The problem seems to be affecting both Android users and, for some, the desktop website. Basically, users have been unable to update their location on Latitude, assuredly leaving many of their friends and family to work up the obvious conclusion: that they have tripped and fallen off the face of the Earth.

Yesterday, Googler Jade Wang offered up some advice on how to remedy the problem, but according to a few of you readers as well as commenters over at the Google help forum, that fix didn’t actually fix Latitude much. Today, however, a second Googler, Daniel Mabasa, contributed to the forum. His post was less advice but more reconnaissance for details about users experiencing the Latitude bug.

Thanks for all the continued reports, the team is currently investigating the issues–we need a bit more information from you.

1. What is the make/model, service carrier, OS version of your device (if you haven’t already provided it)?

2. Is the email account you’re using for the forum the same as your latitude account? Only answer yes/no, do not post your email address.

3. Do we have permission to look at your account’s Location History for debugging purposes? (This is strictly confidential and used solely for troubleshooting)

Thanks for working with us to help resolve the issue.

-Daniel

He later provided a follow-up post with the following suggestion:

A few more questions and steps for you:

The following steps have helped some users resolve the issue, make sure you’ve done the following before sending us a new report:
Update to Google Maps 6.8.1
Tap “Join Latitude”
Reboot your phone
Wait several minutes
Still not working? What are you seeing?

A. Are some or all friends missing?
B. Can your friends see you?
C. Is your location updated on the website?

His proposed fix still only addresses the Android problem and, even then, many subsequent replies to the suggestion have indicated that Latitude still isn’t working for people. Beyond the mobile problem, several users (myself included) continue to have difficulty when using the desktop version of Latitude on a variety of browsers.

Actually, having just typed that, I decided to try Latitude out on my browsers just to be sure of its non-workingness but now it appears that Latitude has crapped out altogether.

We’ll keep you updated as we find out what’s going on over at Google and, as always, feel free to let us know what your status is with Google Latitude in the comments section below. Especially let us know if Google’s advice above helped you out.

Microsoft admitted these details at the official page for the Windows Phone devices, along with steps for turning this option off. There’s been no word, however, if that actually works, or, after selecting the option to turn location data off, the device continues to collect data, just like the iPhone does.

Much like other devices that collect location data, the Windows phones use cell towers and Wi-Fi access points to determine a phone’s location, and according to their post, the collection is done once an application requests the location of the device accessing the program. Furthermore, Microsoft is adamant that their collection efforts do not include private data sent over non-protected wireless networks, which is a risk in and of itself (the use of non-protected networks, not the private data collection):

Microsoft engineered and tested the software to make sure that it only observes the information publicly broadcast by Wi-Fi access points to identify access points to devices. The software does not collect any packets transmitted over encrypted or non-encrypted networks and does not attempt to connect to any open networks. This means that any private data you have transmitted over your Wi-Fi network (for example, email or other data you may have sent) is not detectable by the location service software.

Microsoft also states they do not collect emails or passwords transmitted over these same open networks, and that they do not share the collected information with other mobile operators; although, one wonders what benefits Microsoft would receive if they did. As for turning off their location data collection tools, the post has step-by-step details to do so:

To turn off location services for all applications, do the following:

1. From Start, flick left to the App list, and then tap Settings.

2. Tap Location, and then turn off Location services.

According to The Enquirer, users need to turn off location collection in both the Search and Location areas, and while Microsoft includes an image of location collection being turned off in the Search function, they don’t explicitly say users need to do so.

In fact, the post says location data can be turned off by either “withdrawing consent and turning off location services for that particular application,” which features the search function image and by “turning off access to location services for all applications on the phone.”

Say what you will about the ubiquitous Microsoft, but you have to respect their approach to dealing with this subject, but hey, at least Apple finally responded.

Indeed, I’ve been pretty skeptical about the insane valuations being thrown around about Groupon, although Google and their recent announcement to jump into this lucrative space may derail the huge valuation of Groupon… wait and see I guess. So how popular has Groupon, Living Social and other services become??

Check this out, recently there was a promotion from Amazon offering $20 Amazon Gift Card for $10… there were more than 1.3 million of the deals sold!

I’ve recently purchased several deals, mostly half off food and drink although I’ve yet to actually turn in one of my coupons… I’m pretty much paperless so I do hate the idea of having to actually print out the coupon and take it with me – why can’t I simply show the receipt using my smartphone?? So there’s one way to make these services better, but what about more Geo?

I can’t help but think that there’s some opportunity here for skilled, mobile, Geo savvy application developers to jump in here and come up with some very cool ways to make these services even better. With foursquare, GoWalla, and other social checkin services being so popular, perhaps some Groupon-like integration with checkins would be a great idea. This could be huge for foursquare and others and maybe help offer something valuable and useful as a reward for checking in… addressing the topic of user burn-out due to lack of benefit for checking in. And then there’s the idea of geo fencing and notifications being sent to mobile (opt-in) users based on their location. I for one be open to some notifications from select merchants based on my location.

Perhaps I didn’t see today’s Groupon or SwarmJam offer. But, what if I get within blocks of a pub serving up a Groupon today… why not automatically message me when I enter a "hot" zone? 

Since I travel a fair bit I’d also like an app or service that will detect that I’m in a new region, then based on that position, Groupon and other services that I elect to use will update me with deals from that city rather than me having to physically login to my account and update which city deals I receive.

There’s lots of ways that coupon services and mobile advertising can evolve, I just hope some of you mobile, Geo, and LBS app developers jump on this and score a nice win!

Originally published on http://blog.gisuser.com

Mark DiPaola, CEO of CheckPoints, a fast-growing mobile shopping app that lets users earn points towards prizes for checking in and scanning products at stores, shared some thoughts on where the location-based service industry is headed. 

"Gone is the novelty of checking in simply for ‘bragging rights,’ he tells WebProNews. "Consumers will require real value in exchange for their attention and participation. Mainstream consumers begin to see the benefits of LBS apps – particularly around making shopping more personal — without compromising their privacy." 

"As old contracts expire, everyday consumers will increasingly replace the old school phones with smartphones," he continues.  "This will be hastened by a Verizon iPhone (finally!) and Google’s top-secret Android device."

"Smartphone adoption will facilitate a mass migration toward app usage, which will create a lot more noise in the app marketplace – especially the un-curated Android Market," he adds.  Trusted app reviews and recommendations will grow in importance."

One of the most interesting things about location-based services is that they bring the online and offline worlds together, and we will likely see many more ways in which this can be accomplished going forward. 

"Brands born in the app stores will create robust multi-level relationships with consumers that extend into the real world – not just through the phone or online," says DiPaoa. "This year, we saw Angry Birds launch a line of stuffed animals, and CheckPoints offers real world rewards for scanning product barcodes with your phone."  

"The combination of mass mobile adoption, popularity of location-based services and improvements in app quality will help to create deep immersive consumer experiences that bridge the online and physical worlds," he concludes. 

We’re already seeing location-based services penetrate TV. MTV was one of the early pioneers in this area. Now Endemol USA is reportedly developing a TV series that uses Foursquare "emulate the competition and travel aspects of reality shows such as The Amazing Race," as Mashable’s Jennifer Van Grove describes it. 

We will also likely see a continued integration among the location-based services themselves. Gowalla, for example, just announced new integration with Facebook Places and Foursquare. Facebook Places launched with integration with other services. With so many location-based services coming out, the most effective ones are likely going to integrate with others and bring something new to the table in order to attract users. 

Studies have shown that location-based services haven’t caught on that much, despite all the hype surrounding them. That will likely change. 

The concept of the location-based service is still relatively new. Watch for them to become more mainstream over the next year or so as more people figure out practical uses for them and the services themselves and businesses taking advantage of them illustrate these uses. Remember when nobody "got"Twitter?

Are check-in apps just a fad? Tell us what you think.

At PubCon this week, WebProNews spoke with Gib Olander, director of biz dev at Localeze, which provides local business listings to all kinds of sites and apps. He certainly seems convinced that location-based services (LBS) are here to stay. 

"Geo-location is just an outstanding place, and the way I think about it is, we started with a big search box and we all kind of wanted to find answers to ‘what’ questions and things have evolved pretty quickly to a ‘what’ and a ‘where’, so we did a geo-modifier," he tells us. "We added a state or a zip code or a city. We started to find more information."

Putting the "Where" and the "When" in Marketing

"Nicely, social layers added on top of that where you start to get your Facebook and your friends’ recommendations," he continues. "Yelp did a great job with reviews, and then Foursquare came along, and they’ve added a really neat new component with this check-in feature, and there’s other sites that are doing it as well, like Brightkite and SCVNGR, but one of the things I think is really neat and new for marketers is they’ve added the time of ‘when.’"

That "when" is a key factor in executing a successful campaign, and it’s one that just hasn’t been able to get nearly as precise in marketing channels of the past. The mobile device in customers’ pocket tracking right where they are when they’re there (particularly when they’re sharing this information on purpose) is astonishingly powerful. 

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"When someone is there really changes the relevancy of what kind of information you want to share with them – what kind of things you want to talk to them about," says Olander. "So, geo-location has added all those…kind of layers: the who, what, where, why, and when on top of each other, and it’s created new opportunities for businesses to talk to their customers, and for customers to discover new businesses, and I think that’s just really exciting for our space."

"Michael Metcalf from Yahoo talked about this at a conference," he recalls. "Your spatial network is just about as important as your social network. So who’s around you and when they’re around you both from a physical location, and businesses need to be aware of that with other businesses, but also people around you. Because when people congregate in an area, they leave a pyschographic imprint of who they are and what they are, and why they’re there. And marketers can tend to look at that."

"Like so right now at PubCon, if you were tracking this event, you would see that by the profiles people have when they’re here now at this particular time…you know, we’ve got a lot of interesting SEO and SEM and geo-location and marketing and targeting," Olander explains. "So as a marketer or advertiser…and a big feel for tech…so maybe if you’re the Marriott nearby, you could start to target the area during the hours that we’re here with special offers of free wi-fi or that type of thing."

Which Check-In Apps Should I Utilize?

One challenge that marketers face along with these types of opportunities is knowing which services to utilize. There are seemingly new check-in apps coming out just about every day.  Foursquare is the one that’s gotten the most attention thus far, but there are plenty of others breathing down that company’s neck to be the "it" check-in app – the Facebook to Foursquare’s MySpace. Of course, Facebook itself is doing more in this space with its Facebook Places product. It will be interesting to see how other apps co-exist with that. Facebook Places is only going to get bigger and bigger. The social network has over half a billion user, let’s not forget.

"I think the real competition from the Facebook ecosystem is gonna come from third-party developers like Zynga that build on top of the Facebook Places API, because you’ll notice with Facebook Places that they haven’t done anything with like virtual goods like badges or points, and these are some of the main attractions of Foursquare and Gowalla," Lawrence Coburn, who runs the geo-location app provider DoubleDutch recently told WebProNews. "So they’ve just left that open, but I know that third-party developers won’t be so shy, and they’ll come in and make games, because there’s a lot of good game developers on Facebook." 

That’s certainly another advantage for the social network giant, but that doesn’t mean it’s time to consider the rest of these apps doomed. 

Foursquare itself has some pretty big plans, particularly for local businesses. CEO Dennis Crowley talked about this at ad:tech last week. "The harder part is consumer brands…consumer packaged goods," he said, adding that it’s hard to find a practical way to use Foursquare to sell things like batteries or cereal. The local business stuff is much more obvious though, and what may not work with Foursquare or even Facebook Places, may work with another app. 

"Across the board, they’re all really important," says Olander. "I think there’s a stat out that there’s more than six thousand LBS apps on the iPhone alone, so fragmentation is a reality of the marketplace. What we think, at Localeze, is that you look at each one of them as an opportunity…what you really have to establish is your business identity online."

"It used to be that you could just have a brick and mortar store, and put a nice awning up or a nice sign up, and people would walk by and find you," he adds. "But today, you really have to own that online presence, and that starts with owning your name/address/phone number. You make sure it’s consistent in multiple applications, and then you’re starting to cover them all. You start to monitor each of those and see where most of the foot traffic, or where your audience or customers are, and then really interact with those and create unique content offers for them."

Are you marketing to customers with location-based services? Tell us about your experiences.

Much like Foursquare, minus the creepy geo-location aspect, GetGlue allows users to check in to movies they’re currently watching, books that they’re reading, and the music that they’re listening to. There are also other check-in options pertaining to wine, celebrities, video games and general topics of discussion. “We wanted to build a place that glues friends & fans together around things they love,” GetGlue founder and CEO Alex Iskold told WebProNews.

Do you currently use GetGlue or any other check-in service? Let us know.

Most check-in services, GetGlue has built in gaming elements like badges, points and even physical stickers. When a user has been awarded seven different profile stickers, they can request a copy of their stickers – free of charge. “Two things make GetGlue stickers unique” says Iskold.  “First, they are physical, tangible rewards. The interplay of digital and digital is fascinating. In addition, they are branded – authorized by FOX, HBO, Showtime, and others. This makes them very real and very meaningful. Its not just some digital bling you got, it is a thank you from the brand you love.”

GetGlue began 2010 with approximately 30,000 users; currently the site has over 650,000 registered users. As you would expect, September was the biggest month to date, with over 10 million ratings and check-ins. According to Iskold, mobile is very critical to their strategy, with mobile accounting for over 70% of total check-ins. GetGlue currently features an iPhone, iPad and Android App.

One thing that sets GetGlue apart from their competition is the partnerships with major media brands and their reach. Iskold tells WebProNews, “We have been fortunate to work with over two dozen of top entertainment brands. Our first partner was Showtime, followed closely by HBO, our biggest partner. FOX, ABC Family, USA, Syfy, AMC, Universal, Sony pictures, PBS, Discovery, Random House, Penguin and many others are offering rewards to GetGlue users.”

Upon analyzing GetGlue’s partnerships Iskold says, “There were a couple of very interesting things we learned… brands love our concept of ad-without-an-ad. When someone shares that they are watching Mad Men, that’s effectively an ad for the show, but no one perceives it as an ad. This is a genuine connection around people’s watching habits. And when you take thousands of such check-ins, you get millions of friends, and followers reached through Facebook and Twitter. This quickly becomes very powerful way for brands to reach fans and provide incentives for tune-in.”

Recently GetGlue announced an exclusive partnership with HBO for fans of their hit show True Blood. For a limited time, fans that check in to the show will receive a 10% discount at HBO’s online store for True Blood merchandise. Fans with a higher check-in status can receive up to 20% off products, with one lucky individual getting a $50 gift card. If you miss out on this offer, don’t worry more are promised, “Social entertainment market is heating up and we are leading the way. We have a ton of very exciting product ideas that you will see later this year and in 2011." 

In the near future, Iskold wants to continue partnering with bigger brands – he even wants to help lower the cost of your cable bill. “I’m envisioning a service where if you check in a certain number of times, you could get $10 off of your monthly cable bill.”

Do you think GetGlue will ever be mentioned in the same sentence as Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare?  Tell us what you think.

Foursquare users: How bad do you want the NASA Explorer Badge? Let us know.

The check-in officially kicks off a partnership between NASA and Foursquare, NASA even has aFoursquare page offering venues where you can unlock the new NASA Explorer Badge. Users will get tips about the venues upon check-in with their smartphone or mobile device.

Wheelock, @Astro_wheels as he’s known on Twitter, is the Commander of ISS Expedition 25, which is a team of cosmonauts and astronauts from both Russia and the United States. You can read his full bio here.

It should be noted that earlier this year NASA coordinated the first tweet from outer space What will they have in store for us next? Let us know what you think.

"With today’s release, we’re expanding what’s possible, enabling your applications to create check-ins on behalf of users," the company says. It utilizes OAuth 2.0 to do so.

The company gives developers the following guidelines for using the API:

• Encourage users of your application to check in at places they are actually located.
• Avoid incentives or game mechanics that reward checking in from distant locations.
• Never “auto check-in” a person without their explicit permission. This is seriously uncool.
• Encourage social interaction over bot-like behavior.
• Rapid, repeated check-ins with the intent to automate the location and swapping of items will not be tolerated.
• Go easy on the API. Cache data where you can, respond to error messages, and be thoughtful about your user experience.

The documentation is here.

The Check In API should help Gowalla continue to compete in an increasingly crowded check-in app space – a space that Google is starting to place more emphasis on and Facebook is expected to get more involved with.

In other check-in app-related news, Foursquare has opened up a new online store, where fans can purchase Foursquare merchandise and help Foursquare continue to boost its branding efforts.

The Hotlist launched last year, claiming to be the first geo-social aggregator. Its platform calculates the popularity of events and venues, offering analytics and ratings for social planning.

The app compiles info from sources like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp, and filters public social activities of over 100 million people worldwide.

"People work and people play. However, planning even the smallest get together can be very time-consuming and frustrating," says The Hotlist CEO Gianni Martire. "Our mobile app allows people to make the most out of their social life by giving friends a place to share their social plans, eliminating the stress of phone tag, endless text messages and disappointing evenings. The Hotlist instantly gives people information that used to take hours to figure out, a one-stop app to organize your social life."

The Hotlist claims to have over 160,000 monthly active users, and the release of an iPhone app should only boost that number significantly. Then, the company will launch Android and BlackBerry apps at some point. No specific dates for these are mentioned, but they said to expect them "shortly."

While I’d encourage you to sift through the headlines and social media app directories on a regular basis, I’ve put together a few currently unfolding storylines with big implications for business owners.

What do you think is the most interesting social media development of which we have yet to see the outcome? Let us know.

1. Why the Google Buzz Firehose Will Benefit You

Google Buzz launched to a lot of hype, but that kind of died down to some extent after a while. The privacy-related issues that it launched with didn’t help. However, Google Buzz has steadily been making more moves to become more relevant to the social media universe. It already has a solid user base, and we’ve likely only seen the service’s infancy.

A couple months ago, Google launched the Buzz API, which was a big step in the right direction. This gave developers tools to build applications around Buzz, or integrate Buzz into their existing applications, hence making Buzz more useful. Just as Twitter became more useful when more apps were built for it, Buzz has similar potential.

That potential has now increased greatly, as Google has launched the firehose for the Buzz API. This means that all public information from Buzz users is accessible by developers for use with their apps, which opens the door for many more opportunities. See how some are already using it here.

From the business owner’s perspective, simply think of Buzz as another group of potential customers, in addition to Facebook and Twitter users, which will probably be integrated into many of the same apps that are already utilizing these other groups. So any promotional benefits you are seeing from said apps should increase with the addition of Buzz data, not to mention the fact that this and other factors will likely lead to the growth of Buzz itself. That brings me to the next point.

Do you think Google Buzz will become more useful to your business? Comment here.

2. Google Me

For weeks, Google has been rumored to be working on a new big social network to rival Facebook. The company of course does not comment on rumors, but has not denied the concept. Details are scarce, but "Google Me" as it’s commonly being referred to, will likely utilize existing Google profile pages, which are tied to Google Buzz. As I discussed in a recent article, Google is making all YouTube users connect their accounts to a Google account, which could mean that all of these Google account holders become part of Google’s massive social network by default.

Without knowing Google’s exact plans, it’s hard to say exactly what benefits will become available that aren’t already there, but you can bet that the implications will be big, and it might make all of Google’s social properties more beneficial to businesses. YouTube is one of the most popular sites in the world. Add that to everyone else with a Google account.

Will Google be able to rival Facebook in social media mind share? Comment here.

3. Virtual Goods Increase Purchase Intent

Virtual goods are becoming more popular within social networks, and businesses are already finding ways to utilize them to not only increase brand awareness and influence positive opinions about their products, but drive purchase intent.

In fact, new study from Appssavvy found that they can do all of these things, while increasing all brand metrics. More about this here.

Have you had success with virtual goods-based campaigns? Comment here.

4. Customers Are Checking In, and This Will Become Searchable

Another hot trend in social media is checking in. You know, all of these geo-location services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Booyah, etc. More and more of them will continue to pop up, and let’s not forget the really big names. Google has Google latitude, Twitter has Twitter Places, and Facebook will be launching something location-based one of these days soon.

Foursquare is already in talks with all of the major search engines. We don’t know exactly will come of this, but it seems clear that search engines are interested in indexing this kind of data, and why wouldn’t they be? Imagine if you as, as a business, could search for all of the people sharing their location in your area. That could be pretty powerful.

How would you use searchable, realtime location data? Comment here.

5. Social Media Hasn’t Plateaued.

During the world cup, Twitter was breaking records for tweets. While this is related to a large-scale event, it just shows that a massive amount of people still care about Twitter, and that isn’t changing anytime soon.

It was only earlier this year that Facebook announced it had surpassed 400 million users. The company is widely expected to announce that it’s reached 500 million this week. I probably don’t have to tell you that between these numbers, Facebook faced a huge amount of criticism in the media over privacy issues, with a lot of people talking about deleting their accounts. Facebook just kept on growing. That’s not going to change anytime soon either. Facebook is becoming integrated into the very fiber of the web more and more each day (through social plug-ins, apps, etc.). There are more access points all the time (see Microsoft’s new Outlook integration). It’s getting harder to ignore if you’re not already a user.

If that wasn’t good enough news for businesses placing their fatih in social media, more consumers are actively using Facebook and Twitter to engage with brands. They’re making email marketing campaigns (an already effective marketing channel) more effective.

How long do you think Facebook and Twitter will continue to grow? Share your thoughts.

The web is flooded with social media advice articles everyday. They can get redundant at times, and a lot of them say basically the same things. However, this massive amount of information is also a product of the sheer number of opportunities there are with this medium. That number also grows everyday as more apps, tools, and resources are created – including niche-specific opportunities. Local-specific. Networking-specific. E-commerce-specific. Brick and Mortar-specific.

What are some specific examples of social media opportunities you have found to be beneficial to your business? Share your ideas with other business owners.