Thursday, March 25, 2010

Six things to know about remotely locating phones with Veriplace

1. Remote location APIs are great for server-based apps. Web sites; mobile web sites; apps written on platforms like Facebook or Salesforce; IVR and SMS apps. We get asked if remote location is useful for native mobile app development. The answer is, "it depends."

2. You can locate some phones for free. Others cost money. If you are content to focus on remotely locating smartphones, use our "Freedom Mode" (free for most developers). If you need more coverage or have other special needs, "Professional Modes" provide access to every phone on supported carriers (at a cost of pennies per locate).

3. Our APIs use OAuth. Veriplace treats location as a protected resource, something that requires permission from the user before it can be accessed. The OAuth protocol provides a framework for obtaining permission to access such protected resources. OAuth is becoming a well known standard, and library implementations are available for most development environments.

4. Locating somebody requires user consent. Always. Veriplace handles this for you. Your users will be asked - by us - whether they are comfortable sharing location with your app. Once you have permission, you won't have to ask again until the user revokes it.

5. Apps in development are restricted in who they can locate. We can't let the general public share their location with your app until it is certified. However, you can whitelist phones you want to use for testing purposes. You list the phone number in your developer account, and the corresponding user is given a chance to opt in to "developer mode." They can then share their location with your app.

6. The general public can begin sharing location with your app as soon as it's certified by Veriplace. Certification is usually quick and painless as long as you've followed guidelines and are transparent about how you are using location. When your app is ready, find the "publish app" link within the My Apps section of your developer account. We look forward to seeing what you have built!

Monday, March 22, 2010

T-Mobile joins Veriplace, 2/3 of all phones in the USA now locatable with a single API

T-Mobile is now the third major tier 1 carrier to go live on Veriplace, joining AT&T and Sprint. We are thrilled to bring this unprecedented capability to our developer partners.

You can immediately log into your Veriplace Developer Account at developer.veriplace.com and provision and locate T-Mobile test phones. Developer partners who have commercially deployed services can now add T-Mobile phones to their list of locatable devices… no additional work required.

As part of this launch, we have updated the Veriplace Developer Terms of Service. If you are already a Veriplace developer, your continued use of the Veriplace Location Platform indicates your acceptance of these updated Terms of Service.

If you're not yet a Veriplace developer, visit developer.veriplace.com to get started.