You tell me, is this good news?

CBS Mobile, in partnership with a company called Loopt, announced on Wednesday that they will be delivering the country’s first location-based mobile Web site advertisements.

If you’re wondering what that means…

The partners will use GPS and other localization technology to reach consumers at their physical location, enabling them to target users who are near a particular place of business.  These will NOT be Bluejacked messages sent to  cell phones, but appear non-intrusively on mobile Web sites which consumers can access from their cell phones.

The ads will be available on CBS Sports Mobile and CBS Mobile News Web sites, on Loopt properties and its partner’s Web sites.

In other words, you’re checking the scores at CBS Sports on your phone while waiting for your car’s oil to be changed and ‘POP’ there’s an ad for a sale on donuts at the grocery store next door.

All consumer location data, they say, will be privacy protected by Loopt.

According to the press release:

“Location-based advertising is the sweet spot in mobile marketing,” said Cyriac Roeding, Executive Vice President, CBS Mobile.  “We are thrilled for CBS to be the first media company in the country to help our clients realize highly relevant, yet non-intrusive mobile ads using location-based technology. Through our partnership with Loopt, our advertisers will be able to deliver targeted messages to potential customers who, based on their location, might be very likely to click or make a purchase. This makes the ads highly relevant to consumers and advertisers at the same time.”

CBS’s mobile sports and news Web sites  produced close to 75 million page views and 5 million unique users  in the last quarter of 2007 - making it one of the highest-traffic ad-supported mobile Web sites in the U.S.

“We’ve really blurred the line between advertising and content. It’s a win for everyone — consumers, advertisers, Loopt, CBS and our carrier and developer partners.”

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Fairly sure unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are well aware of the iPhone, the need for an update, and all the people that tried to manipulate theirs themselves and ended up with a big fat brick.  Ooops.

That said my friends, a REAL iPhone software update is finally here and by the sounds of things, it helps do some pretty nifty things.  According to the article I just read the new update allows users, “to find their location using the Maps application; text message multiple people in one message; create Web Clips for websites; customize their home screen; and watch movies rented from the iTunes Movie Rentals.” 

While the iPhone notoriously lacks GPS, something that I’m guessing will be remedied in the future renditions of the device, the new update lets users find their location “automatically” by triangulating their position based on WiFi access points, and cell phone towers…good Lord, wouldn’t adding GPS just be, well, easier?

That said, if you are an iPhone user, use your iTunes to get things updated…I’m quite sure you’ll be happy.

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Fresh on the heels of Elizabeth’s genius post on the TomTom yesterday, I found this little gem, and thought to myself, “Self, She really could have used one of these on her trip!”  What is it, you ask?  It’s a Bluetooth GPS receiver that literally fits on your keychain.  Wow.

My favorite part about this new product is the fact that it only runs $99.  So, if you’re the lucky type that has a SmartPhone, BlackBerry, or any other type of gadget that for some reason does not have a GPS chip, you simply grab this little device, and voila, your phone now has GPS capability.  What’s also pretty darn sweet about this little guy is the fact that on a single charge, the battery will last well into 10 hours.  Ten hours folks, is a lot of time off the charger, so don’t worry about this dying on your workday commute.

The device uses Bluetooth 2.0 and you can “connect simultaneously to up to 20 satellite channels, operate for ten hours on a single charge, sports a tracking sensitivity of 159 dBm, supports an external antenna, and purportedly plays nice with your BT-enabled device from up to ten meters away.”  Not bad friends, not bad at all.

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Before embarking on last month’s road trip, we purchased a TomTom global navigation system.

For the past decade, the bulk of my trips have been the fly/rental car variety. Increasingly in the past years, my cars have come equipped with a GPS.

There are few things I hate more than those tiny place-mat maps the Airport car rental places give you.

The only place they have ever successfully steered me is into the freight hangars.

So I took to GPS like a duck to cool, deep puddle and planned on making sure the next car we buy has it factory-installed.

But a portable after-market system in the meantime? Seemed like an unnecessary luxury in this Mapquest world.

Then, the day before embarking on my 10,000-mile boondoggle, my husband came home with a TomTom. Like an adult, I squealed and hopped around the driveway.

The portable system ran us about $300. We chose it over the integrated option with my husband’s Blackberry because, well, I’m the one that does most of the getting lost in this relationship.

The installation was a matter of attaching a suction cup.

With John Cleese telling us to ‘turn left NOW’, off we stepped.

It never occurred to us to check if it would work in Canada. No worries, even in the most rural bits of northern New Brunswick the device knew where to go.

The multiple-stop planning option was outstanding. We were able to integrate all the destinations - client sites, hotels, desired detours - it a single plan. The estimated travel times and on-the-fly recalculations were about 90% correct. Huge improvement over the other systems I’ve used (perhaps a simple matter of the algorithm getting smarter) and Mapquest.

In sum, the gadget steered us faithfully  except for some spells where the satellite signal was not available. The maps clear, construction and traffic avoided, and John’s sardonic wit occasionally shining through the basic ‘go here go there’ dialogue. By the end of the trip, we were ‘instrument driving’ - relying on TomTom  instead of looking out for upcoming exits or traffic.

The only improvement to our experience (excepting stronger satellites) would have been if we’d paired it with a Bluetooth headset like the one MoGo is rolling out. There were long stretches when it would have been nice to route the sound only to the driver’s ears.

Otherwise, I can heartily recommend this as a Father’s Day gift or just a regular Thursday purchase.

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