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use of such devices more natural and simpler given their contexts of use. Some examples of current
mobile OSs are iOS by Apple, Google's Android, RIM's BlackBerry OS and Microsoft Windows
Mobile 7 and more recently 8. Additionally, smartphones have given the user the ability to person-
alise their devices by customising the look of the software and the functions the device can perform
through the purchasing of apps. Credit should be given to Apple for creating the App Store (after
much reported internal confrontation) as this was really the first real attempt to run third-party apps
on an existing platform where the software delivery mechanism was accessed directly from the
device itself located anywhere with network coverage. This new way of authoring and delivering
apps meant that updates to the store were very frequent and the apps priced in a way that could make
them an impulse purchase, thus boosting their popularity. It also meant that software could even be
written and sold by home-based, part-time developers and reduced the reliance on large software
houses to produce apps. After seeing the success of the App Store, the other OS originators quickly
followed suit.
The advantages offered by app stores include quality control, minimal marketing costs, ease of
software delivery, ease of supplying updates and revenue paid directly to the creator (with the app
store provider taking a cut). These apps also mean that content such as media and web pages can be
made more usable through creating an app for that purpose: good examples of this are the Facebook
(2013) and Twitter (2013) apps, which were solely created to present the information from a user's
account in a manner which is suited to mobile devices, though in very recent iterations, these apps
have taken advantage of the on-board GPS to publically report position.
Mobile devices are powerful and popular, have a multitude of on-board sensors, possess high-
resolution screens, run software which is suited to the affordances of the hardware and have a large
development community, which makes them ideal for performing GC, but with the added advan-
tage of being mobile. The combination of hardware and software features described in Table 15.1
suggests a wide range of affordances related to both computation and user interaction, but it is the
addition of the positioning capability which opens up exciting possibilities for exploiting the user's
spatial location and context, not only for searching for relevant information, or tagging logged data
with location, but for exploring the merits of in-field analysis, and the added value of including user
location in GC.
15.2 DEFINING LBGC
LBGC offers a fresh way of thinking based on an explicit reworking of several existing concepts.
It combines the power of GC as a set of tools, techniques and methodologies that can exploit the
advantages of being in the field. These advantages include collecting, processing, analysing and
visualising data in the field from which informed decisions can be made about current activities.
These may influence the design of an experiment and/or affect the interpretation of a computed
output. An example would be the ability to visualise a model prediction in the context of the real
world and adjust the model inputs according to data collected on location. Another possibility is to
build a model from scratch in the field, using the mobile device to perform all new data collection
and simultaneously combining it with secondary data from another source such as the web. LBGC
has become possible because background data, processing power, Internet access and data collec-
tion tools can all now be taken out into the field on a mobile device.
LBGC is part of computational geography and as such has an established pedigree, clearly
predating the advent and proliferation of GIS (geographic information systems) and GISc (geo-
graphic information science). The historical development of such computational activities is per-
haps best envisaged as being a natural descendant of the so-called quantitative revolution, one
of the four major turning points in modern geography (environmental determinism, regional
geography, quantitative geography and critical geography). The quantitative revolution occurred
during the 1950s and 1960s. It involved a rapid change in the methods that were being applied to
perform geographical research, moving away from regional geography into a spatial science of
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