Thursday, July 9. 2009

How Google Maps uses the W3C Geolocation API and Google Location Services

There's a lot of excitement (sample) about browsers (notably Firefox and Chrome, but actually any implementation that include Google Gears) implementing the W3C Geolocation API. Why? In the past few days Google announced that Google Maps (desktop) can now take advantage of it. All good. My concern: all this discussion may be "fuzzing up" what the API does and does not do.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, LBS, Standards, Wi-Fi at 17:13 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Skyhook's Morgan: Screen Size Challenges GPS Signals, Turn by Turn too Expensive

Rafe Needleman interviewed Skyhook's CEO Ted Morgan on the current state of things location, including FireFox going with Google's toolkit and not Skyhook's (not unexpected), the price of turn by turn directions in phones (too high), the need for location brokers like Fire Eagle (too early to know) and how the larger the screen in a device, the poorer the reception.

Furthermore, the bigger the screen of a device, the worse the GPS reception gets. Morgan says, "The bigger screens drown out the GPS signals." Although when I pressed him as to why, and he claimed to not be technical enough to fully understand it.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, GPS, Wi-Fi, Satellite Navigation, Geospatial Business at 08:28 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Wednesday, July 1. 2009

Skyhook Adds Location to Dell's New Mini

Starting next week Dell will offer its Dell Wireless 700 location solution for the Mini 10 netbook in the U.S. It's a GPS/wireless hardware and software solution. Skyhook provides the wi-fi locating. Dow Jones says Dell is using LBS to try to differentiate its netbooks.

- Dell Blog

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Wi-Fi at 06:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Thursday, February 19. 2009

The Wi-Fi Infrastructure of LBS; Skyhook’s 100 Million Hotspot Baby

100 Million is a big number but that’s how many Wi-Fi hotspots Skyhook Wireless has compiled for its Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS). And that’s also the number of location-based searches that Skyhook can account for in any given day, according to Ted Morgan, Skyhook Wireless’ CEO. “Google does 250 Million searches per day.” So, by comparison, location is making a significant impact in the search business.

Again, according to Morgan, when you understand that even the cellular carriers only do 1 million location-based searches each day, the number of Wi-Fi based location searches is impressive.

So, I asked Morgan what’s happening to LBS especially during the global economic meltdown. Morgan pointed to a couple of factors driving adoption both from the consumer and the software application developer’s perspective.

1. INFRASTRUCURE. The infrastructure is there with more GPS chips on the handset and Wi-Fi hotpots providing positioning technology. In reality, LBS is starting from scratch and things like the iPhone are seeing incredible growth.
2. APPLE. Apple, for example, has an open platform on which to build applications. Software developers can create and launch an app in less than 2 months, and since the opening of the Apple App Store, over 1200 applications have been location enabled. Dealing with a carrier may be a 6-9 month process of bringing an application to market.
3. UNCHARTED TERRITORY: There is no hesitation by app developers to try new stuff; some are looking at different business models and learning to fail fast. Look at Trapster, an application that uses crowd-sourced information to location police speed traps…They’ve had over 400,000 downloads of their application since it launched on the iPhone.

Posted by Joe Francica in LBS, Wi-Fi at 20:36 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Tuesday, January 27. 2009

Podcast: Hybrid Positioning and Your Future

Hybrid positioning refers to handsets that use GPS and another technology to determine the device's location. Such solutions use Wi-Fi access points, cell towers, TV towers and their related signals, RFID, Bluetooth as a companion for when GPS is not enough. A recent report suggest growing use of hybrid solutions. What might your future and that of geospatial marketplace look like as these solutions proliferate? Our editors share some scenarios and point out gaps in the existing infrastructure, i.e., places to make money.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in RFID, LBS, GPS, Sensors, Directions on the News Podcast, Wi-Fi, Geospatial Business, Routing, Tracking, Logistics, Infrastructure at 01:00 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

Wednesday, January 21. 2009

Hybrid Positioning Market Prediction

In a press release I must have missed from last week but which I think is significant, ABI Research offered predictions on the market potential of hybrid positioning systems. That is, when one form of position determination is not available, others must be available on the same handset. Dominique Bonte, ABI's principal analyst for telematics and navigation (see my podcast interview with him from last August on LBS) states that, "Users expect a seamless and transparent location experience regardless of application or environment...Since no single positioning technology can provide this, the future will be about hybrid positioning systems, combining A-GPS, Cell-ID, Wi-Fi, cellular, motion sensors, and even TV broadcast and proximity technologies such as Bluetooth, NFC and RFID. A-GPS, Wi-Fi and Cell-ID will be the winning combination offering accuracy, availability, interoperability and short fix times at low cost. It will represent 25% of all positioning solutions by 2014. Stand-alone Cell-ID and/or Wi-Fi will remain important in regions with low GPS handset penetration."

So, here are a few questions:

1. What's the size of the handset or chip set that must be equipped with all of these various positioning options?

2. Will there eventually be a nationwide network of just one or two technologies that win out over the long term?

Posted by Joe Francica in RFID, Tracking, LBS, GPS, Wi-Fi at 09:38 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |