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Palm looking to push location-specific advertising to WebOS?

By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 10:06 AM

When it was made public that Palm’s WebOS was periodically phoning home to update Palm and its affiliates with Palm Pre user location data, there was a lot of talk about “Big Brother” and concerns for privacy. Today, BGR has uncovered a patent application that might take the WebOS’s location-tracking technology even further into your private life. Palm has filed for a patent that would provide the WebOS “a method and system thereof that can be used to more effectively target advertisements and other services to users of wireless communication devices.”

In case that legalese is too much for you to chew, Palm is basically looking to take the location-specific information from your Palm Pre and push advertisements to your phone based on your current location. That means some computer somewhere knows where you are and serves up ads that best match the area you’re in. Scared yet?

It gets worse. Palm can even figure out your where you will likely be traveling in the near future by looking at your upcoming calendar appointments. Armed with that info, Palm can push ads that offer services and products tailored to a future location. Palm will basically know where you are and where you plan to go. You should be scared now.

Of course, Palm can’t infer your travel plans if you leave location data out of your calendar appointments. Then again, that kind of cripples the calendar application.

Palm has yet to go live with location-based advertising, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t already collecting location-data in preparation. Take that how you will.

[Via: BGR]

About The Author

Will Park

Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...

  • DaVo

    Let’s be realistic. At some point they are going to have such a backlash that it will be removed or at least a way to turn it off. That is unless it is done so well that it is in fact useful. If you think about it, you are in an area that you are not often in, the phone suggesting dining and shopping or offering coupons could really be helpful and really isn’t much different from what GPS services and Google Maps already does.

  • John

    Reality check. The phone companies all know were your are and are collecting data. They do this to know were they need to increase service, advertizing, and bandwith. The only way you can turn this off is if you disable GPS. Even then though they know were you are by the pings off the tower. With just this they can locate you within half a mile. So maybe we should all turn off our phone. It is a nice paperweight. The Pre you have the option to disable data collection. I find the services helpfull. So I leave mine on. People need to get a life. By the way did you see Apple is doing the same thing. The horror.