Facebook intros geo-location

Mobile geo-location applications that let people share where they shop, dine or play have become an emerging technology trend, but social media powerhouse Facebook has joined the parade with a new feature that could bring the trend to a mainstream audience, writes San Francisco Chronicle.

The Palo Alto company introduced a feature called Places, which lets its users, starting in the US, check in to a location and post it to their Facebook profiles.

The company updated its Facebook app for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch to include Facebook Places. It is still working on apps for other mobile devices.

An MIT spinoff technology company called Lyric Semiconductor has created a chip which uses a technique called 'probability processing' to solve tricky technical problems, says PCR Online.

The first application of the new technology will be found in the new Lyric Error Correction (LEC) chip which is 30 times smaller than digital error correction chips. These savings will make improvement to Flash memory systems which use heavy error correction to make up for high error rates inherent in the technology.

Lyric will license the technology to manufacturers, so rather than providing an actual LEC chip, technology companies will more likely build LEC into existing designs for memory controllers within Flash devices.

Out-of-Home media specialist Eye is set to conduct a multi-format, multi-country study across its advertising network using the latest available global research technology, neuro imaging, states The Moodie Report.

Traditionally, Out-of-Home's passive consumption and subtleties have made it difficult to quantify consumers' responsiveness, Eye said. This study will provide the company's airport and retail business partners, as well as clients, with another measure of advertising effectiveness, it claimed.

Companies such as Procter & Gamble, Nestl'e and Vodafone have previously utilised neuro imaging technology, which delivers insights into the emotional responsiveness of consumers in relation to advertising.