I don’t have an iPhone (I like my Windows Mobile 6.1 platform better, on a touch-screen Samsung i760) so I miss iPhone news sometimes. I’m tardy in learning that, In the words of one of my colleagues at the Institute for Advanced Technology in Governments, “Loopt is launching their app on iPhone and is using Virtual Earth. How did Apple ever allow that to happen?” 🙂
Here’s the video of boyish Loopt CEO Sam Altman, at Apple’s WWDC 2008 in San Francisco last month, previewing their new iPhone app using location-based services displayed in Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, allowing a blend of social networks “so you can see where your friends are,” and integrating friends’ journals, current status, pictures they’ve added, etc. The blog “WebWare: Cool Web 2.0 Apps for Everyone” and CNet covered his demo as well.
Easy to imagine government first-responders, social workers, healthcare personnel etc. all making use of these integrated technologies. Now I’m trying out Loopt on Facebook – very cool.
Update: A reader emailed after the above, to ask what I think of Apple; I love Apple, always have. And I mean always. With my brother I started messing with a county library mainframe from a Vax terminal as a teenager, and used IBM PCs in college at UVA, and a Kaypro 10 as a research assistant for Prof. Larry Sabato – wow, a 10mb hard disk in a so-called portable behemoth! But a girlfriend owned an Apple IIc, which is where I first played at amateurish programming, and when I got to Stanford in 1984, the library had been outfitted with brand-new Macs, and I took liberal advantage of them.
Since then, I’ve been in heterogeneous environments at work and home, and have owned the following in succession: Macintosh IIcx, Macintosh Performa 6400, PowerBook 1400c, Power Mac G4, iMac (original) and iMac G5 (Intel) – that last one is now used as a networked always-on webcam and screensaver art display at home. I still own two iPods, gotta get that Zune 🙂
All along I’ve also used PCs, and the first computer I ever purchased with my own money was a PC-XT clone in 1985, with a 20-megabyte hard-disk. I thought I’d never fill it…
Filed under: Government, innovation, Microsoft, Society, Technology | Tagged: Apple, apps, first-responders, gis, Google, Google Earth, Google Maps, Government, i760, iPhone, Live Maps, Loopt, mapping, maps, Microsoft, mobile, Sam Altman, Samsung, Samsung i760, San Francisco, social networking, social networks, software, Technology, Virtual Earth, Web 2.0, Windows Mobile, WWDC |
Shepherd's Pi 
It hasn’t passed the acid test yet.
Steve Jobs has to approve the app before it makes it to the iPhone App Store.
The joys of controlling the whole widget. Steve gets to pick the winners and reject the losers. If the app isn’t going to sell more iPhones, it’s not going to see the light of day.
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Thanks, Al … but … but that’s… so CLOSED. What about the wisdom of the crowd??
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How many users are on Loopt? I’ve never ever heard of it before WWDC. I’m thinking that if it doesn’t generate enough users between now and the launch of the app store…it won’t make it to the iPhone. I don’t see the use for an app that only does friend-finding so even if it does make it, I’ll stick to the more multi-functional ones. Loopt is just boring.
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@Larry – you could be right, but Apple chose them & vetted them for stage-time at WWDC. Must be something there, at least in Apple’s eyes.
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The Emerging Business Team at Microsoft works with Loopt closely and is very excited for them. Beti Cung blogged about this announcement earlier and included the video of Sam Altman, their CEO, at Apple’s WWDC.
http://microsoftstartupzone.com/blogs/beticung/archive/2008/06/17/loopt-will-be-free-on-the-new-iphone-using-microsoft-virtual-earth.aspx
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[…] uses Microsoft’s virtual earth as mapping basis for social networking on mobile iPhone platformhttps://lewisshepherd.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/loopt-brings-apple-microsoft-together/Ask Maps Now Using Virtual Earth – LiveSideI??ve only seen virtual earth integration on the US one, […]
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