Geo-fencing
Latest
Apple awarded patent for geo-fencing profile changes to stop you texting in the theater
Now that the patent trial of the decade is over bar the shouting, everyone's back to ensuring they've called shotgun on enough of tomorrow's technology. Cupertino has won a patent to enforce policies when your wireless device enters a specific location. Dry as that may sound, it means that your smartphone could automatically switch to silent and disable its display as soon as you enter a movie theater. Of course, it's as likely to remain in Bruce Sewell's bottom drawer as it is to be a feature in the next iPhone, but as perpetually-annoyed cinema-goers we'd pay good money to see it retrospectively installed in every handset from the last decade.
AT&T ShopAlerts: first location-based ads from a US carrier kick off in four markets
A few third-party apps have been going after this market for a while now, but AT&T has just become the first American carrier to throw its weight behind location-based ads in teaming up with Placecast to launch the so-called AT&T ShopAlerts service in four markets. Residents of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco will be the first to experience the mind-bending future of advertising -- presumably because they're densely-populated enough to make a location-based trial worthwhile -- with seven inaugural partners: HP, Kmart, JetBlue, SC Johnson, Kibbles 'n Bits ('n Bits 'n Bits), Nature's Recipe, and the "got milk?" people. Fortunately, the system is opt-in, not out. Follow the break for AT&T's full press release.
