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Smartphones put the moves on social networking
(Times of Oman Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) AUSTIN: Mobile social networking ruled on Saturday as the techno-hip at South By South West (SXSW) used location-based services on smartphones to track down everything from panels to parties.
Foursquare and Gowalla dueled for supremacy here while fresh rivals such as Tweetsii and Toodalu vowed to eclipse them. FourSquare and Gowalla launched last year at SXSW, a renowned gathering of musicians, film makers, and entrepreneurs quick to find creative uses for new Internet technologies.
FourSquare and Gowalla take advantage of satellite location capabilies of smartphones to let friends share where they are. The competing services also weave in addictive game aspects by letting users gain status by collecting virtual "badges" along the way.
"Location-based services are big," said Israel Mirsky, executive vice president of emerging technology at public relations firm Porter Novelli.
"FourSquare and Gowalla use game methods to keep people engaged but they are ultimately utilities because they help friends find each other."
Porter Novelli was holding a first-of-its-kind scavenger hunt at SXSW incorporating smartphones and augmented reality. People were challenged to scour the streets of Austin, a bar-rich college town that also serves as Texas state capitol, for 3-D images only visible through camera lenses of GPS-enabled smartphones.
"You hold up your phone with the game application in it and the pieces will appear floating in the air," Mirsky said. "It is like being in a real-world videogame."
Whoever finds the most icons will win 1,000 dollars. On a SXSW show floor startup gypsii showed off a new Tweetsii application for Apple s popular iPhone smartphones, the mobile device of choice for most folks at the gathering.
(c) 2009 Muscat Press and Publishing House SAOC Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company
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