Skyhook Wireless Announces Finalists for its Developers Contest – the Wi-Fi Cage Match - Invites the Public to Help Select the Winner
Winner Will Ride Away on a Segway® Human Transporter
BOSTON , MA – September 12, 2006 -- Skyhook Wireless, provider of the industry's first Wi-Fi based positioning system, announced today the three finalists of its Wi-Fi Cage Match, a product contest rewarding the developer of the most innovative and dynamic Wi-Fi based location application leveraging the Skyhook Wi-Fi Positioning System™ (WPS) with a brand new Segway® Human Transporter. Finalists include a location-aware Firefox/Minimo extension, location-stamped photos from Eye-Film, and area/code's location-based urban game.
The Wi-Fi Cage Match was kicked off at the O'Reilly Media Where 2.0 conference in June together with the launch of the Skyhook Developers' Network. Providing developers with free access to the Skyhook WPS APIs, documentation and a support infrastructure, the Developers' Network allows solution providers to build accurate and reliable location-based products running on commonly available platforms and without the need of additional hardware such as a GPS.
The contest, which is co-sponsored by leading global geographic content provider Tele Atlas, is part competition, part community of like-minded developers, and part forum for showing off innovative ideas and approaches. “Our growing business relationship with Skyhook Wireless is a natural fit and we're pleased to co-sponsor the Wi-Fi Cage Match contest to spur development of innovative location-based applications to help grow the overall market,” said Al Cooley, director, Tele Atlas. “Cage Match participants also are able to leverage the Tele Atlas DeveloperLink SM program to access our comprehensive map data to enhance their applications.”
“The objective of the Wi-Fi Cage Match has been to encourage the development of location-based applications on more open, reliable and accurate systems, and we have seen a lot of really interesting concepts come out of the contest and the Developers' Network in general,” said Jed Rice, vice president of market development at Skyhook. “We are announcing the three finalists today, but with a community of almost 150 active development partners, we will be featuring other applications on the Skyhook Developers' Dashboard on on-going basis.”
The Finalists
Eye-Film
Eye-Fi's Wi-Fi enabled media card client combines the data storage of an SD card, the connectivity of a Wi-Fi card and the location-determination capabilities of Skyhook's WPS to location-stamp photos on most digital cameras. The unique combination of capabilities captures the MAC addresses within range of the camera and associates those addresses with temporally proximate images. Leveraging the Skyhook API, the MAC addresses are uploaded to Eye-Fi's servers and then passed to the Skyhook Positioning Engine which calculates and returns a location. The resulting latitude/longitude and place name data is embedded within an image's EXIF header as standard tags which allow the image to be indexed and visualized using existing geo-aware tools.
Firefox/Minimo extension
The location-awareness Firefox / Minimo extension, developed by a third party developer, integrates auto-location determination into the Firefox/Minimo browser turning it into a platform for various location-bases services. As a result, content accessed or viewed within the browser is specifically and dynamically changed based on the user's location. For example, a movie directory site viewed in the Firefox/Minimo browser will immediately show only local movies without having you enter a zip code, or an airline's webpage might notice that you are in a terminal and return to you the arrival/departure data without you having to tap your way through nested links.
Plundr
Developed by area/code, Plundr is a laptop-based game that incorporates real-world location. Players take on the role of bloodthirsty pirates navigating the high seas pillaging merchant ships and trafficking black market goods. In Plundr, the action takes place at islands each of which has an actual real-world location. The game uses the Loki browser plug-in to identify the players' current location and determine which island they are near. Each island has merchant ships to attack and a local marketplace to buy and sell goods.
Visit www.skyhookwireless.com to cast your vote for your favorite location-based application. Voting ends on September 24 and the winner will be announced on September 25, 2006.
About Skyhook Wireless
Founded in 2003, Skyhook Wireless has pioneered the development of the first-ever metro-area positioning system that leverages Wi-Fi rather than satellites or cell towers to deliver precise location data supporting the growing market for location-based services. The Skyhook Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) requires no new hardware, works indoors and outdoors, provides an instant location and is more accurate than current technologies in congested downtown areas. WPS is currently available in the top 100 US metro areas and is on target to serve 70% of the US population by the end of 2006. Skyhook Wireless is headquartered in Boston, MA and is privately held. Investors include Bain Capital, Intel Capital and Nokia Ventures Organization. For more information visit www.skyhookwireless.com , send an email to info@skyhookwireless.com or call 617-314-9802.
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Beth Winkowski
Winkowski Public Relations
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bwinkowski@att.net