Grizzly Analytics Blog

Microsoft announced today a new mobile scripting platform which they're calling ON(x), pronounced "onyx." ON(x) isn't just making apps easier to develop, it's a real game-changer, in that it makes some very sophisticated technology available to app developers that until now they've had to develop themselves. ON(x) was presented briefly at the Think Next 2012 event hosted by the Microsoft Israel R&D center .  It's scheduled to be available in the summer. In a nutshell, ON(x) enables scripts to be invoked based on a huge variety of trigger events. ON(x) scripts are built using a visual editor, where the user defines the trigger actions on which a script is run and the action which is carried out.  Examples include things like "when my wife sends me an SMS that says 'where?' send her back an SMS with my location. Behind the scenes, these triggers/actions are turned into JavaScript code, and users can edit this JavaScript to customi...

Grizzly Analytics loves indoor location positioning. We've analyzed the technology research in progress and we've analyzed the services that stores and malls can deploy now . We loved seeing indoor location demos at MWC ( like this one ). One of the more innovative approaches to indoor positioning uses phone sensors to track the phone's motion inside. The idea is to combine signals from a gyroscope, a compass and an accelerometer to track the direction in whcih the phone is moving and how fast it's moving. One start-up company currently commercializing this approach is Senion Lab, based in Sweden.  I met with Senion Lab at MWC, and their demo managed to track our location fairly well as we walked around the booths. This area has been researched in the past by Microsoft, Samsung, Qualcomm, CSR, Motorola, RIM and others, but is only now appearing in start-ups. Among smaller companies, besides Senion Lab, it's being worked on by Matrix Product Development, Trimb...