Uber can tell you how far you are from a cab, or even where is your cab coming from and when it will arrive. As such, the cab becomes a dynamic content which only exist in a specific location during a specific time. Kitewalk can create dynamic contents for cabs, restaurants, shops, ice cream trucks, museums, tonight baroque music concerts, players of scrabble willing to play, best prices of ski gloves, bedrooms, anything!
Thanks to Kitewalk, any business of any size can leverage the power of geolocation – just like big tech companies like Uber, Google or Airbnb do. And as Kitewalk was designed to be used by non-technical people, it is very easy and fast to deploy.
Kitewalk advantages when compared to existing solutions
Search vs Discovery
Google allows users to search for a pizzeria. Open or closed, that is irrelevant. Kitewalk allows citizens to become aware that there is a 2x1 tuna pizza deal next to them starting in 20 minutes without searching for it. We call it content discovery (and that is very different from search).
Context-based delivery
Kitewalk only discovers information that matters to the consumer, based on user’s preferences and context. For example, if you are too far away from the cosmetic store or if the cosmetic store is not part of your interests, information will not be pushed to your mobile.
Real-time information
A digital map tells you that a bookstore is opened between 9am and 7pm. Kitewalk will tell you that Dan Brown will be there dedicating copies of his new book tomorrow from 3pm till 5pm. Content is dynamic and real-time.
Geo-intelligent solutions
Oracle platform can warn a user living in Paris that a new kosher butchery has opened in rue Tolbiac. Kitewalk will warn the same user when she/he is at less than 5 blocks from the butchery, the way to reach it and the time when opening celebration takes place. Kitewalk operates as a personal assistant.
Client Bandwidth
Classical GIS systems handle cartographic data in layers. They are designed to correlate massive amounts of data from different data layers at the client side in order to deliver key analysis and results. Such ability hugely helps geo-mathematiciens and business decision planners on a daily basis. The downside is that the magic is highly dependent on the client side bandwidth and computing power. Long story short, they were never intended to be deployed on mobile devices in the first place. Kitewalk takes a different approach with geo-data by changing the intended audience: instead of addressing geo-mathematiciens goals, it addresses consumer audiences goals, from "discovering what do right now around" to "which jobs I can apply to close to my children school", "which houses are on sale in this specific area", "where is a free parking space right now" or "where can my son's connected Start Wars robot find another connected Start War robot around so that both can engage into a physical Empire Global Fight. Technically speaking now, Kitewalk specializes in rendering at the client side the tiny little subset of geo-data which matches the specific time, space and category criteria required to solve a particular consumer point need. As such, Kitewalk client interfaces can be lightweight, little bandwidth, little computer power. The real Kitewalk magic is server-centric, platform-centric, completely invisible at the client side.
Misunderstanding is the biggest risk
Besides all the risks common to most innovative scale-ups, there is one specific risk which Kitewalk must address to succeed: the misunderstanding of what geolocation means and how Kitewalk’s value proposition is related to it. The geolocation concept is so much overused these days that most people associate it to Google Maps when the truth is there is much more to it than that.
Mobile devices deliver citizens geolocations. And Google Maps allows us to search for static places geolocations. Or, a complete geo-intelligent picture would and should also be able to geolocate the dynamic contents that both citizens and places generate in order to link opportunities and needs together. A citizen and a pizzeria will only correlate together if and when the pizzeria will bring an opportunity matching the user needs / requirements at that particular moment and place. Otherwise, both the citizen and the pizzeria will not correlate, they will both remain disconnected geo-data no matter how good the pizzeria will be and no matter how much the citizen will love pizzas. The technological challenge which Kitewalk solves is rendering such dynamic correlations possible in real time and real space.
The advantages expressed earlier on justify Kitewalk's self-existence, there is indeed a huge space for Kitewalk to live and to create value. Unfortunately, and unlike cars, paintings, cheese or flowers, such advantages are hard to feel, to touch, to see, to perceive. More often than not, these advantages will pass unnoticed to stakeholders, happy enough to see a geo-location checkbox set to green regardless of the gory details of the solution behind.
"Many others are doing geolocation already". "We receive proposals like yours hundreds of times". "I already have a Facebook page". "Geolocation already comes for free with my mobile". Those are all comments we have been confronted to.
So yes, making the magic become invisible is indeed a risk. We must not underestimate this one and work in priority on a strategy to make it easier for people to perceive, to sense, to feel that kitewalking their data is a insurance for their future.
We must make it clear, evident and self-explanatory that the nature of dynamic contents is not necessarily static neither in space (e.g. a cab’s position) nor in time. A 2x1 on pizzas tonight from 7pm till 9pm is a dynamic content that Kitewalk can manage. It is very different from providing the pizzeria’s location only (Google Maps). What drives the commerce and social interaction is the special offering at a specific place and time - not the pizzeria itself. This is how Kitewalk helps create business and social interactions within cities.
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