Communication Support with Location-based Information
Hiroki Uematsu, Kosuke Numa, Masahiro Hamasaki, Ikki Ohmukai, Hideaki Takeda
Yokohama National University,
79-2 Tokiwadai, Hodogaya, Yokohama, Kanagawa 240-8501 Japan
National Institute of Informatics,
2-1-2 Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda, Tokyo 101-8430 Japan
uematsu@nii.ac.jp
Abstract
In this paper, we propose the communication
supporting system with location-based information such as landmarks. Our system provides
cooperative aggregation environment for location-based information. The user can also
communicate each other with.

1 Introduction
Moving one place to the other is an indispensable partof our daily life, i.e., we visit somewhere, meet somebody at somewhere, and even go by somewhere. Not
only location is a key of our life but also a key of ourcommunication. By sharing information on location, wecan meet to each other, talk about locations, and exchange various information by specifying location. We
aim to support such location-based communication withGPS and mobile phone environment.
Our key idea is to share “landmarking”. We often cite
in our communication locations which we frequently
visit or which is famous in some reasons. We call such a
specific location "landmark", and we provide an environment in which people can make landmarks anywhere
they want, then they can share these landmarks if theywant.
Our system supports two types of landmark. One ispublic space such as a park, a building and a station. The
other is the area where people meet to make communication. Users make the “Landmark” based on latitude
and longitude. And share them to communicate with.

2 Proposed systems
Our system consists of CGI application and databaseserver. Users access the server with GPS-enabled mobile phone.

Figure 1 shows snapshots when users access our system. Users can entry their own location with mobilephone. CGI application receives location data with user
information. System registers it to database. Users register own location data with latitude and longitude.
However, Precise latitude and longitude are unnecessary
for landmarking.
Accordingly, location data had better to be registeredwith ranges. So, our system registers location data byaddress and “Landmark”.

Figure 2 “Landmark” which is shared
In our system, users can name to the area registered as
Landmark. Users can choose two types of landmark
from Public-Landmark or Own-Landmark. Public-Landmark indicates a station or a park and anymore.
Own-Landmark means what something like users own
home. Figure 2 shows concept of Public-Landmark.
Users can share Public-Landmark. One user entry thePublic-Landmark and some other people entry their own
location with using that landmark. We expect that public
landmarks would grow up as common database for locations. Not all landmarks can be survived. Popularity ofeach landmark, i.e., how often it is used by users, can beused to determine whether it will be deleted from thedatabase or not. Gradually only popular landmarks will
be stored and served to users.

3. Conclusion
In this paper, we proposed the communication supporting system with location-based information. Using“Landmark”, the system provides an easy way to sharelocation-based information among users.
We investigate the process of generating Landmarks
as a future works.
Figure 1 image of system