GISCafe Voice 
Susan Smith
Susan Smith has worked as an editor and writer in the technology industry for over 16 years. As an editor she has been responsible for the launch of a number of technology trade publications, both in print and online. Currently, Susan is the Editor of GISCafe and AECCafe, as well as those sites’ … More » For your to-do list, try GeoFencingNovember 29th, 2012 by Susan Smith
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.
According to Research and Markets, “In this 145-page report, Grizzly Analytics analyzes and reports all the ongoing research on GeoFencing, including technology research overcoming the hurdles listed above, and including dozens of applications and services. Read about the research activity of all the major mobile companies – Google, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Qualcomm, EBay, IBM & others – and also 3rd-party applications and individual patent holders.” Tags: GeoFencing, geospatial, GIS, GPS, Research and Markets, smartphones 3 Responses to “For your to-do list, try GeoFencing” |
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Interesting. I wonder if the folks building these “GeoFencing” apps know that the geofencing concept and capability has been around for decades. I remember back in the late 1990’s that Intergraph advertized a geofencing capability and that any number of CAD systems had similar capabilities. And as far back as 1978, MOSS (Map Overlay and Statistical System) had a PROXIMITY command that allowed the user to perform a range of geofencing analytics. Funny that there are patents for this capability!
Re Carl Reed the patents are generally not for the general concept of GeoFencing, but rather how to do it efficiently and effectively. Checking GPS every minute will drain your battery quickly. Determining GeoFence crossings when the GeoFence is not circular (ie distince from a single point) is difficult. Defining GeoFences in terms of time traveled rather than distance is complex. These and many issues are the subject of a lot of ongoing research, as detailed in the report.