Location based services continue to garner interest among users, businesses, search engines, advertisers and entrepreneurs. I've been fortunate enough to have worked closely with a company that just got included in Gartner's "Cool Vendors in Mobile and Wireless, 2006" publication (ID Number: G00138458). I can't actually post the info or I'd get strung up, but it is cool!The problem? It's hard to give location information if you don't know (more specifically, if your computing device doesn't know) where you are. The more precise the location, the better services are able to provide location specific information back to you/your computing device. We're all familiar with GPS, and some are likely familiar with Enhanced Observed Time Difference (EOTD) and Assisted GPS (A-GPS), but Skyhook has attaked the problem by using the ever growing infrastructure that is created by the wifi networks.
Rather than relying on satellites for positioning, the system utilizes wifi access points to provide location information. All that is needed is a lightweight client and a device that supports wifi (and in general, a connection to the Internet -- although this is not strictly required it sorta makes sense).
Wireless Positioning Service (WPS) is not a cure all, clearly it needs a certain density of wireless access points in order to do its job accurately. This, as of now, relegates the service to urban (and indoor) settings in which wifi radio waves are bouncing all over the place. Interestingly, this is also where GPS sometimes has a harder time. It's also handy in that no additional hardware is necessary, if you have a wifi interface, you can use the service.
They recently went Beta with a browser toolbar (pretty soon, there will be no room in my browser for actual content, all I'll have is a stack of toolbars!) called Loki. I personally think the toolbar cool and useful, but I'll let others that aren't as biased explain:
Lookie at Loki: Wi-Fi Begets Latitude, Longitude
JiWire's Weekly Guide to Wi-Fi (Friday, March 24) (sorry, no link)
- Loki turns your Wi-Fi laptop into a GPS
- Turns Laptop into GPS with Loki
- Loki will tell you where to go - on your laptop
- Loki Local Search Toolbar from Skyhook Wireless
- Free Loki (Wi-Fi location solution)
- Loki: Location-Based Internet Search & Navigation
- Loki Local Search Toolbar from Skyhook Wireless
- Loki Local Search Toolbar from Skyhook Wireless
- Skyhook Wireless Offers Loki Local Toolbar
- Software Which Turns Laptops Into GPS
- Loki turns your Wi-Fi laptop into a GPS
- Loki Tells Where You Are
There are probably others, but this seems like a good list to start things off...
I'm just bummed that there isn't a mac version out yet!
Kipp
2 comments:
Interesting concept point, Kipp. I've been slightly "anti" on this because I see it as re-inventing the wheel ... you wouldn't believe how many professionals I've talked to over the year who will terminate conversations at the drop of a let/long.
But you make two very valid points ... in spite of a lot of agile minds at work and even a little smoke and mirrors, indoor GPS is not likely to be useful ... well. maybe not "ever", but for a significantly large fraction of "ever".
Second, the resolution of Wi-Fi based systems. can be very high ... I mean, in the most obvious scenario, a business interested in popping up in such services can really "hedge their best" with nothing but an economical WAP ... talk about "pinpointing"...
Your comment about the tool bars couldn't be more appropriate. There are already a lot of smart toolbar services I don't use, and won't use, because I value my screen real estate too highly. I'm not sure of what the methodology should be ... but is the Web 2.0 mavens wanted to invent something _really_ 2.0, they'd find a way to make tool bars come and go automatically .. or deliver the service in a newer, better method.
Best regards,
Dave
Thanks for the comment Dave.
I like your thinking -- certainly radio-based indoor position can be used and usefull, but it appears to me that the scalability of these solutions is directly proportional to the amount of effort put into installing and maintaining them -- i.e. they don't scale well in general.
But that's also a matter of granularity, depending on the specificity required, they can be useful without an undue amount of work.
As to tool bars and screen real estate -- that's a huge issue for me as well. And some browsers (e.g. IE) seem to 'automatically' adjust your toolbars, but never in a good way.
Kip
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