The Difference Between Location-Based Services and Context-Aware Location-Based Services

I've written about Location-Based Services a few times, most recently on September 28^th, and I came across the term Context-Aware Location-Based Services. In doing research on this topic, I found the top results from a web search are some academic papers, including this academic paper which goes into much detail. But there are many of them and it appears this is hot academic research topic.

 

If I had to boil it down, the difference between LBS and Context-Aware LBS would involve a database of some sort that "knows" something about you. For instance, in the LBS example I showed in the September 28^th blog, an advertisement for a restaurant appeared on the user's mobile phone. Perhaps that advertisement was sent to anyone within a certain amount of blocks of the restaurant. That would be an example of a location-based advertisement. But perhaps also that ad only appeared on that user's mobile phone since the owner of that mobile phone had been there before and/or had opted in to some future advertising promotion. So the ad appearing was much more in context. 

 

I can also envision some kind of service that is integrated with your calendar. For example, I am constantly changing the type of ring tone of my mobile phone depending on what I'm doing. Why do I really need to do that - why can't the mobile phone integrate with my calendar and change the ring tone to either what I've done in the past in certain situations, or change it depending on the type of activity I'm doing on my calendar.