News

Never mind how are you. Where are you? Do it yourself!

Microsoft says it is "working with" several mobile phone operators on this. It's giving the end user the ability to plug into MapPoint, and use their own applications to run location-based services. Will they buy it?

The announcement was of a deal between Microsoft and European mobile operators mmO2 and TeliaSonera. They've "announced plans to deliver real-time location services designed to enable businesses to significantly improve the way they locate, track and manage their mobile assets and mobile work force."

If that doesn't tell you much, you're not alone. What it means is that if a mobile operator has network data which can more or less pinpoint a user's location, then there is, technically, a way of giving that data to the individual handset.

The demonstration was simple: take a photograph, and press a single button which transfers that photo to your blog. It posts it - with a network-generated caption, which includes your location.

Actually, it wouldn't be much interest to the average user, because the data is MapPoint location data, almost entirely indecipherable. But an application can be terribly easily created to turn that into a graphic showing the location (more or less) accurately.

The idea of location based services to mobile phone users isn't new. Several European operators have used this data for dating services. You sign up, press the "find a date" button, and anybody else who subscribes and is within 400 yards of your phone will be notified that you're on the prowl.

But these services have always been provided by the operator. If they didn't provide them, you couldn't provide them for yourself.

The deal with Microsoft is new, however. It means that a platform has been built, off which quite small, independent software providers can sell applications - like the blogger app - direct to end users. The network will benefit only from the extra data traffic.