Situation or Situational or Task Based Services

Today everyone is talking about Location based services, few talking about location aware services, but almost no one is talking about situation based services.

Situation-al based services can be really breakthrough advancement in software and the way people are able to get their work done.

Let’s understand what is Location based services, Location aware services and then we will understand situation based services.

Location Based Services:
LBS, these services are executed when you are around particular location. Let’s take a simple scenario: You got your cell phone and your cell phone is loaded with the software which enables you to know the location at which you are, and this software is constantly running in a background, you have also subscribed to the live services provided by the software manufacture, you are in your office, you get a call from your mother asking you to get some grocery when you are on the way to home, later you get a call from your girl friend wanting to meet you, and you decide to greet her with flowers, you note all this information down, and you open up the software loaded in your cell phone and put all this information saying that as soon as you leave office, remind you to buy groceries for mother, and to buy flowers to greet girl friend, all information is punched into a software, and now you don't need to remember or care, you can be a free... Now your work is done, it’s time to leave office, you reach office gate and you get reminder to buy groceries for mother... You drive to grocery shop, get the groceries, on the way when you are approaching flower shop, your cell phone reminds you to buy flowers for your girlfriend, you reach home give groceries to your mother, and leave to meet your girlfriend, on the way while you are approaching your cell phone informs you about romantic movie being played nearby movie hall, and tickets are available at rate of 90.00rs (approx 2 USD), you decide to buy tickets and again while approaching cell phone informs you there is a traffic on the way and advice you to take another route, you reach on time, and you give good surprises to your girl friend, you feel proud of yourself and all this is done through LBS.

How LBS work?
Your cell phone is switched on, and software is running which provides LBS, this software keeps on monitoring the location which you are at, software does it using cell tower information, whenever you enter particular cell, software queries the cell and gets information which includes cell id, signal strength etc... User enters information into software based on that, for example I know that when I reach my office gate I am at cell tower 22, I get this information through software and I give it a friendly name - my office gate, so in software I will enter information when cell enters into my office gateway which is tower 22 remind me to buy groceries, and similarly I configure other reminders, auto notification like traffic and movie hall nearby are given to me by software which is connected to software manufacture through internet using GPRS.

So that was about Location Based Services, now let’s look at Location Aware Services.

Location Aware Services:
These services are executed when you are at the particular location, let’s take a scenario for this one as well: you are having a mobile device which is connected to GPS receiver to get the exact location where you are presently, software is loaded on your mobile device to get the data from GPS receiver and perform actions, you are at office working and you get a call from your friend and you both decide to meet up place where you never been, and you are not sure about the direction, you start the software and with the help of GPS, software is able to give you your perfect location and is able to direct you to proper location.

How LAS Works?
LAS, works using GPS device, GPS receiver gives your longitude and latitude along with many more information, e.g. speed at which you are travelling, altitude, etc...

The difference between LBS and LAS is, LBS cannot get the accurate location as it is working on cellular tower information, and cellular tower covers a good amount of distance making software unable to determine the exact location, whereas LBS communicates with GPS satellites and gives you your perfect location.

Now, let’s look at Situation based services.

Situation Based Services:
SBS, very rarely anyone is talking about this, but once this services gets implemented it can do wonders for everyone, there is just no limit to what it can do, we will better understand it by a good scenario: you are at office working, you get a call from a friend and you both decides to meet at 6:00 PM, but you are too busy with work and not sure if you can make it, in situation based service providing software you enter information like if you are still in office at 5:00 PM, message your friend saying "I will get a bit late, I will message you when I leave from office." and you also set message for if u still in the office at 6:00 PM "I am really sorry, I am still at office, lots of work here, we will meet some other time." and you set one more message for if u leave office before 6:00 PM "I am done with my work, I am leaving now.. Meet you in next 30 minutes." after doing all this, you get busy with work... Its 5:00 PM now and you forgot about your friend, but the software remembers and sends SMS to your friend what you had set for 5 PM if you still in the office, you done with your work at 5:30 pm, you leave the office, software reminds you that you have to meet your friend and also sends message to your friend about meeting you in 30 minutes.. You will meet by 6 PM, software doesn't send message which you set for not meeting at 6:00 pm, because you are not in the office.

The above scenario is very simple but yet excites a lot; there can be lots of reasons and possibilities for which you can use Situation Based Services. This is the future of connected world.

How SBS Work?
Working of SBS is combination of LBS and LAS; you need cell tower information as well as GPS information.

Welcome to the future :)