Sprint-Nextel has announced a new services (July 17, 2007) enabling users to access social networking sites, and letting customers locate each other using GPS technology.

Impact on Galileo-Radar (GR)

GR will have a significant role in the emerging trend and market drive for social networking and “friend finding” applications.

GR is different in the following ways:

1.GR points to the direction the “friend”, eliminating the need to look at a map. On the Sprint-Nextel system you can only see locations on a map.

2. GR is not limited to “registered friends”. GR will enable finding new friends with similar interests. Sprint-Nextel system is limited to registered friends.

3. GR will not rely on cell phone communication but rather on WiMax, reducing costs dramatically. Sprint-Nextel service costs a monthly fee of $2-$3 plus Internet access time used.

4. GR will alert automatically when a friend is within proximity. Sprint-Nextel requires the user to set up communication, access the Internet, access the application, and look at a map. 

…read more at Mashable - social networking news

Gartner’s report titled “The Next Round of Consumer Technologies Will Soon Hit the Enterprise” seems to be in line with what Galileo-Radar consortium is developing.

Physical location and orientation data will be one of several keys to information technology business growth in the next several years
says market-research firm Gartner Inc. (GR is all about location and orientation in real world social networking context)

It will be consumer-driven innovation that continues to move. (GR is all about consumer driven in business-consummer networking context)

Within five years, what Gartner terms “augmented reality” (GR head up display is all about augmented reality where information is super imposed over real world objects) will be one of the consumer-driven innovations. Augmented reality, used for many years in niche applications,  provides an overlay of relevant digital information by automatically sensing the physical location and orientation of the user. (GR basics)  Routine availability of location-based sensing and augmented reality will lead to new enterprise applications that are location- and context-sensitive, Gartner says.

“In the emerging world of ‘permanent beta’ innovation led by Web-native companies such as Google, the dominant approach is to throw a new capability out to potential users, see what they do with it, then figure out how to monazite it,” Fenn said. “This fertile breeding ground enables a raw idea to be refined rapidly. (GR will use the spiral development method, described in the D2-Golantech document)

The areas where most innovation will occur will be those relevant to individuals and small workgroups, including personal productivity, communications and social networking. (GR, GR and again GR)

Next Three Years:
Web Platforms—the use of Web-based application services will start in the area of personal productivity,  and spread to enterprise applications. (GR Arena for web based services) Just as “mashups” use third-party data, (GR Meshup as described in D2-Sonarion) presentation and development tools to create original functionality, enterprises will increasingly benefit from the data and application services provided by nontraditional enterprise providers. (GR vision of recurring revenue as described in D0-Galileo-Radar).

Community Communication Platforms—enterprise users have been accustomed to communicating through private channels, such as telephone, e-mail or IM, and attempts to move to a shared collaboration space have, for the most part, failed. Highly successful consumer community sites, such as Facebook, MySpace, and Cyworld, operate under the opposite assumption—that postings and communications are public and visible by default, unless you specify otherwise. (GR arena and concept of GR social and business networking)  In the collaboration space, the migration of alternate operating assumptions such as these will be as important as specific functionality.

Five Years Plus:
Augmented Reality—As discussed previously, location-based sensing and augmented reality that are just now developing in the consumer space will spread to enterprise applications such as location- and context-sensitive information. (GR in five years)

Gartner predictions are a tremendous back wind to the GR vision.
…read more at GPS World

US patent number 6,618,593 was sold for US$2.6 million at the live intellectual property auction in Chicago This patent covers a location based match-making technology. The system, working with location-aware devices connected to a remote server, allows users to make connections with other users based upon specified preferences and their distance. For example, a user can setup a profile indicating the types of people he would be interested in meeting. When he comes nearby another user matching this profile, a notification is sent to both. The field of application of this patent is essentially mobile social networking and mobile dating. Both markets are soon to explode, with million of users on the verge to shift from PC to cell phone to manage their digital social life.

Impact on Galileo-Radar (GR)
It is clear that Galileo-Radar will operate in a hot market. GR consortium is working on patenting several novel innovations, but GR will have to licensee several patents owned by third party companies.

…read more at GPS Business News

…read the patent at US Patent Office