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Monday, June 2. 2008

Google Location Services API in Gears

TechCrunch UK (via TechCrunch US via Washington Post) reports on some new info on Google and LBS:

- "Location services API had been added to Google Gears" (Gears left limited beta last week and is open to all now)
- Google is "backing up their Location API with a large effort to map out cell-phone towers and wifi hotspots, so that a users location can be pin-pointed more precisely."
- Google building its own database of cell towers/wi-fi hotspots (I think we knew that) and "users of the service will further refine and improve the service by having devices submit information on towers and signal strength" (I think we knew that, too)
- "an effort to develop and define a standard API for accessing Location data" (I expected a link to OGC, where Google is a member, but found a dead link to blog in India)

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google at 06:00 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark and Share

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Recently I browsed around about the location-based services (LBS). A more detailed explanation of LBS for mobiles can be found by

http://to.swang.googlepages.com/
http://to.swang.googlepages.com/lbs


Most people believe it would be the next big thing or killer app. Quite a few others have different opinion. e.g.,

http://www.smallsurfaces.com/2008/06/do-we-need-lbs/
http://www.lewebmobile.com/2008/06/do-humans-really-need-location-based.html

Here I can possibly present one opinion from the consumer/end-user perspective, which I have posted in some other places too.

Do we need LBS so badly?

Before I really go to the details. Let me give a review of one simple concept and theory here, which are called “Home Range Concept” and “Traffic Pattern Theory”.

Home Range Concept. It is a concept that can be traced back to a publication in 1943 by W. H. Burt, who constructed maps delineating the spatial extent or outside boundary of an animal’s movement during the course of its everyday activities.

Traffic Pattern Theory. A people’s daily activity pattern is pretty regular, which comprises of several major events, such as school, work, home, shopping.

As I remember, a technical explanation of traffic pattern theory can be found in a report by Stefan Schonfelder, STRC 2001.

http://www.strc.ch/schoenfe.pdf

What happened here is if you are looking at the traffic pattern of a person, saying a full-time employed, 45 years, car, 3-person-household, one child, the regular activity route is so LIMITED. So, does this mean …
#1 Elibom (Link) on 2008-06-13 12:06 (Reply)

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