Thursday, October 22. 2009

PC World: Nokia's Future All About (Indoor) Location

The article keys in on the new Booklet 3G which includes GPS and other portable devices as key to location technology. Among the interesting quotes:

"And Nokia's already off to a good start, having acquired several mapping/geolocation services, including Navteq, the world's largest mapping database."

"I [Mark Sullivan] spoke to Nokia VP of social location services Michael Halbherr about indoor location services here today, and he said Nokia will likely roll out new indoor location services on mobile devices in about two years."

"Each time a Nokia device approaches a building it will communicate with GPS satellite until the moment it gets inside the door, then it will begin communicating with the cellular and Wi-Fi base stations inside. By triangulating the device's position relative to the GPS satellite outside the building, and to all the cellular and Wi-Fi hotspots inside, Nokia will be able to associate the device with a specific cell (areas 10 meters or less) as it moves around inside the building."

The article suggests Nokia is already collecting indoor base data from its users - similar to how Google collects StreetView data. I wonder if there are legal concerns here - do I need permission to walk around in a grocery store with my cell phone and collect data on where the walls are? Especially if I don't know I'm doing that?

Oh, and, per the article, Google is apparently also doing indoor mapping.

- PC World

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, NAVTEQ at 07:35 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

No comments

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to	[ Top level ]
Comment	Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_. Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:
	Remember Information?   Subscribe to this entry