Veriplace gives developers access to AT&T location

Big news! As announced today at the AT&T Developer Summit in Las Vegas, AT&T is opening up access to their location infrastructure as part of a trial program with Veriplace.

Like many tier 1 carriers, AT&T has the ability to remotely locate any AT&T phone (see for example AT&T FamilyMap). AT&T is now making this capability available to third party developers via Veriplace. This more than doubles the number of phones locatable using Veriplace, bringing the total to around 130 million phones.

As noted in the official press release:

"By utilizing the carrier network, Veriplace allows for a background polling solution, enabling developers to write SMS, Web, WAP and IVR applications that can employ location information even when an application is not in use. For example, a customer who signs up for a mobile weather application can give the application permission to send alerts about approaching storms or severe conditions based on the customer’s location, even when the customer may not have the app actively running on the handset. Additionally, utilization of the carrier network allows devices to be located both indoors and outdoors, to varying degrees of accuracy."

Many will be interested to know that this announcement includes AT&T iPhones. iPhone developers no longer need an application running on the phone in order to locate it, which means ever-elusive "background location" is finally available to all iPhone developers. Developers who simply want to remotely locate iPhones can skip the Apple App Store process altogether.

The trial program will launch in the coming weeks for registered Veriplace developers. Visit developer.veriplace.com to get started.

Oct 7 presentation on location-enabling Enterprise Services

Veriplace is helping to location-enable enterprise services. Our CTO Scott Hotes presents at the Location Intelligence Conference 2009 in Westminster, Colorado, October 7th. As he will demonstrate during his session, the Veriplace Location Platform makes it easy for enterprise developers to incorporate mobile location data into their applications:

Enterprise services can benefit greatly from access to device location. The challenge for the developer is that accessing location is often operator-specific. Doing individual deals with each operator individually is expensive and time-consuming. Veriplace provides a single, secure interface for accessing location across all operators and location technologies. In this presentation we will walk step-by-step through the process of location-enabling your Web, mobile-Web, SMS and mobile-resident service.

Through a single interface, participants will learn how to access location across mobile operators and location technologies.

Veriplace at Microsoft's Mobile Incubation Week

We're in D.C. this week, taking part in Microsoft's Mobile Incubation Week. It's a great opportunity to pepper Microsoft engineers with questions, while showing off how easy it is for developers to location-enable their applications with our network-based APIs.

Beneath the hood, the Veriplace Location Platform has to use different techniques to locate different types of phones. Locating a Windows Mobile phone differs from locating a BlackBerry, which in turn differs from locating an entry-level Sprint feature phone. There are as many subtle details as there are OS versions, manufacturers, and carriers.

The Veriplace Location Platform simplifies this for you, the developer. By writing to the Veriplace API, you let us worry about the type of phone your user has and how to locate them. Furthermore, as indicated by our presence in D.C. this week, you can write to our API knowing that we're always out there keeping up with the latest developments in location technologies and phone operating systems. Our continuing mission is to be the location experts.

If you happen to be a developer in the D.C. area, drop us a line!

Upcoming appearances at Mobilize and MetaPlaces conferences

Our CEO Tasso Roumeliotis will be at Mobilize 09 on September 10 in San Francisco. He'll be sharing his thoughts as a panel member for the "Location: Context is Money" session.

We'll also be at MetaPlaces09 in San Jose September 22-23 as both a participant and platform sponsor for the conference.

Drop us a line if you'd like to connect!

The first of many: uShip launches

We're extremely pleased today to announce that uShip is the first 3rd party to use the Veriplace Location Platform and WaveMarket's carrier connections to obtain location information from mobile phones.

As explained in today's press release, uShip is "the first and largest online marketplace for shipping and transportation services.... Using Veriplace, uShip customers can now track the exact location of their shipments – not just intermittent check points – bringing a new level of transparency not seen in the shipping industry."

Visit developer.veriplace.com to learn how you can location-enable your own site or service with real location info from mobile phones.

Update: See also uShip's announcement on their blog.