Skyhook Developers Blog

Find My Car for Android Integrates Skyhook

Maggie Taylor — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 15:28:40 +0000

Find My Car Lite and Find My Car Full, car locator apps on the Android platform, today released new versions using Skyhook for location services. The apps allow you to save the location of where you have parked your car, and then help you find your way back using location services. Features include parking notes, parking timer, compass and walking directions.

See screenshots and details about the app here.

The app can be downloaded today in the Android Marketplace.

Skyhook Releases SDK 4.0

Maggie Taylor — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 22:35:38 +0000

Today Skyhook released version 4.0 of the its Core Engine SDK, making a significant step forward in performance for users.

Highlights in version 4.0 SDK:

Better accuracy: Inertial navigation using accelerometer
Longer battery life: Significant power optimization on all platforms
Reduced bandwidth and data utilization
Integration with CDMA cell location

In addition there are numerous minor improvements and bug fixes.

Download here today.

go2 Adds Skyhook to Android app

Maggie Taylor — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 18:30:57 +0000

go2 released its newest version on Friday, and is now using Skyhook to power location on the app. go2 is a mobile entertainment guide with movies, concerts, food and daily picks from its editorial network – plus sports, horoscopes and news. The app offers all of this content at a local level: showing the best content around the user’s current location. go2 local content and local search helps your users find what’s happening in their area. The app helps users discover what to do and where to go.

The app can be downloaded today for free in the Android Marketplace. Skyhook offers a publicly available SDK for Android developers, available here.

ActionComplete Teams Up with Skyhook on Their Android App

Maggie Taylor — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:48:26 +0000

Today ActionComplete released Android version 6.3 with Skyhook technology integrated for improved positioning. ActionComplete is a task management solution based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology.

With ActionComplete, a user can attach tasks to physical locations, or Places. Location-based notifications can be enabled to let the user know about location-specific tasks when he or she approaches the location linked to the tasks. Skyhook’s WPS technology constitutes the foundation of the location-based functionality in ActionComplete allowing accurate GPS-less position identification.

With all these features ActionComplete creates an entirely new category of productivity applications - geo-social task managers. Download ActionComplete in the Android Marketplace today. Skyhook Wireless offers a publicly available SDK for Android developers, available here.

Skyhook Joins Navteq Network for Developers for Local Faves Webinar

Maggie Taylor — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:02:54 +0000

On August 24th at 2:00 pm EST, Skyhook will present Local Faves to the Navteq Network for Developers (NN4D). The Webinar is titled Add Location & Social Features to Any iPhone App. Our George Polak, lead developer on Local Faves, will be joined by Jeff Wagner, Navteq Resource and Community Service Manager. The two will walk the group through a background on Local Faves and how to implement it into iPhone apps. The session will review examples of innovation location-based iPhone apps and discuss what growth of location and location-based apps means. They will include a brief coding session to demonstrate how three simple lines of code can add location and multiple community features into your existing iPhone apps.

Skyhook Releases Local Faves SDK 1.1

Maggie Taylor — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:47:02 +0000

Local Faves 1.1 is now available for download: https://www.skyhookwireless.com/localfaves/register/index.php.

New features and updates in this release include:

Profile Page now shows own activity
Ability to check-in with Foursquare when associating a venue with a fave
Ability to create new venues (perfect for users in more rural areas)
Ability to specify a custom username when not signed into Facebook (prevents “anonymous” tags within your app).
Better heatmap generation
Better performance in large map areas
More delegate callbacks
Twitter component now using Oauth
Numerous minor fixes and UI tweaks

Although the previous release of Local Faves will still work, it is highly recommended that you upgrade to 1.1. Twitter will completely drop Basic Authentication support by August 16th, so any Local Faves apps should be upgraded by then.

Many of these updates were based on feedback we received from users like you, so please continue to send us your ideas and feature requests.

Also, just a reminder that Skyhook’s Local Faves User Group can be found here. You can ask/answer questions with other users, share ideas on how to use Local Faves in your apps and interact directly with our engineers.

For those of you who have launched apps using Local Faves, be sure to let us know when your apps are live in the App Store so we can help promote them and include you in media opportunities (some of our Local Faves users have been featured in articles in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Mashable). Press coverage can directly impact download numbers, so please let us know when you are live!

We hope you enjoy the new features.

Skyhook Uses SpotRank to Map CMA Mobile Activity

Maggie Taylor — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:49:38 +0000

Skyhook, UDig, and the Country Music Association have collaborated to create a real-time map of geotagged mobile activity around the 2010 CMA Music Festival in Nashville from June 10 - 13.

The map will use Skyhook’s new data intelligence service SpotRank, which identifies the density of people in predefined urban square-block areas worldwide at any hour, any day of the week.

Visit http://skyhookwireless.com/spotrank/CMA.php to see Foursquare checkins, Tweets, Flickr photos, Music Fest concerts, and a heat map of all the mobile location requests coming out of Nashville. You can choose the speed at which the map plays, or just put it on autoloop and sit back and watch. Move the time slider to show 8:30 pm on Thursday (6/11). You will see a huge jump in activity at the LP Field concert stage, around the same time that Alan Jackson took the stage. People were checking into the concert via Foursquare, commenting on the show on Twitter, and tagging photos like this one:

Over the course of festival SpotRank will give observers an exciting new view into the way that mobile device users interact with location-aware apps and how they move around a one-time event.
But looking forward, Music Fest serves as an example for how people are starting to use location-aware mobile apps and devices all over the world.

To use SpotRank for your event, contact spotrank@skyhookwireless.com

Skyhook Releases SDK Version 3.5

Maggie Taylor — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 18:24:57 +0000

We are pleased to announce the release of Skyhook Core Location SDK version 3.5.

Skyhook Core Location now provides hybrid positioning, incorporating data from GPS, Wi-Fi, and cell tower scans when available, across all supported platforms. By using Skyhook Core Location SDK in your app you will always get the most accurate position possible, in the least time, with the lowest power consumption.

In this release:

Power efficiency - multiple optimizations to reduce power consumption
Hybrid switching - improved automatic switching between GPS and Wi-Fi to ensure most accurate fix, with least time to fix
Error estimation - more accurate error estimates
Introduction of hybrid positioning (Wi-Fi and GPS combined) on Nokia/Symbian devices

Download it here today.

Local Faves SDK Now Available

Maggie Taylor — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:02:19 +0000

Skyhook put out a wide release of its Local Faves SDK for iPhone today. Developers can now visit our site and download the full SDK version and begin integrating it into their iPhone apps. Local Faves adds engaging location-aware features, like content tagging, checking-in, slick map views and user rankings to any app on this platform.

This initial release includes the abilities to tag content, check in on Foursquare, follow users, see maps of activity around you, view trends in any area, enable push notifications, publish content to Twitter Flickr and Facebook, and more.

Download now http://www.skyhookwireless.com/register/index.php

Skyhook Awards Prizes to Cal Poly App Competition Winners

Maggie Taylor — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:51:16 +0000

Skyhook recently awarded two iPod Touches to the winners of an Android app competition held in an Android app development class at Cal Poly. More info about the class is available here. The two students developed an app called Reception Mapper, which shows actual data coverage of carriers across the US. The app uses the Skyhook Android SDK, which replaces native Android location with Skyhook’s Location Engine, to obtain exact user location. The app can show signal strength or network type carriers have in a user’s current area.

Check out Reception Mapper here.

Skyhook is excited to be provide students with the tools to create the best location-based apps possible, and to foster the invention of innovative uses of location.