LBCS Location Based Community Services Proactive LBS Services for Mobile Communities in the Research Project COSMOS

In this paper we introduce Location Based Community Services (LBCS) as a natural advancement of ordinary Location Based Services (LBS). We shortly review some basic notions of LBS and argue why embedding LBS into a collaborative environment such as a virtual community facilitates new possibilities for LBS. We describe how LBS can evolve to LBCS and investigate the prerequisites for establishing these services. We shortly review the notion of virtual communities and discuss the pragmatics of handling location information for LBCS. We will introduce a portfolio of LBCS that was established in a pilot test in the COSMOS project at the Technische Universitat Munchen, Germany and describe first experiences with user reception. Furthermore we will mention privacy issues in connection with LBS and discuss special privacy aspects when handling location information in a community.