Domestic US Airlines as iPhone Apps

UPDATED 9/2/10

As a frequent traveler, I have determined that a nice compact iPhone application can make travel smoother by putting personalized flight data in the palm of your hand. So I went about loading all the airline's iPhone apps, and what-do-you-know? They largely don't exist.

AirTran - sorry no iPhone app, and no mobile site
Alaska - iPhone app
American - sorry no iPhone app, use their mobile site
Continental - sorry no iPhone app, use their mobile site
Delta - iPhone app or use their mobile site
Frontier - sorry no iPhone app, and no mobile site
Hawaiian - sorry no iPhone app, and no mobile site
JetBlue - sorry no iPhone app, use their mobile site
Midwest - sorry no iPhone app, use their mobile site
Southwest - iPhone app
United - sorry no iPhone app, use their mobile site or flight lookup mobile site
US Airways - sorry no iPhone app, use their mobile site
Virgin America - sorry no iPhone app, and no mobile site

One exception is the Oneworld Alliance iPhone app that supports American Airlines.

When you look at what the state of the travel economy has been, even with a brighter airline outlook; you wonder what airlines are doing to put paying passengers into more seats.

So here is a simple case of why every single airline above should have an iPhone app:

Rely on this number or anyone else's, but Apple has sold 50 million iPhones. Not all in the US...but AT&T activated 2.7 million in the last quarter ending March 2010.

You can do the math on how many early adopters traded up, how many people got tired of AT&T service issues, but any person that has eyes knows - there are a bunch of people carrying an iPhone nowadays.

On my last flight, I estimate there were 1.5 iPhones per row of the Delta B757. With 33 rows, that comes down to approximately 50 iPhones out of 162 seats - or roughly 1/3 of the aircraft. There was of course 1 Microsoft Kin, because he sat next to me, but that is statistically insignificant, right?

Let's compare that with the average domestic passenger enplanements for the 12 months between April 2009 and March 2010...51.6 million per month (Bureau of Transportation Statistics).

We need some more math here, based on my experience, most enplanements are double counts because most people fly roundtrips....so 25 million or so unique passengers a month, which is a number comparable to the number of domestic iPhones. So, I think, my estimate of how many iPhones on that plane was low.

In the gate area waiting on flights I see people mucking about with their iPhones, but they probably aren't turning to Twitter or Facebook or an airline blog for FLIFO.

Now that you may be convinced, here are some basics for any airline iPhone application:

1. Persistent identity storage. I don't want to spend 5 minutes signing in at least twice a week to access personalized data. There are too many examples to list here of persistent identity storage on the iPhone.

2. Contextual guidance within and around airports. Has anyone ever seen the iPhone app Geodelic? They have an Experience set up for the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. This is just a start: guide me to your ticket counters, events you sponsor in my current city, to sweetheart deals you have with airport service firms like Park-N-Fly.

3. Contextual guidance within the plane. Tell me what kind of plane I'm on, tell me about my seat. Show me a safety video...I've seen this one at least 100 times, and I would watch it again because it's funny.

4. Contextual guidance within the flight. Point out things on the ground during the flight: Here is an example from the 1940s that we put on Mapicurious: Eastern Air Lines Route Map. This describes in little tidbits about the cities you may fly over. Remember, you can save this info to the device similarly to the persistent identity storage. Another one...Let me buy food items and duty free (where appropriate)...you already let me surf the net.

5. Travel tips. Here's an inventory of what you know about me: My flight, the weather, how many bags I checked, how many bags others have checked, my boarding order, my frequent flier data, my aircraft, my origin and destination, and how much I paid. Use these to my advantage, and I will be a happy flier.

6. Caching of travel data. Sometimes you don't have wifi onboard. But I still would like the data.

Additionally, what we already know about iPhone apps is simple:

1. It can be a wrapper of your existing mobile site.
2. You will receive analytics that are probably better than your current ones.
3. You probably have a developer on staff that can program it.
4. It can be silently soft launched, or through you viral network and social media hounds.
5. It provides a better mobile experience than the mobile site.
6. 1/3 of the passengers on your next flight will be carrying an iPhone, not a KIN.

Bottom line is this: I throw away your constant credit card offers. I happen to already carry your card. I don't like it when the cheap, non-traveler guy gets first class upgrades due to his credit card spending habits versus me flying your airline constantly.

Spend that money using this implementation of consumer technology to better connect with the people that give you money for your core business...air travel.

Thanks,

Maps

A little disclosure: I don't work for any airline, but I do travel frequently - but not like George Clooney. I've flown all of the above airlines except: Virgin America, Hawaiian, and AirTran.

A 3 Step Guide to Enable Location for Your Business

How do you take advantage of the Location craze?

Here are 3 steps:

1. http://mapicurious.blogspot.com/2008/10/step-1-prepare-your-locations-listing.html
2. http://mapicurious.blogspot.com/2008/10/step-2-add-your-lat-lng-to-your.html
3. http://mapicurious.blogspot.com/2008/10/step-3-make-your-business-show-in.html

Thanks,

Maps

Hey Foursquare: Just what does it take to be Mayor?

Update: On the 59th check in....I'm now the Mayor!!!! Here is the simple secret: Your account must have a profile image. My account lacked that image on the 58th checkin, but had one on the 59th. Thanks to Tim Barsness for the tip off, and proving that he knows a lot about leveraging social media.

---

This morning I checked-in to Chick-Fil-A for the 45th time. Your first thought may be, "WTF!?" either because someone has been to The Chick that many times or that person isn't the Mayor on Foursquare. You may miss the saddest part, because there are two other guys that visit this Chick-Fil-A more times than me. At least according to Foursquare.

When I first started playing Foursquare, my goal was to be a Mayor before I quit playing and move on to the next great thing. I met people that rode by establishments on buses or walked down a street checking-in to every venue they passed. This is "cheating", but I know from my own LBS experience that GPS accuracy comes at a price that mobile game developers would rather avoid for playability sake.

Now I come to this 45th check-in milestone, and no mayorship. I'm not upset but I am unsatisfied - two others have been anointed Mayor in my time checking-in to The Chick. So the following must be a description of how I avoided being the Mayor.

What!? Me not the Mayor?



I couldn't believe that I could check-in 10 times and not be the Mayor of a place that had no Mayor. Epic Fail!

I thought if you visited the location more than others, you automatically received the mayorship for the location. I started to wonder if my AT&T 3G service was bonkers when playing Foursquare.

I also figured my GPS needed to warm up adequately - so I stood in the parking lot a few mornings to get an accurate reading (according to my own app).

I eventually noticed the location they had, while it's address was correct, the geocoding was slightly off.

Reaching out to Foursquare

My next move was to tweet some difficulty with Foursquare, and I figured this would open a communication path on the specific problem I'm having:



Kudos to their social media monitoring - because I received the fastest response ever. One of this blog's commenters will probably say this was an automated response...but I was impressed:



After that response I tried to submit a problem with the venue via their reporting email, however I received no response. Maybe they don't have my email address. I know this is a free game with unpaid support - I just had different expectations given my Twitter experience.

It would be helpful to let them know the location of the venue needs to be corrected. The location actually is plotted in the wrong area of the massive parking lot where Chick-Fil-A sits.

The Squeeze, The Squirt, and The Scam?

Trying to be the Mayor I discovered The FourSqueeze. My friends aware of my quest with access to this location kept telling me they were checking-in there, and that was why I didn't receive the coveted Mayor. I termed the pressure to check-in because your friends are trying to grab your potential mayorship as The Squeeze. Maybe Foursquare could add this competition awareness component to their game - it would help me distract my friends from my Mayorship.

After not getting success I encountered The FourSquirt. I mean I visited this location about 75 times, but only checked-in a portion because it just didn't seem to have an impact on the game. The times I go to a location where I've previously checked-in and not checked-in I termed as The Squirt. If Foursquare could remind me to check-in when I get near the location in question that would help me dominate my potential competitors. It might help with the cheating too.

And then finally - What kind of campaign do you have to run to be a Mayor? The FourScam. I use "scam" completely lightheartedly - and here are the emoticons to prove it ;) ;) ;) ;) I just want to know what more I need to do to accomplish my only goal with Foursquare, for now I'm the chump at this table. I've checked-in 45 times and not received a Mayorship!

Yo bro, you are STILL not the Mayor!



Guess how surprised I was to see Edgar L as the Mayor on my 34th check-in! It instantly gave me this brilliant idea to start showing the Mayor photo to the Chick-Fil-A staff. Only one said he might be a familiar face. I will say I explained Foursquare about 5 times to everyone - and thankfully I had a friendly reputation before showing my investigative skills.

And then the biggest surprise this morning - Edgar L totally dethroned! This guy Jason F shows up overnight to claim the title. Hey Jason F: Did you see me at The Chick today or the day before? I'm now looking for you dude! And my employee friends are on the lookout for you too. Your days are numbered as Mayor here...that is if 50 check-ins gets the job done. ;)

So here is my Foursquare offer

If either or both Mayors reach out to me, I'll be more than happy to buy them each a Chick-Fil-A lunch and learn their Foursquare secrets. We can term this as the Chick-Fil-A Summit.

If one of the Foursquare team members needs a lunch there too, I'm happy to oblige them as well.

And finally: I'll be at Wherecamp this April in Mountain View. I'll pitch a session about my experience with LBS games - and maybe a Foursquare-ite will be there to chat. By then I hope to be Mayor of Chick-Fil-A!

Here are a couple of disclosures

You may have encountered similar issues, so I'm disclosing some additional information if you want to correlate your experience.

1. Twitter or Facebook are not linked to my Foursquare account.
2. I don't have a photo on my Foursquare profile.
3. I only offered a tip for the location after I was passed over for Mayor the first time.
4. I don't think the venue has ever been closed on Foursquare, otherwise my check-ins would not be as high.
5. I think the app may have run into some problems, when you see the check-ins with a big blank page.

Pictures of my other checkins

So I didn't capture every picture of each checkin, but I was able to get most. I was in total shock this morning when there was a new mayor, but not me (picture at top of post).

A Small Guide to Mapicurious

As we travel around at Mapicurious, we need efficient ways to create maps on the site - and quickly share points of interest.

Here is our guide to how we do it:

1. We have Twitter and Foursquare accounts. We can tweet and checkin from places around the city during our data collection. These geotagged apps simplify collection of known places like restaurants and bars.

2. We use our Around Mapicurious app for iPhone (available on Android as well). This lets us know what we have already mapped. No reason to add duplicate points.

3. What's in our bag today? iPhone 3GS and Garmin Colorado 400t. We take advantage of the lower resolution camera on the iPhone, versus carrying the N95 8GB. For quick mapping, these tools are the best.

4. We use the Foursquare and Twitter mapping methods to get a map, and use our other tools (Garmin and iPhone) to enhance the location data. It can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes to create a complete map.

5. Once in Mapicurious, we can easily expose our map data to:

a. The Mapicurious.com site.
b. Google Earth for detailed analysis.
c. Our Garmin nuvi for road trips.
d. GeoRSS to add into a few random GPSes we have laying around the place. (Sometimes we get bored too.)
e. Layar AR browsing app on the iPhone.
f. OpenStreetMap because we see value participating in the larger geo community.

And now you know.

Maps

How we address location privacy in our Around service

Concerned about your privacy using our location aware browser application for Apple iPhone 3GS and Android phones?

Don't be. We place a big green notice about your location privacy clearly on our application's main user interaction page.

We think other services should do this as clear as we do.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Maps

Mapicurious view on APIs

Over the years, we have spent a lot of development time integrating selected APIs into Mapicurious. Because APIs tend to change over time, we spend even more time updating our code. Sometimes writing code specifically to integrate with others' APIs is just a waste of time.

Do you feel the same?

We believe integration of Mapicurious into your software projects should be easier, therefore we offer the following as "our API":

- Each map has a GPX file - Access an example map: http://www.mapicurious.com/maps/483/locations.gpx

- Each map has a KML file - Access an example map: http://www.mapicurious.com/maps/483/locations.kml

- Each map has a GeoRSS file - Access an example map: http://www.mapicurious.com/maps/483/locations.rss

Our API philosophy is simple:

If you already have a geo based application you can probably read one or all of those formats, and read the useful data.

One more thing - We ask that you respect the attribution of data from Mapicurious by recognizing the author's name and Mapicurious.com with a link provided back to the author's map.

Thanks,

Maps

Step 3: Make your business show in Google Earth

Have you seen Google Earth?

Google Earth lets a user cruise in the air over the entire world seeing details such as terrain and 3D buildings. Many businesses have listings inside of Google Earth to help customers spot their locations.

And some others take extreme measures:

A few months ago I noticed a large bullseye on top of a building. If you guessed this was a Target retail store, then you get the prize. It probably cost them a substantial sum to paint that bullseye, but everyone will definitely know it houses a Target store.

You probably are not that lucky:

1. Your rooftop may be shared with other businesses.
2. Your rooftop may not be very big.
3. You may not be legally allowed to paint on top of the roof.
4. Your logo is not a bullseye.

So what could give you the same benefits with no cost?

Storing a file on your web server that essentially does the same. We've included the code to copy, change, and save on your on server. You may even place a link to it to help people spot you in Google Earth.

Below is KML or GML - the language of Google Earth:

Copy and paste the contents into a file labeled - YourBusinessName.kml

Look for the [square brackets]. Replace with your information. Remember to get rid of those square brackets when you are done.


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.2">
<Document>
<name>[The Name of Your Business]</name>
<Style id="sn_shopping">
<IconStyle>
<scale>1.2</scale>
<Icon>
<href>http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/kml/shapes/shopping.png</href>
</Icon>
<hotSpot x="0.5" y="0" xunits="fraction" yunits="fraction"/>
</IconStyle>
<ListStyle>
</ListStyle>
</Style>
<Style id="sh_shopping">
<IconStyle>
<scale>1.4</scale>
<Icon>
<href>http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/kml/shapes/shopping.png</href>
</Icon>
<hotSpot x="0.5" y="0" xunits="fraction" yunits="fraction"/>
</IconStyle>
<ListStyle>
</ListStyle>
</Style>
<StyleMap id="msn_shopping">
<Pair>
<key>normal</key>
<styleUrl>#sn_shopping</styleUrl>
</Pair>
<Pair>
<key>highlight</key>
<styleUrl>#sh_shopping</styleUrl>
</Pair>
</StyleMap>
<Placemark>
<name>[The Name of Your Business]</name>
<LookAt>
<longitude>[Enter your longitude value here. Probably negative if you are in the US.]</longitude>
<latitude>[Enter your latitude value here.]</latitude>
<altitude>0</altitude>
<range>156086.0671498432</range>
<tilt>0</tilt>
<heading>-1.107010360583494</heading>
</LookAt>
<styleUrl>#msn_shopping</styleUrl>
<Point>
<coordinates>[Enter your longitude value here. Probably negative if you are in the US.],[Enter your latitude value here.],0</coordinates>
</Point>
</Placemark>
</Document>
</kml>

Where could you take this?

Think about expanding your location with a polygon to outline your property or space. Enhance by building a 3d storefront using Google SketchUp.

Enjoy,

Maps

Step 2: Add your Lat Lng to Your Register Receipts

The other day I found a receipt from a trip to Tokyo, Japan. If you have ever been to Tokyo before (especially if you do not speak the language) you know how confusing it can be to find locations.

Well this merchant placed their location's coordinates right on the receipt, where we would normally find the telephone number. What a great idea!

Here's why:

1. As a customer, I can program these coordinates into my mobile phone or GPS device and always have your exact location handy without the trouble of geocoding.

2. As a business traveler, I can reconstruct where I spent my expense account dollars. Which might reveal what I purchased when my memory is fuzzy.

3. As a tourist, I can easily map what I visited.

4. Even as a foreigner who cannot speak or read Japanese, I could tell you where I bought this really cool electronic gadget.

So on any available line on your receipt, program your cash register to output your latitude and longitude along with the important information from Step 1.

Thanks,

Maps

Step 1: Prepare your locations' listing data

At the very least a listing should include common locative information. Here is your checklist:

1. The latitude and longitude of your store's front door location. Why the front door? Many times your address might be 1500 Main Street Suite 221, and the shopping center is a small city, the parking lot is huge, and your storefront is a needle-in-the-haystack.

It is one thing to be on the property, and another to be inside your location.

Locative technologies are supposed to save you time, and knowing how to get within 10 feet of your front door is key. Your next customer could be using his/her cell phone to pinpoint your location.

2. Local phone number - If you forget the address (assuming you already supplied the latitude and longitude) a phone number is all you need. Remember - most of your customers carry a cell phone.

3. Your street address - You can try this on any PND - type in your store address, and let the PND navigate you to your store. You might be surprised to find out the address alone could be off a significant distance.

An address can be converted to coordinates by "geocoding", however this is an estimate of your location only. Double check the address by plotting your address with Google Earth.

4. Your website URL - Hopefully you have some ways to engage your customers here, but since Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs) are more connected (think cell phones) this is critical information about your business that might not be able to list on the GPS.

Supply a mobile optimized site, not your multimedia heavy regular dotcom site.

5. Description - Break down your location into discreet bites of information:
- 1 sentence for what you do (sell new and used sports equipment cheap)
- 1 for particulars on your location (far left of Park Lane Shopping Center)
- best days and time to shop (open M-F 9a-5p, closed the entire month of December, etc)

This should be enough for a good listing. Did we forget anything?

Is your business under-represented?

Do you own a personal navigation device or PND (Think Garmin, Magellan, Mio, TomTom, or your gps mobile phone)?

Conduct a point of interest search and notice Starbucks, Subways, and McDonalds are easy to find. How about your own business, where is it listed?

Where it ranks on the list may determine whether a PND guided user finds Subway over your location.


Typically GPS hardware/software manufacturers license these business based POIs from NAVTEQ, TeleAtlas, or the like. These providers are always looking for unique, local results - and it is much easier to collect POIs 1000 at a time. Some of you may have working SEO programs to help web searchers find you, but what about strategies to help people find you in the real world using PNDs?

If you have 1000+ locations I doubt you are reading this blog. Companies like NAVTEQ, TeleAtlas, and MapQuest have probably already reached out to you. So as a smaller operator how do you make your business stand out in the searchable list on a PND?

We at Mapicurious want to give you ideas for marketing your business via personal navigation device in a multi-part series.

For starters let us introduce a definition:

Personal Navigation Device (PND) - Software and hardware to receive a location and guide the user between two points in the physical world. You know these as Garmins, Magellans, Dashes, Mios, and Navigons. You should know that Nokias, iPhones, and Blackberrys fall into this category as well.

It is very possible that the customer in your store now has one of these.

Second, let's prepare a few answers to critical questions making your business stand out?

1. How many times have you felt your location is a disadvantage compared to your customers?

2. Do customers mention they had difficulty finding a location of yours?

3. How much is it worth if a customer finds your location on their PND with an attractive amount of information, and bypass your competitors to visit?

4. Ask your friends and customers, what brand of PND they have.

We'll use these answers in the next installment.

Thanks,

Maps

Helping Pakistan Find the Terrorists/Taliban?

A funny thing happened when I stepped away from the computer this evening:

Watching an interview by NBC's Anne Curry with Pakistan's President Ali Asif Zardari on the Nightly News, he proposed a simple solution to stymie the terrorists in Pakistan: “Give us the intelligence, and we will do the job."

As NBC showed nice Google Earth imagery over Pakistan, I thought about Tim O'Reilly's suggestion last week at the Web 2.0 Expo "...to ask yourself, are we working on the right things?"

So with all the crowd sourcing, the updated disaster imagery of hurricane and fire impact areas, and the mantra of "Do no evil" of Google - Why can't we crowd source the study of imagery of the Pakistan hills?

With enough eyeballs on decent satellite imagery, we could spot every frickin movement of cows, camels, clouds, and cohorts.

Then we could give Pakistan all the intelligence it supposedly needs to capture the bad guys.

Could we accomplish this without endangering the good guys?

Just thinking...

A little disclosure - I did recently see Morgan Spurlock's Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?

How do you get your business on a GPS?

Hopefully you have harder questions for us at Mapicurious, but we assist businesses getting their locations onto various GPS devices.

Contact us at maps at mapicurious dot com for more info. Use the subject "Get my business on a GPS".

Thanks,

Maps

GeoRel - Could we make this a new standard?

Has anyone ever thought to re-purpose the rel attribute in HTML and RSS to contain Geo data?

On face value, rel = relationship and placing lat lng inside the rel attribute relates the content spatially.

Now browsers and RSS readers can simply show links based on their distance order from the reader. Using this with a location service (FireEagle, etc), the browser/reader could assess relevance and relationship geographically.

The main advantages are easy and lightweight representation of geospatial relationships in the semantic web. Should be both machine and human readable.

It could support existing formats - Simple GeoRSS, Latitude and Longitude, KML (provide link to KML file)

Here are some link examples below based on Mapicurious data. Look at properties for each link to see the "rel" tag in use.

1. Basic Lat Lng (lat lng separated by space and pairs by comma for paths and polygons)

California Football Players 2006
Chick-Fil-A in Southern California
Hof's Hut - Southern California Tradition

2. L:

California Football Players 2006
Hof's Hut - Southern California Tradition

3. Geohash

California Football Players 2006
Chick-Fil-A in Southern California
Hof's Hut - Southern California Tradition

4. Georeference:

California Football Players 2006
Chick-Fil-A in Southern California
Hof's Hut - Southern California Tradition



Simple Use Cases:

Mapping web site - Overlay links directly on a map based on GeoRel data. Show geographically relevant links to map content to user, based on user's location (including distance calculations).

News site - Arrange links based on geospatial relevance.

RSS Reader - Filter links to content based on location from reader.

What for 2010?

I recently combed through a notepad (physical not Windows) where I collected important information in the early 1990s. I developed a habit of writing companies or topics of interest in the margin, and a quick note of why it was interesting. Eventually I might get around to "discovering" additional information, but otherwise it remained invisible until my recent discovery, unless I happened to run across the company's location in the physical world.

Along with the 1990s notepad, I found another from 2000 or 2001 with websites scribbled on the side. I checked those out back then, added them to my bookmarks, and am surprised to see ones I still use today. Back then if you didn't have a web presence, you didn't exist to a large group of people.

As technology has deepened our lives to such a point, there are numerous opportunities to cross over the web space in to the physical space.

Since I've been working with geospatial, I'm curious on what will happen for 2010?

For Mapicurious I think it safe to say - if you don't exist properly in either my auto's GPS, my handheld GPS, or my cellphone GPS - I probably will not find you.

That means this is the time to get your business georeferenced.

- Maps