Location based Information Streams

Applications
Title	Location based Information Streams
Author(s)	Rui Barradas Pereira.
Level	Basic
Year of Publication	2011

Location based Information Streams consists on pushing information to the user depending on its location and on the assumption that this information will be useful and welcomed by the user.

The information provided by these services can vary from information of nearest services or stores to alerts on traffic jams and location based advertising. In some cases the information is provided without user request while on other the information is provided on request.

Application Architecture

Location based Information Services depend normally on a architecture that includes a user mobile device and an information server usually accessible throught the internet.

The user mobile phone is usually a mobile phone with internet access, localization capabilities and a rich user interface.

The process usually followed by these applications is:

• The user mobile device can make requests and send the user position to the information server.

• The information server receives the user requests and position, determines whether there is revelevant information to provide to the user and sends it to the user

• The user mobile device presents the informantion to the user.

Variants to this architecture are:

• SMS can be used for comunication between user device and and information server.

• Local databases can be used instead of an online server.

• Information can be either provided on demand or "pushed" to the user upon some event such as entering or leaving a certain area.