What Is Location Based Services (LBS)?

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What are Location-Based Services (LBS)? It's like peanut butter to your jelly or pizza to your beer—well, maybe not quite like that. But you get it. Location-based services are everywhere. They're on our phones, cars… even on our wrists! They are everywhere you can imagine and are all wonderful because they make us feel like we have the whole world in our grasp (even if it is just a few feet away). So what are location-based services? The services are offered through a mobile phone and consider the device's location. LBS typically provides information or entertainment. Since LBS relies on the mobile user's location, the service provider's system must determine where the user is. Various approaches are available to accomplish this. Location-based services are a great way to find out where you are and what's around you, but they don't always work as well as promised. Some systems use GPS satellites. Smartphones with built-in GPS receivers now make this approach much more accurate than previously mentioned. Indoor LBS applications typically utilize short-range positioning beacons that rely on WiFi or Bluetooth technologies. There are two main types of location-based services: Push and Pull. In a Push service, the user receives information from the provider without requesting it immediately. Although users may have originally subscribed to the service, they may now be free riders. For example, if you installed an app on your phone that alerts you when there are good deals for restaurants in your area, that's a push notification—you didn't ask for it (yet). However, it's still useful because you don't have to do anything to get it. It's just there! On the other hand, with a Pull service, the user has to request the information they want actively. For instance: "Where can I find a good place to eat?" or "Where are my friends?" You can see how these two things are very different.

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