The Cellular, Telephone & Internet Association (CTIA) - the main industry organization for US wireless companies, has published the Best Practices and Guidelines for Location-Based Services in an effort to boost adoption of location aware services and alleviate LBS-privacy concerns. Critics might argue that this document was published so that government will not try to regulate the wireless industry through legislation.

This 10-page guidelines is CTIA attempt to calm the fears raised by critics on the privacy and safety of location based services. It focuses entirely on the privacy of LBS users which will be achieved through “common sense” rules summarized by two fundamental principals:

Want to be have a successful location based service? Need to know the secret to location based services success? TruePosition, a respected name in the field of location based services, identified what it calls the seven "key drivers" to the success of LBS:

1. Superior phones
2. Better user interfaces on the applications
3. Improved databases of useful information
4. Greater understanding of social networking
5. Increased awareness of location based services among enterprises and consumers
6. More cost effective subscription plans
7. Increased performance of the location technologies powering location based services

We commend TruePosition for attempting to simplify a complex business problem and we whole heartedly agree with them. All identified drivers, some more than others, make sense and are key to successful location-aware services. My only issue is that the list misses one important driver - privacy & safety.

Android is an open source free operating system platform for mobile phones, it is being developed by Google and The Open Handset Alliance, a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies.

Android will deliver a complete set of software for mobile devices: an operating system, middleware and key mobile applications, the idea is to help developers get started developing new mobile applications that will utilize the full functionality of mobile phones and will interact with each other through a rich graphical interface (including the mobile phone's internal GPS). By offering its application and services suite as a part of Android, Google is trying to extend its dominant online position to wireless.

For example, this will allow your calendar, address book and map applications to fully-interact: your phone will remind you when its friend’s birthday, will display a map of his home address with the nearest gift shops, and you will be able to purchase a gift with the push of a button.