Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Doyon Kim, CEO of Pangalore (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: This was more about page views. You did the searching yourselves, so they can’t get into searching.

Doyon Kim: Right. Content providers had to get some sort of code from us, but that code could track every activity of people on the website. Sites like TechCrunch implement a code, so we track their website traffic and see what are the most popular articles of the day. We could get everything [and know] overall, what were the most popular articles.

SM: But it required that you became a quoter yourselves, wasn’t it? >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tasso Roumeliotis, CEO of Safely (Part 5)

SM: Interesting. When you look around, what are some location-based killer apps that you’ve seen – not your own apps – that are really impressive, really interesting?

TR: For me, I would categorize it as a couple different types of apps. The first apps that I still think have massive appeal and are still used at an incredible rate are navigation and local search. These are things that didn’t exist years ago and now, effectively, I can’t live without. It’s an essential crutch that I have. These are absolutely the most powerful applications. That’s what I call from the utility. When I’ve got some time to spare, which, unfortunately, is very rare these days, and I just want to try something new that has appeal, I like the services that companies like Booyah! developed, which are a little bit like Foursquare, but rather than being a real world check-in, it’s a virtual world. The virtual world represents where I am physically. Wherever I am, I’m able to do different things like buy real estate, play a game of Monopoly, but the real estate that I’m buying is reflecting where I am right now. I think there are very clever games that can be built around location as well. I’ve used Foursquare. I’ve not hit the serendipity point, because I guess I’m not that popular. But I can definitely see why that’s a very powerful application. Those are the services that I like. I’m more partial to games and utilities. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tasso Roumeliotis, CEO of Safely (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I think I agree with you. You are saying that Groupon is the most significant. Groupon – and the others in that category, such as LivingSocial – is the more significant innovation in location-based coupon services in the recent generation.

Tasso Roumeliotis: Yes, exactly.

SM: What do you see as the impact of the intersection of social media and location-based services? >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ari Zilka, CTO of TerraCotta (Part 4)

SM: There are two trends that we are discussing in this conversation. One is the real-time trend. The other is the big-data trend. So, I would like to do a thought experiment with you that takes both of those into account and use a social media construct on the use case.

Let’s say we are looking at the realm of consumer marketing. Some company … let’s say Amazon is marketing to consumers, and there is a ton of stuff going on in social media around products that Amazon sells. The customers of Amazon are conceivably discussing products that they might be buying and so on and so forth. What, in your opinion, is the future of marketing from the standpoint of an Amazon that wants to tap into all that information that is out there and react to it? >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tasso Roumeliotis, CEO of Safely (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Who else plays in that space? Whom do you compete with? And are the applications only phone locating applications, or are there other applications  you’re seeing emerge in that space?

Tasso Roumeliotis: There are other ones. To answer your first question, the biggest competitor, by far, is a company called TCS. They’re the ones that have the Verizon account, which is the single account in the United States that we don’t have. TCS is the competitor there. In terms of other services, location and beyond is where we’re providing personal security. In regards to location, in September 2011, the CEO of Sprint went up on stage and announced – and we launched – a product that uses location on smart phones, on Android phones primarily, that detects if you’re texting while driving. So, we can’t detect whether you’re in the passenger seat, but we do know that you’re traveling at more than 10 miles an hour. And if you are using the phone – calling, playing games, whatever it is – we have a lock-up screen that comes up. This technology’s being pre-loaded into every phone that Sprint’s launching. T-Mobile launched this product a few months before that. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Ari Zilka, CTO of Terracotta (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely, that makes sense. Who else in the real-time data access and analytics space plays in the ecosystem?

Ari Zilka: In the real-time analytics space, there is a lack of clarity as to what tools to use in the market. The vendors have started to paint fences and mark out territories like complex event processing and real-time business intelligence engines.

SM: TIBCO plays in that space, right? >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tasso Roumeliotis, CEO of Safely (Part 2)

SM: Which app on the smart phone that you think is the milestone event that makes location-based services viable.

TR: I would say that if you actually look at the revenue-generating, location-based services, a lot of the revenue that’s being generated, those applications are still near the top or at the top, even before smart phones. For example, turn-by-turn navigation, which is on Sprint and AT&T, powered by a company called TeleNav, is still arguably the number one revenue-generating, location-based service out there. It’s a public company doing hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue on, effectively, an app that does turn-by-turn navigation.

I don’t think — with the exception of maybe Google Local Search, which is obviously a different ball game — there’s another app out there for the service that generates that kind of revenue. >>>

Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Tasso Roumeliotis, CEO of Safely (Part 1)

No matter how old they get, parents never stop worrying about their children. They always want to know where their children are, what they’re doing and who they’re with. Safely seeks to alleviate some those concerns through modern technology. For example, with Safely Drive, parents can disable texting and talking while driving, with Safely Locate, they can create alerts that let them know when their children leave specified areas, or they can use Sparkle to get on-demand location information. Safely is a division of Location Labs, a location-based services company that, according to Inc.com, boasted $17 million in revenue in 2010.

Sramana Mitra: Hi, Tasso. Let’s talk a little bit about your background. Would you give us some context so the audience knows who you are? >>>