Brisbane-mobile location-based software developer Locatrix Communications has taken out a 2009 Australian Computing Society Queensland ICT Award for the Whereis® Everyone system they developed with Telstra.

Locatrix Communications CEO Mark White said they were delighted to win the Telecommunications Award for the Whereis® Everyone web and mobile phone application that allows friends to locate each other and find places to meet using their Telstra mobile phones.

“The system really is fantastic and allows people to find friends and convenient locations where they can catch up,” Mr White said.

Locatrix, which operates from Queensland Government owned i.lab incubator at Toowong, first developed the mobile Whereis® Everyone application in 2006 and last year helped Telstra launch the web-based version of the application. 

i.lab Chief Executive Officer Anne-Marie Birkill congratulated Locatrix on receiving the award.  ”i.lab works closely with all our client companies to grow their innovative ideas into strong and sustainable businesses and Locatrix is a perfect ambassador for our program,” Ms Birkill said.

“In their three years at i.lab, Locatrix has developed and commercialised their product and established a fantastic partnership with one of Australia’s premier telecommunications companies,” she said.

Ms Birkill said by providing flexible office space, mentoring by industry experienced professionals and entrepreneurs, skills development and networking opportunities and business development support, i.lab was encouraging investment in new technology-based companies and creating knowledge-based jobs for Queenslanders. 

Mr White commented that the success of Whereis® Everyone was down to the exciting range of uses for consumers including being able to share locations with friends and family, help them connect and share experiences as well as find nearby places to meet, like at a coffee shop, restaurant or bar. 

“Whereis® Everyone can send you alerts when your friends or family members are near, and allows you to see any or all of their locations on a map, either on a single mobile screen or from the website,” Mr White said. 

He said the application works on any Telstra Next G^TMmobile.

Mr White said winning the award was fantastic recognition for the Locatrix team and was also evidence of the rapidly growing interest in mobile social networking applications beyond sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Mr White said that unlike tracking applications, Whereis® Everyone gives subscribers full control over whom they share their location with.

“Locatrix and Telstra take the privacy of users very seriously,” he said, adding that safeguards were used to make sure no mobile user is located without their consent.

For more information about Locatrix visit www.locatrix.com and for more information about Whereis® Everyone visit http://everyone.whereis.com.

ENDS

For more information contact i.lab CEO Anne-Marie Birkill on (07) 33279802 or 0419 789 401 or Locatrix CEO Mark White on 0438 900 880 or email mark@locatrix.com.

2009 ACS Qld Telecommunications Award

A major theme from this year’s Mobile World Congress, and a topic I hear repeated when speaking with mobile operators around the world, is how to create “value” in the mobile internet beyond data carriage. (And if you’ve noticed the price of mobile data reducing in every market worldwide, you aren’t alone).

This month we are profiling Locatrix/XLF, our hosted enabler-access and application framework solution. Mobile “enablers” – network elements that provide location, subscriber identity and profile, SMS/MMS messaging and charging – are powerful network assets that can create tremendous value for an operator and their subscribers, through facilitating personalized, interactive and monetizable consumer experiences.

While these enablers of course exist in mobile networks, the cost of opening them up for access by mobile application developers, either directly or via middleware or some sort of service delivery platform (SDP) can be an expensive proposition. We’ve seen VAS business cases shot down because of extensive capital expense requirements, or through provisioning and management costs that make consumer services commercially unviable.

That’s why we’re offering Locatrix/XLF to mobile operators as a hosted, capex-free solution; as the foundation for our consumer applications (friend finder, family minder, location-enhanced marketing and social networking) we’ve already proven the value in enabling multiple applications utilising the same enabler access framework. And by encapsulating the business logic – per-event charging, subscriptions, trial periods and usage caps – within the framework, operators can also launch more “revenue-safe” initiatives, targeted at specifically focused subscriber demographics. We’re also participating in the GSMA’s OneAPI initiative to ensure compliance with the relevant industry standards.

The Locatrix/XLF hosted solution reduces both costs and time-to-market, meaning our customer can design and launch VAS solutions faster, and realise ARPU growth sooner. In one case we’re reducing a six-month initiative cycle (from concept to launch) to just six weeks.

In the current mobile market environment, we believe that operators will be under increasing pressure to both launch new services and reduce capital spending.  Locatrix/XLF is our argument that the two objectives need not be mutually exclusive.  Send me a note if you are interested in exploring Locatrix/XLF further.

G’day from Brisbane, where I’ve returned after the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the GSM Association’s annual conference, exhibition, and ‘economy-defying’ gathering of the entire mobile industry.

Rather than re-hash the news items from the conference itself, I thought we’d devote this month’s newsletter to a rundown on what for us were the top four mobile location topics to emerge last month. Read more

I’m travelling for a couple of weeks, so haven’t been as active on the blog as I ought to have been. However, the new Blackberry was working overtime last week when Google announced Latitude, the friend-finding capability within Google maps. Thanks to all of my friends who called, e-mailed, or texted me to let me know…….there were a lot of you! Read more

I’ve spent a lot of the weekend playing with my new BlackBerry Bold. It’s a very neat device. After three days I’m wondering how I ever lived without it. Read more