. You’ll be able to connect to others music libraries, see related music based on your tastes, and even download free (and legal) music from new artists. All with a click of a mouse button.
If you like what you hear, check out iLike and create your free account and then install the iTunes plugin. Share in the freedom, once again.
isporty.com (formerly in award-winning beta format at tiredandtested.com) launches the UK’s premier social sport site for grassroots players. The site aims to become the ultimate sporting clubhouse online, where millions of grassroots sports men and women can network for everything local, national and international around the sports they play and the clubs they support.
isporty is free to sign up to and enables grassroots players to live a pro lifestyle - whatever sport they play and whatever level they play at. isporty offers its members a unique combination of its own interactive content, the very latest news, videos, photos and podcasts for every sport (365 on the site) and a full set of social networking features tailored for sport players.
isporty’s unique combination
isporty.com interactive content Includes the first online TV sports channel for grassroots sports. The channel will show user-generated content at its glorious best or slapstick worst, presented by the legendary sports terrestrial presenter Gary Newbon, Rebecca Lowe (BBC Match Of The Day) and Jo Ankier (the UK’s top 3000m steeplechase athlete). Led by Tim Southwell (former founder of Loaded and Golf Punk magazines), him and his team of 40 journalists will be blogging on the best of the British sporting media on a daily basis.
isporty’s 365 sports Through mash-ups with YouTube, flickr, Google, iTunes Music Store and Yahoo as well as feeds from the BBC and other specialist sources, isporty offers its members the very latest sports news, videos, photos and podcasts from every sport they play, all in one place.
Members also benefit from the bespoke Google co-op search that searches vertically over 3,500 authoritative sports sites – providing the best UK sports search offering online.
isporty’s social networking features Members get their own local sporting playground (thanks to a mash-up with Google Maps and the isporty database) and their personalised sporting history (a Lifeslide based on their date of birth), Members get to create and customise their profile; create sites for the teams they play for and those they support; upload and share videos, photos, blogs; participate in 100s of sport or team specific forums; meet and chat with other members based on the sport they play, the team they support, where they live or simply their avatar!
etribes today launches the latest in a suite of new features with the introduction of its mobile video-sharing service through which etribes members can simply send (MMS) mobile video clips to their own free personal website.
etribes customers create their own personal website at the push of a button, updating it regularly with news, photos, videos and documents. The service is designed for busy adults who do not want the hassle or technical challenge of maintaining a blog, but do want to be able to share content easily with friends and family.
etribes members can already MMS photos straight from their mobile phone to their personal website. From today they will do the same with video clips. Simon Grice, CEO, says that video posting opens a new dimension to the service:
“Very few people in our target market know how to download photos or videos from their mobile phone, so being able to MMS photos or video clips to their own personal website is a great solution”. He continued:
“The success of video sharing sites such as YouTube shows how popular these services can be. Our customers don’t want to show their videos to the whole world, but they do want to share them with close friends and family”.
Earthcomber LLC announced today that it has been awarded a patent for a location-based search system that allows individuals to constantly sweep their surroundings for their personal interests.
The patented method provides a means to notify a user about people, places and things nearby that match that person’s specific preferences.
“Personalization and privacy have become so important to mobile users,” said Jim Brady, founder and CEO of Earthcomber LLC. “With our approach, users build profiles to suit their preferences – essentially a ‘DNA’ of all your personal tastes and interests. Then, when you do a search, you get back only those things nearby that match your preferences.”
The patent was announced today at the Directory Driven Commerce conference organized by The Kelsey Group. As the public increasingly relies on mobile devices to deliver local, personalized content, the patent is expected to be a key enabler for mobile advertisers, including directory publishers such as Yellow Pages and newspapers.
By law, advertisers cannot transmit messages to mobile consumers without users’ permission. Earthcomber’s method allows an advertiser’s message to reach the user if the user has stated an explicit preference for something that the advertiser offers, and if the advertiser is within the user’s specified range.
“Mobile advertising is the perfect medium for one-to-one marketing,” Brady said. “It’s one thing to send somebody an email offer. It’s a whole new ball game when the advertiser can communicate to consumers when they are nearby, and show them a potential transaction they are deliberately looking for. Our approach transforms mobile search into a positive environment in which buyers and sellers connect for mutual benefit.”
The patent is also expected to provide a foundation for social networking on mobile devices. For example, mobile users can be alerted about friends nearby, or people with common characteristics (schools, organizations, acquaintances).
The company features the methodology in its free, location-based personal navigation suite for Palm OS, Windows Mobile Pocket PC, and Java-capable cell phones and PDAs.
The company plans to continue bringing innovations to mobile search and its applications. The company is also evaluating licensing opportunities for the patent.
For more information, visit the company’s website at www.earthcomber.com or call (708) 366-1600.
Greenlight Wireless has been helping resolution challenged web surfers with making large sites fit just right on thier PDA and phone screens for some time now. Skweezer makes going to graphic intense and complex formatted sites like eBay or Amazon not so frustrating for many and now it has put together a new way to surf social sites such as del.iou.us and furl.
Greenliht Wireless told SvenOnTech, “Skweezer has a new feature that allows users to save browsing favorites to del.icio.us, Furl, Simpy or BlinkList from their cell phone or PDA.” Making such a cumbersome task a piece of cake really helps one when they’re, forgive the pun, in a squeeze. With social sites are becoming more popular than search engines as of late, this makes a perfect added solution to the Skweezer site which is free of charge to use.
Hey, I got the tags to work now. I had to fudge my .htaccess file and that was about it. Now we have tags fully working here and you can click on them and find related posts that have that tag in it.
Making life easier for ya folks!