“You don’t really know where you are, and are looking for a good place to eat. You pull out your laptop, fire up Firefox, and go to your favorite review site. It automatically deduces your location, and serves up some delicious suggestions a couple blocks away and plots directions there.”
Last week Mozilla Labs announced Geode, a geolocation add-on to Firefox 3.
Geode gives the ability for websites to gain access to your location without the use of GPS. Instead it uses Skyhook’s Loki technology, which uses WiFi to determine your location within a second and with an accuracy of about 10-20 meters. Whist this won’t work in remote areas, it does however have a big advantage over GPS. It works inside buildings! No longer do you have to be outside to get location based services.
The example at azarask.in/local/ found 522 Fulham road straight away without me doing anything, so clearly it works.
Whilst finding restaurants does have its uses, I’m sure we’ll start to see some better applications of the technology soon.
Let me know if you find any.
London is still the world capital of WiFi with 12,276 access points, according to the annual Wireless Security Survey by RSA, beating New York City by roughly 3,000. In Paris the year-over-year increase was 543%, while London and New York saw much slower increases.
http://www.rsa.com/press_release.aspx?id=9725
Dan
Thought you might like this SD memory card which ‘geo-tags’ photo based on Wi-Fi hotspot locations. It works using the Wayport hotspot provider which unfortunately are only in the USA.
http://www.eye.fi/services/geotagging/
The card also includes Wi-Fi in iit so that you can automatically upload photos to the web if you’re in a wi-fi area
Hope you are well.
Cheers
Rich