New mobile location tracking service launches in UK

A new service in the UK will allow mobile users to record details of locations using their handsets and allow them to find the spot at a later date.

The service, known as TagandScan, allows mobile users to create notes on specific geographical locations using a mobile handset. If users are standing outside a particular restaurant and want to comment upon it, they use the TagandScan menu on their mobile handset to create a "tag."

Each tag will include a title, a description of the location and could include a picture. When the user saves the tag, the location of the tag is recorded using location-based technology and the tag is then added to an appropriate "grid."

Grids are thematically-sorted location maps, so the notes on the restaurant would be added to the "food and drink" grid and could be viewed by anybody who had a TagandScan ID and wanted to know more about the restaurant.

Thus the public grids can be used to create a peer-to-peer guidebook. The public grids are monitored by the TagandScan administrators, who ensure that the content is appropriate to the grid.

TagandScan also includes private grids, through which people can create their own tags and share them with others. For example, system subscribers could create a walking tour of their town for visiting friends. These friends could then follow the tour, armed with only a mobile handset and a TagandScan.

"The tags and grids can be used to enhance your spatial memory," Ryan Janssen, co-founder and chief executive officer of Cimarrones, the US-based company which developed the technology, told ElectricNews.Net. "They can be used to record the location of potential Christmas gifts, or a list of possible apartments to rent."

Currently the service is only available in the UK, where it is provided by the Vodafone, Orange, O2 and T-Mobile mobile operators. Janssen said that Cimarrones plans to roll the technology out internationally, but says that each implementation requires detailed negotiations with mobile operators. On the one hand operators are anxious to ensure that the system is technologically sound and appropriate to their market. On the other hand, operators can be slow to provide the TagandScan system with the location-based information that the system needs to provide precise location information.

TagandScan works over existing GPRS networks and users can register for free at tagandscan.com.

Ciaran Buckley writes for ElectricNews.net