Perhaps it is the time of year, late spring/early summer, as the weather gets nicer and people become more active socially and physically that brings about in many people the need to find new activities, change their eating habits, or eat more healthy fruits and vegetables.  This week, the app store gained a few new applications that resonate with that fun and healthier drive that many get, and they all use location as their chief function.

The first is The Corona Summerbration. Corona is synonymous with nice weather, so it seems no surprise that they have released an application that locates bars serving Corona nearest to the user’s current location, in addition to displaying a new reason to get together with friends every day of the summer (or 90 days) and celebrate the season.  There is also a function to send out an email to any contact letting them know the location of where to meet up.  It is a great vehicle for Corona to promote their products and it seems likely that other beer distributors might follow their lead in the future.

FarmFresh NYC is the guide to finding locally harvested fruits, vegetables, fish and shellfish.  The application notifies the user of what is in season and the best place within the five boroughs of New York City to find them, if that store is open, and maps the location making it easy for the user to find.  FarmFresh is currently only available in NYC, but they will soon be releasing applications based in Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans and San Francisco.

3^rd Whale Mobile’s mission is to mobilize the green revolution by providing a database of 25,000+ businesses in six different categories (food, retail, eco-travel, healing & wellness, transportation and services) that run completely or partially green.  All business are also located within walking, biking, or mass transit distance to the user’s location to continue to help improve the environment even further.

By Courtney Teeling

Skyhook released a report today detailing some very startling distinctions between the Blackberry App World store, Apple App Store and Android Marketplace.  The most astounding fact was that Blackberry LBS apps are a full four times more expensive than similar apps on iPhone and Android.  While the average price for an LBS app on Blackberry is $13.60, average prices on iPhone and Android are $3.60 and $0.84, respectively.  We found 17 different types of apps that use location. The most popular location aware apps are Travel, Navigation, and Social Networking, but new types of apps, like Music, Finance, and Games, are also integrating location in new ways.

The Skyhook report also detailed the growing popularity of location apps by showing the surge in Skyhook location lookups per device, 5.4 per day in October and 6.1 per day in April.  This proves location is a core functionality and a integral part of a user’s everyday device use.

We expect to see a growing variety of location applications in all stores in the future, and it will be interesting to see if Blackberry will alter their prices to be more in line with its competitors.  Apple seems to be setting the standard as the most popular and successful app store to date and it may be difficult for future app stores to defy Apple’s model and achieve success.

For the Location Aware App Report, Skyhook will systematically research location‐aware applications in Apple’s App Store, Google’s Android Marketplace and Blackberry’s AppWorld, and will publish the results of this research monthly. This report will include data on location‐aware apps from new stores as they are released (e.g. Nokia’s Ovi Store, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Marketplace).

The full report can be accessed at here: http://www.locationrevolution.com/stats/skyhookaprilreport.pdf

LocationRevolution.com is a new site that serves as a go-to guide for location-aware app information.  It includes featured LBS apps, comparative videos, stats and charts, developer info and much more.

This week was all about city guides and tours using the location services developed by Skyhook Wireless.  We have previously see the “At A Glance” city guides from BeeLoop SL, but there was quite a surge this past week from the developer as there are now over 20 cities in Europe and the United States that can be discovered with this application. While the “At a Glance” guides focus primarily on points of interest throughout the city, the city guides from Dubbele.com are street level maps that let you find important places such as ATM machines, parking, restrooms, etc. and include high interest points such as museums and historic places.  There are over 100 of these apps developed for cities all over the world such as Los Angeles, Melbourne and Warsaw.

Another interesting trend this week was the introduction of applications that service information regarding the recent Swine Flu Pandemic.  There were plenty of games designed around the scare or applications describing preventative actions, but both Swine Flu Tracker and Swine Flu Tracker Map use current location to show where the reported cases are in relation to the user.

Finally, the ultimate wedding application has been designed for those getting married and trying to organize the event without the help of a wedding planner.  WeddingWire uses geo-location to research and locate 20 different categories, from everything from the cake to the band to the venue, to help a bride design the wedding of her dreams.  The app features comparisons of local wedding professionals, read reviews of past clients, and call vendors directly from your iPhone.

By Courtney Teeling

The world of purposeful, clever and entertaining applications using Skyhook’s patented location based technology continue to grow every week, and once again, there are several great new apps to mention.  The first is Best Buy Weekly Deals.   Best Buy is just the latest major corporation to realize the importance of including location into applications they introduce in the app store.  Best Buy Weekly Deals shows the best deals of the week and includes the nearest store, eliminating the extra step of looking up stores by zip code that a user of a device without location awareness would have to take.

Call Nearest is simple: type a business name into the application and it will find the nearest match and automatically dial that company.  This works, for example, if you have just left the doctor and need the closest pharmacy to fill a prescription, or if you are out running errands and need to get an oil change.   If you are on the way to a friend’s house and need a last minute gift, you could look up a florist, liquor, store, etc.  The search works for both name specific locations, such as Blockbuster, or generic like video rental.

Tweet Globe brings Twitter to the next level.  Instead of following someone on Twitter, you can actually follow their location as well.  The application offers a geographical representation of everyone you follow on Twitter.  The application features also include posting tweets, replying to tweets, and viewing websites.

Super Twiddler is similar to the application Urban Spoon, but with a twist.  Rather than just locate the closest places to eat, Super Twiddler also locates the closest activities and events based on mood, location and timeframe.  Activities include rock climbing, bars, libraries, museums, etc and 15 different mood options to choose from.  The application also works in every major U.S. city and also includes Yelp reviews!

By Courtney Teeling

The month of May in the app store has started off with roughly 45,000 applications, and 2,400 of those are geo-location based.  As usual, there was no lack of new and unique ways for developers to figure out how to incorporate location into their applications.  Here are a few of the ones that stood out this week…

After nearly a year of new applications helping to find your closest gas station, coffee shop, bank, and practically every type of business imaginable, the developers from MobileApp Topia  have managed to introduce us to iWaffles, proving location based services can be applied to the most specific of requests.  iWaffles is an application that will locate waffles closest by.  The app provides over 5,000 locations throughout the United States and includes major waffle chains like Denny’s, IHOP and Waffle House.

SportsAttendant will display the routes of sporting events like cycling, running, and triathlons and then will use LBS-functionality to coordinate a meeting point with the athlete you are cheering on.  SportsAttendant’s features also include calculating distance to the athlete, location tracking and calculation of transit time of the athlete.

Newsflash is customized news most current to the user’s location.  The application also can display national and global news.  The application is very user friendly because in addition to displaying geo-located news, it breaks that news down into categories such as business, sports, entertainment, health, etc. allowing the user to get news specified to their preferences.

Finally, at last, the ability to tag a tweet with GPS coordinates has arrived.  TweetGPS is used to keep your Twitter friends up to date on your location.  You can choose how accurate you want your position to be, how far you have to move and how long to wait before sending an update.

By Courtney Teeling