Everyone’s “Hoppr” (read Hopping) around these days in India.
Hoppr is a mobile device-agnostic location based service developed by a India based company – Y2CF Digital Media Pvt Ltd in partnership with Bharti Softbank. Launched in 2012 and 10 months later, we have 85 Million Check-ins and 4 Million registered monthly users. Not bad for a location based service provider in India. What say?
They claim to be the only device-agnostic and location-based check-in service that enables users to explore rewards and offers available with brands and merchants in their vicinity.
Hoppr is a location based service that allows users to check in and discover places using multiple mediums like SMS, USSD( Its a protocol used by the GSM service provider’s computers to communicate with the mobile device) and Android apps. Hoppr allows merchants to interact with these users by offering them rewards or specials which makes things interesting 😉 Mobile Marketing is HERE!!
To get started one has to sms HOP to 56660 (one-time registration). From then on just SMS your location/place to Hoppr and then be prepared for an embargo of deals from the merchant 😉 But Seriously, it’s a big respite for the non-smartphone users to be able to utilize the power of location based services without using GPS which incidentally Hoppr claims makes it the world’s first such service (P.S: I am not too sure about that. Remember the Election reporting service for Kenya? Maybe there’s more) But surely it has been one of the first and its biggest USP has to be the USSD service (Tie-up with Telecos) which enables them to accurately pin-point the location of the sender/mobile device using the Mobile Tower triangulation technique. One can of course use the Android App and GPS to do the same.
HOPPR!
Given its uniqueness, multiple platforms to Check-in and service partnerships with 7 of the country’s leading telcos, Hoppr is accessible to 95%+ Indian mobile population.
Hoppr is available only in India and they are looking to take on the likes of FourSquare and the lot. Good luck to them.
Lets Hoppr, say we 😉 Take a look here
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Everyone in the industry says the indoor location is the next big thing… Imagine location-based marketing inside shopping malls, supermarkets… imagine never searching for stuff in IKEA any more;), imagine always finding your way in an underground parking, airport, office building… ast week Apple paid $20m for WiFiSlam indoor location startup , so there really big buck evolved. Almost all tech universities I know and many companies are competing or cooperating to develop the best solution. Common methods for indoor location tracking include using Wi-Fi or bluetooth hotspots or cell-tower locations, but these aren’t exceptionally accurate and usually depend on existing wireless infrastructure. There are some trials with accelerometer based technologies that are based on Earth’s magnetic field. L
What they do?
Australian startup Navisens says it has technology different from anything you’ve ever heard before. They say they can locate people and mobile devices with zero infrastructure. No WiFi. No GPS. No reference nodes. Guys from Navisens says they are using an approach known as “inertial navigation”, modified from military and industrial applications. Navisens’ algorithms process raw data captured using low-cost motion sensors on smartphones and other devices and can give position with accuracy less than one metre.
How they do it?
How is it possible knowing that WiFi-based systems only detect location within two metres? High resolution is achieved by measuring motion rather than radio frequency signals as wifi does, and is based on where and how the person moves through an environment over time. Navisens claims it can trace where a person is heading, the direction they are facing (to an accuracy of 1cm), track if a person turns a corner, moves slow or fast, walks upstairs or downstairs. Navisens also knows if you have stopped moving.
Navisens API?
But of course the reality is not that beautiful and simple. Navisens API is still not available for app developers (it is supposed to be this year), but since regular mobile accelerometers aren’t top sensitivity it might need to be actually integrated with some other positioning technologies. And actually there is nothing wrong about it – all outdoor positioning technologies are in fact hybrids.
The Navisens device
But for now, Navisens has developed some sample devices that are targeted towards emergency applications with some ongoing trials with firefighters. The device is small unit composed of three accelerometers and three gyroscopes mounted on three different axes that captures information about its acceleration and angular rotation, and a small computer tat uses algorithms to determine location, current direction, and the wearer’s position. A recorded path is wirelessly transmitted to a USB dongle connected to a remote computer, where another person can be monitoring the wearer’s movements (often, this monitoring is currently done by radio).
Effect?
There are so many indoor technologies around and none of them seems to be actually working with smartphone. I believe that it might be too difficult to implement it as a standalone API, but probably in a few years Apple, Google, Samsung or Nokia will buy Navisens and use it to correct WiFi positioning which starts to be the industry standard and the industry surely needs breaking innovations. Good job Navisens.
Check you the video from presentation describing the technology (13 min long):
source: MIT Review
