Skyhook Wireless is now providing its Wi-Fi-based location awareness technology for users of Locr software which automatically adds location information to photos.
Skyhook’s software runs on Apple’s iPhone. It maps the location of Wi-Fi hotspots and uses them to triangulate a cell phone’s location. It works indoors and out but requires nearby WiFi hotspots.
Combining Wi-Fi and GPS enables more accurate, reliable location information. XPS is their hybrid positioning engine that integrates the Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) from Skyhook with GPS or cellular triangulation.
Last year Skyhook announced a partnership with SiRF, a maker of GPS chips, and the iPhone and iPod Touch, but other major handset device makers haven’t followed — yet.
iPhone Review lists the 10 Best iPhone Applications. They like Navizon (below).
As more phones come equipped with GPS, all sorts of location services are being offered by the carriers (and other companies) for additional fees.
The Sony Ericsson C702 Cyber-shot (right) uses built-in aGPS to stamp location data onto every photo you take with its 3.2 MP camera.
The Nokia 6220, a 5-megapixel camera, uploads directly to Flickr with geotagging.
Assisted GPS can locate the phone roughly by what cell site it is connected to and enable the cell phone to lock to the satellites when it otherwise could not.
Air Semiconductor, is building a chip to let cameras process GPS signals so latitude and longitude data can be attached to digital photos.
Google Maps Mania has the latest mashups. Here are some other broadband mapping sites.
Wikiloc is a free web site which lets you share your favorite GPS tracks through a Google Maps mashup or through Google Earth. Its focus is on trails - and it shows the elevation profile as a graph with every track.
The NY Times overviews GPS Cellphone services:
- The Disney Family Locator service on a Disney-branded mobile phone uses G.P.S. to track a child’s whereabouts. Parents buy special child and parent phones. The child’s phone is programmed to beam locations to the parent’s phone, which has the ability to display and map the approximate street address where the child is at any given time.
- Sprint’s Family Locator service provides parents with the child’s location and alerts them when the child arrives at a specified place. The Sprint service can also be used to track adult family members, but the adult can control who tracks them.
- Verizon’s child locater, called Chaperone, adds a “geofencing” service that allows a parents to define an area — such as a school or baby sitter’s house — where the child is permitted. The parents receive an alert on their handset when the child’s cellphone enters or leaves the zone.
- Verizon’s VZ Navigator service has turn-by-turn voice and onscreen directions and a local search function to help you find nearby businesses.
- Wherify Wireless offers a line of G.P.S.-enabled phones to track elderly relatives or employees. People doing the tracking can locate the trackees through a Web or cellphone interface or by calling the company’s toll-free number and providing the operator with a password.
Helio offers Buddy Beacon. The virtual operator aimed at young adults, enables customers to beam their location to 25 other Helio users. Helio plots directions on Google Maps and searches for nearby businesses.
- Loopt, which runs only on Sprint’s network and Boost’s prepaid network, allows its users to continually report their location to friends who are also Loopt customers. The phone tracks the user and issues an alert when another Loopt user comes within a certain distance.
- PocketTweets is a Web-based Twitter client for the Apple iPhone, using EDGE or WiFi. Twitter sends mobile text to your group of friends and posts it to your Twitter page.
- Skyhook Wireless offers a service that uses Wi-Fi to locate laptops and other devices, including some Wi-Fi Internet phones, and with the user’s permission reports that position to others.
- TeleNav offers a service that turns phones from Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile and others into a full-fledged G.P.S. navigation device by using the phone’s speaker and color screen. It has a “points of interest” database, but because it is connected to the cellular network, it receives updates in real time. That enables services like a “gas by price” for the nearest cheap gas. If you beam your address to other TeleNav users, they can plot you on a map and get directions to your location.
- Some Sprint and Verizon phones can use Bones in Motion’s BiM Active application to track your speed, location, elevation and calories burned while walking, running or cycling. You can view your statistics and a map of your route on the phone or a Web page.
Cellphone location information can be handy. If your phone doesn’t have GPS built-in, external Bluetooth GPS receivers like GlobalSat or others might work.
DailyWireless has more on Location-based Services, GPS, Bluetooth and Mobile Applications with Geocoding Content & Telemetry, GPS Tracking: In a Shoe, On a Bike, Wireless GPS Camera, New Smartphones from HTC, Polar Flight Telemetry, Happy GIS Day!, Realtime Tracking: WiFi is the Ticket, JiWire + MetroFi = Location-based Ads, Cellular Navigation & Tracking, City Clouds: Becoming The World Cup.
