Research and Markets  announced this week the addition of the “GeoFencing: Enabling Location-Based Reminders, Ads, Promotions, Proactive Apps, Security & More”report to their offering.

What is GeoFencing? It is an application that runs automatically on your smartphone so that when you get near a relevant location, that location or vendor can target their services to you the user and to the location.

If you use your smartphone calendar and to-do list, GeoFencing will let you know you are passing a store that sells the item on your to-do list that you need. If you’re a retailer then GeoFending will run your shop’s app while a user is passing the store in that location, signaling him/her with an appropriate product suggestion. It is also good for advertisers, parents, for social networking, for interoffice communication, always letting you know of what or who nearby might be appropriate for you to talk to.

There are a number of hurdles yet to be scaled for GeoFencing, such as the fact that running the phone GPS might drain the device’s battery. Also, timing and the range of the GPS are factors.

One of the many nice things about ArcGIS Online, is the ability to host Web App templates on your own server. We thought is worth walking through he steps of how this is done.

Step 1 – Log into your ArcGIS Online account and publish a web map

Remote sensing aficionados will be pleased to know that Astrium Services is launching their Pléiades 1B on Friday, 30 November 2012 at 11:02 pm Kourou local time (Saturday, 1 December 2:02 UTC). Pleiades 1B is the second satellite in the Pléiades constellation and will be orbited by a Soyuz launcher from Europe’s spaceport in French Guiana. Arianespace at www.arianespace.tv will be the official broadcasters of the launch.