Jaiku’s S60 Client Gets LBS’d. BrightKite Starts Location-Based Notifications.

Two interesting location-based services news for today. The first one is about Jaiku’s upgrade of their s60 smartphone client. The new version does a couple of pretty nifty things from an LBS perspective. And the second piece of news is about a newcomer into the LBS marketplace fresh out of an incubator.

The Jaiku news (via GigaOm) :

• Firstly, the client allows you to share your location (neighborhood, city, country) based on cellular network towers. It would be interesting to know how exactly the network positioning works. S60 devices can get access to the “Cell ID” or the reference number of the network tower that an S60 mobile is connected to. But the ID is only valuable if it is annotated with the name of the location where the cell phone mast resides. And that info is not always available.
• Second, the app lets you share who you’re with based on nearby Bluetooth devices. This means that your Jaiku profile, viewed from anywhere, should display if you’re in the proximity of another Jaiku user. This would work by determining that the two of you are in each others’ bluetooth range. ‘Nearby friends’ might also include any other mobile devices with a public Bluetooth personal profile.

The other LBS news tidbit comes to us via DonDodge and is about an upcoming startup called BrightKite. BrightKite is 1 of 10 companies that just graduated from the Boulder, Colorado based TechStars incubator. From the post:

BrightKite - Location Based Notifications via email, IM or SMS. The notifications are all about location or what they call “place-streaming”. Streaming content about a “place” from a “place”. Alerts you when friends are nearby, or about great deals at nearby businesses, movie listings, etc. It could be used for conferences, events, bars, parties, or public places. BrightKite is also platform for other location based apps from third party developers. Advertising model. Seeking $500K.

Go to the website to get an invite as soon as they have something ready. Invites get sent by your choice of IM, SMS, or email :)

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