Bipper has just launched their free personal safety app bSafe on BlackBerry. Already available for iOS and Android, bSafe broadcasts text-based SOS messages to your pre-selected contacts along with your GPS location with the press of a single button.
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Tag: Location
Augmented Reality browser Wikitude has been updated to version 6.0.13 on BlackBerry App World. Augmented Reality takes advantage of the GPS, magnetometer and camera found in BlackBerry 7 devices to show all sorts of content displayed through your phone’s screen on specific locations.
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At the Where 2.0 conference it was announced that Apple was secretly collecting the location of every iPhone and weren’t telling users. This led to a Senate hearing of Apple and Google execs who had to explain themselves and answer to why they are collecting the data without the user’s knowledge. Recently, SmrtGuard decided to do some digging around to see if RIM collects this same data for a BlackBerry, and yes they do. The difference is that RIM does it in a very transparent way that users can opt out of, which is exactly how Apple and Google should have done it.
Many of you have noticed this option but in case you haven’t, go to Options > Device > Location Settings and scroll down a little. There, you’ll see the Enable GPS option with a message that says: “Anonymously collects data to improve the speed and accuracy of future location services.” The intent is pretty clear and RIM is building a database of location data in order to be able to improve their software. RIM is explicit that the data is anonymous and give the user the ability to disable. Again, if Apple and Google had been this open about their location data collection, it probably wouldn’t have turned into such a debacle.
Read more over at SmrtGuard’s Resource Center where they’ll have regular content in the mobile security space.
RIM has been working on the BlackBerry Messenger SDK so developers could leverage the mobile social platform. BBM boasts 35 million users and has been gaining momentum as a platform ever since it launched in early 2006.
Telmap was the first to integrate BBM into their real-time location app since RIM’s announcement of the platform last September.
Telmap uses BBM to manage friends and permissions, then the Telmap Mobile Location Companion app displays the location. The Location Companion app allows users to navigate to their friends’ location either by car or walking.
Today at BlackBerry World, RIM announced that the BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 smartphones will be shipping with Augmented Reality software Wikitude. This will be one of the first utilizations of the new Bold series’ digital compass and will allow users to browse the over 150 million Augmented Reality items already in their system.
The Wikitude World Browser has won the “best Augmented Reality browser” in 2009 and 2010 by readers of Augmented Planet.
I look forward to see what sort of apps and use cases come out of the new Bolds’ AR-friendly features. The influx of BlackBerry users into the AR space will mean a lot more user generated content. It will be interesting to see AR leveraged by BBM’s colossal user base.
Tourality – GPS Multiplayer Game (featured on BBC’s The Gadget Show)
Tourality is a location-based scavenger hunt game that you can play with up to 40 players. The game challenges you to a race to reach different locations and collect gold. Players can steal gold from you too so beware. As you go through the game trying to find the various goals, you can also use gold to buy gadgets which give you an advantage in the game. For example, you can spend 200 gold on the Blinder gadget, which blinds your opponents for 2 minutes, allowing you to get a lead on them.
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