Map it, Find it, Get it, Share it - Search Local With Loki 2.0
Written by Glenn Letham
Monday, 28 May 2007
Loki - a powerful application that uses your location to harness even more power from the Internet. Download the Loki toolbar, take it for a drive and you'll say WOW... I did! I'm trying to figure out why I didn't grab it sooner! Simply put, Loki 2.0 enables you to locate information about where you are when you don't know where you are! For those of us that travel, you'll know what I mean.
Imagine this... you get back to the hotel room and fire up the laptop... you know you're at a motel near an airport or maybe at a hotel near a convention center, but do you really know where you are and what's near you? The Loki toolbar responds to this. To start, download the toolbar - see http://loki.com/download/
Downloading is quick and painless.. installation is even easier
Once installed you should have a nice, new toolbar on your web browser with a number of options:
Find Me - hit the "Find Me" button and you'll see your location plotted on a map. A nifty Google map shows up with your approximate location. Now you can start panning and browsing around to locate businesses or whatever you need. USe the search functionality to search your locale for anything you want or need. Imagine... your at the hotel in downtown San diego and craving Indian food. Simply bang in the appropriate search string and you'll find relevant hits nearby.
FindMe uses Google Maps to show you where you are!
Tune your Location This option is really cool and helps you make the service even better. If the Find Me seems to be off slightly then you can update your location and help refine the results so everyone can enjoy a better experience.
SMS For mobile device users, simply power up your laptop when on the road, click the Loki SMS option on the toolbar, enetr your mobile number and you'll get a message sent via sms providing information about your location. The Email option on the toolbar is similar but send via email instead.
Loki SMS - send details to your mobile
GeoTag Clicking the Geotag option on the toolbar will determine your location and enable you to simply paste in the coordinates when filling in a form that requires geotaging location-relevant information. Loki says this is valuable for users of flickr and other sharing apps (unfortunately I couldn't actually get it to work but I'll keep trying!)
Channels Now this is the fun stuff... Loki Channels are quick, one-click navigation buttons that give you immediate access to the most popular 'location-relevant' content on the web. We've organized them into logical categories – like Restaurants, Movies, Weather, News, Entertainment – and then partnered with some of the most popular sites on the Internet to add pre-packaged links. Zagat, Fandango, AccuWeather, Match.com - more channels are also available from Loki. My favorite is the GasBuddy application.. I now have one-click access to the most recent gas prices in my area. This is cool.. all the channles pull up useful applications but more important, provides your location to the service so you receive only relevant results from the app... SWEET!
Some Recent additions in Loki 2.0 (released in April, 2007) include:
Javascript API - Website developers can now implement Loki’s positioning system with only a few lines of Javascript. Enhancing applications and websites with location awareness is now easier than ever.Head over to the Developers Section to learn more and sign up as a developer. See http://loki.com/developers
Updated UI - The user interface has been cleaned up, beautified and reskinned with new icons. Tasks are now grouped together for easy navigation. And now you can minimize the toolbar when you’re not using it.
I've only touched on the possibilities and options available from the Loki toolbar. This clever service is fun, useful, and innovative... anyone interested in having access to local information and services will appreciate the power of location-enabling your web experience with the help of Loki.
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Loki - a powerful application that uses your location to harness even more power from the Internet. Download the Loki toolbar, take it for a drive and you'll say WOW... I did! I'm trying to figure out why I didn't grab it sooner! Simply put, Loki 2.0 enables you to locate information about where you are when you don't know where you are! For those of us that travel, you'll know what I mean.
