The MetaPos project team are announcing today that the Joint Venture company being formed to exploit the project will be known as the ‘First Location Bank’ (FLB). The new company will be based in Toulouse and headed by Dr Christophe Rhin of Camineo SAS, which will jointly own and run the FLB with Placr Ltd. (UK) and Positium LBS Llc (EE).
The FLB is a location management service that works with Android and Windows Mobile phones (at present), offering secure real-time upload, processing and visualisation of your movement tracks through the FLB web interface. It’s designed for those who want to record and share their movements in real time for business, sporting, security or life-logging reasons.
The FLB offers a robust location data collection platform for GPS, wifi and cell ID sensor data and records phone battery state, all of which are uploaded in real time whenever an internet connection is available. The app will continue data collection and upload later if you go offline. Users can tag their location stream and select a low power mode when battery life is limited. Tracks are stored in the private location accounts of each user and automatically divided into moving and static track sections, each labelled with any user tag that has been added.
The FLB is secure and private, requiring a login on phone and web. No one other than the user and those you authorise can access your location data, and your data is encrypted after collection to keep it safe. The FLB brings something new to location management because you can collect and store location data without giving away any rights in your data in return for the core service. We think location data needs a bank to be a trusted third party and digital self-storage solution.
The FLB will be offered on a freemium model in which the core product will be free to end users, and pro features will be offered on a subscription. The FLB is also looking for developer partnerships to develop use of the location management platform. Beta access to the core service is available now on request to jonathan.raper@placr.co.uk.
