December 2011

L-to-R: Sherwin, Reuben, Mark, George, Kelvin (front, L-R) Lucas, Sam & Andrew

While the Locatrix team works variously in Australia, Singapore, and Brazil, it was great opportunity to have everyone together for a couple of weeks in December – so we had to celebrate 2011 and take an obligatory group photograph!

On that note, we’d all like to take this opportunity to thank our customers and partners for their support throughout the year, and wish everyone a happy and safe festive season as well as a prosperous 2012.

We were thrilled that Lucas Brown – now part of the engineering team at Locatrix – was one of three recipients of an “Outstanding Contribution Award” from Griffith University last month.

Lucas Brown accepts IAP award with Locatrix CEO Mark White

Lucas joined the Locatrix team through the company’s participation in Griffith University’s Industry Affiliate Program, and spent the second half of the year working on a project extending our social analytics platform. He was nominated for the award by Locatrix CEO Mark White, who was thrilled that Lucas accepted a full-time position with the company as soon as his degree was completed.

“The Griffith IAP scheme is beneficial both for students as well as small innovation companies like Locatrix”, said White. “It allows us to identify talented engineering students and see how they perform in a real-world environment. Lucas clearly passed the test with flying colours!”

Lucas is now working on a variety of projects for Locatrix, including new products for 2012. Locatrix looks forward to continuing it’s participation in the Griffith IAP scheme next year.

Locatrix CEO Mark White will present at next week’s OnMobile event, held at the Fox Theatre in Redwood City.  OnMobile 2011 is where the top venture capital-backed mobile companies disrupting the consumer and enterprise worlds join forces with the big players pioneering the new mobile device and operating system platforms.

This two day executive event features high-level debates on what’s hot in the emerging mobile market and how these innovations are disrupting how companies and consumers work, play, advertise, and connect.  Locatrix will feature in a CEO showcase presentation on Wednesday 15th June at 10:45am.

The company will be sharing our vision for Locatrix/SNX, a disruptive technology solution allowing mobile network operators to re-engage with and monetise their subscribers through the power of social networking.

Mark White is excited by the opportunities OnMobile 2011 will provide for the company. “We’ve received an outstanding reception for Locatrix/SNX, both from our deployments in Australia with Telstra and also from prospective customers in South Asia. Showcasing our innovations in the venture capital heartland of Silicon Valley gives us an opportunity to promote the company and also benchmark our capabilities against the best and brightest companies in mobile.”

Following OnMobile 2011, White will head to Singapore where the company’s Callertones Facebook success with Telstra is a finalist in the Asia Communications Awards, to be announced at a gala function at Raffles Hotel on June 22nd.

You can follow our progress here in the Locatrix Blog.

Telstra used our mPoll solution in May to complete a survey of users of Whereis Everyone, the award-winning mobile location-based service from Locatrix Communications.

mPoll is an innovative mobile customer feedback tool, which allows for the speedy distribution and collection of multiple-choice survey responses from subscribers. The surveys are announced via SMS, and an intuitive mobile interface allows for single-click responses.

While Telstra primarily used mPoll to understand the current market demographics of Whereis Everone users (whether business or personal mobile users, and who they use the service to locate), they also added questions about other location-based services and features they’d like to see added to Whereis Everyone in future.

The survey responses are of course commercial in confidence, but mPoll itself again demonstrated amazing effectiveness in gathering feedback: survey response rates were over 30%, with a survey completion rate of over 90%.

Locatrix will be running additional surveys for Telstra and other operators over the coming months, but if you are interested in learning more about mPoll, please contact us or set up a free trial account at mpoll.me.

We’ve been noting with interest the current media debate over how Apple is (or isn’t) using customer location as derived through the iPhone, and wanted to add a brief Locatrix perspective to the mix.

Apple’s response to the issue is that the anonymized usage data allows them to better create location-centric experiences for their customers. Of course the privacy community is asking questions about how anonymous this data really is, and whether ownership of such data should actually be granted to Apple.

It’s worth noting how Apple actually uses data of this nature. Apple provides a positioning API within iOS that allows developers to determine the location of a particular handset, usually to provide some relevant content or data to the handset. The positioning itself is generated using a combination of GPS fix (when a clear view of the sky is possible) but more immediately a derivation of position using attributes of the WiFi or cellular network towers that the device can currently see.

The cellular tower data – latitude, longitude, and azimuth (or antenna direction) – isn’t usually data that network operators release freely. More typically, companies like Apple (and also Skyhook Wireless) utilise GPS-equipped devices to record radio signatures of specific GPS-verified locations, so that when the same signatures are noted from another handset, an approximate location can be calculated without necessarily requiring a clear GPS fix (which, from a cold start, can take up to 45 seconds even with a clear view of the sky).

Apple’s argument is that by gaining access to a larger amount of customer data – after all, there are literally millions of us using iPhones around the world now – will help them improve the performance of this radio-signature positioning method, benefiting all customers.

Now, without wading into the data ownership debate specifically, there’s a really important distinction that can be made here with regards to the usage of technology to passively (i.e. without user initiation) locate a handset.

There’s a good reason that MNOs don’t freely release positioning data, nor access to positioning systems – they can’t. Under each country’s telecommunications regulatory environment, customer data is sacrosanct, and misuse is directly punishable through fines and/or license loss. But in the broader Internet world – one in which we freely click-to-agree licenses and terms-of-use without reading them, there’s much less onus on clarity for where and how these data rights are used.

Within Locatrix, we’ve focused an enormous amount of effort on maintaining the absolute highest standard of data protection, both from the physical domain, in data security within our hosting solutions, but also in providing a proven user privacy model within our XLF and Uandme solutions.

These solutions allow our customers – leading mobile network operators like Telstra – to confidently provide location and social networking capabilities to their subscribers, knowing that at all times each individual’s privacy rights are completely protected.

It’s just unfortunate that the broader web-services world isn’t governed by similar legislation to the regulatory frameworks securing communications industries.

Locatrix is again playing host to an enthusiastic internship program in 2011, with Griffith University final-year Engineering student Kelvin Leung becoming a recent addition to the Locatrix team.

Kelvin is working full-time at Locatrix throughout the first semester, and is contributing to a number of Android-focused initiatives, including the development of an Android version of Guy Fishing, our novel location-based dating game.

Kelvin joins Locatrix through our participation in Griffith’s Industrial Affiliates Program (IAP), a scheme designed to integrate undergraduate and postgraduate students into the workplace. Through the IAP, companies can engage talented final year Engineering, Information Technology, Multimedia, and Science and Environment students ready to contribute to their organisation.

Reuben So, Product Analyst at Locatrix, is an enthusiastic supporter of the internship program, and thinks that Kelvin is learning quickly. “We’re providing Kelvin with guidance, access to devices and development tools, but also with real-world problems to solve – something he wouldn’t necessarily have just from university courses”, says So. “Because we are creating brand new product ideas, we also provide him with insights into the innovation process, which will be invaluable experience.”

For his part, Kelvin’s enjoying the learning experience at Locatrix. “Developing Android OS applications is a great challenge, but one which has great interest to me. Being supported by the other engineers has also been tremendously helpful.”

This isn’t the first time that Locatrix has participated in the IAP – Reuben So himself is a graduate of the program, joining Locatrix as an employee immediately after the conclusion of his internship in 2009!

Last month’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona saw a return to buoyancy in the mobile industry, with the GSMA reporting record attendance figures. Delegates were literally bombarded with industry news: Nokia’s alliance with Microsoft, a plethora of LTE trials around the globe, and absolutely unparalleled interest in developer programs from all the major handset and network players.

One such initiative is the GSMA’s OneAPI project, of which Locatrix is a long-standing supporter. The OneAPI (“One” stands for Open Network Enablers) standard provides a baseline reference for HTTP/RESTful APIs to access core network services such as location, messaging and charging, and the GSMA’s AppGarage booth in Hall 7 at the Congress was a busy thoroughfare for interested operators and developers.

Locatrix was delighted to again be asked by the GSMA to support the program by running demonstrations on the booth, and gave hundreds of presentations to delegates of our Developer Portal solution, which provides an immediate application support program for network APIs.

Significantly, we also saw massive interest in our social shopfront solutions, as deployed by Telstra and other operators.  These, like all our hosted application services provide operators with a new engagement and promotional channel to their customers for services, content and other offers, producing numerous ARPU and retention benefits.

We’ve been busy since Barcelona fielding interest from operators in Asia and Europe for these solutions, and also preparing for new deployments. Please get in touch if you’d like to learn more about any of our OneAPI or social networking solutions for mobile operators.

Telstra has again chosen Locatrix as a solution partner with the launch this week of  Blurtl™, an innovative new service which lets users post 30-second audio clips to their Facebook walls, or those of their friends, using only their mobile phone.

The following DDB-produced video commercial shows Blurtl in action.

Based on the Locatrix Chime solution, Blurtl users simply dial a number (in this case it’s 0458 BLURTL) and leave a brief message which is then posted to their Facebook wall. A customized Facebook application (below) allows users to select friends to also receive the audio posts.

The finished Telstra solution is evidence of growing interest in the SNX application framework developed by Locatrix, according to CEO Mark White. “SNX lets us take mobile network SMS, location, billing, and now subscriber voice channels,” says White, “and pair them with a secure social network identity to create a near-limitless range of mobile service opportunities.”

For more information on Blurtl, Chime or the range of Locatrix solutions and services, please contact us today.