Where are You? I’m Here, Kakiloc

Alec Saunders recently attended BarCamp in Ottawa, and came away impressed with a start-up called Kakiloc, which he describes as something that “marries social networks and location based services”. Using Google Maps and Yahoo Maps, the Ottawa-based start-up lets people broadcast their locations (longitude and latitude) to friends and family through a computer or mobile devices. Kakiloc looks to among a growing number of companies trying to capitalize on the growing interest in GPS technology among consumers. The mobile market is particularly fertile as more consumers subscribe to location-based services. Last month, Sprint Nextel rolled out a friend-tracking service call Boost, while Helio launched Buddy Beacon. Kakiloc looks like an interesting “feature” that could prove useful to wireless carriers looking to attract young consumers, and/or a social networking site that wants to build customer loyalty.