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.

Push vs Pull Services

There are 2 main variants of this kind of applications:

• Pull Services: The user uses the mobile application to request information based on its location. Examples of this applications are applications where the user requests the nearest ATMs and the information server responds with a list of the closest ATMs, enventually with navigation instrutions to get there.

• Push Services: The position of the user is monitored by the information server and when the user position triggers determined conditions (such as entering a determined area) the information is sent automatically to the user. Normally the user activites the services and normally can configure the conditions in which information is pushed to his device. These services might require that an application is kept running in the background feeding the user position to the information server. Examples of such applications are advertising applications that send discount coupons to users in the proximity of a store.

These kind of services can raise privacy concerns specially Push Services since the position of the user might be shared with third-parties without user consent. To protect the user from this some countries have passed legislation to garantee that the position of the user is only used with its consent and that no messages are sent unless the user explicitly activates the service.