Skyhook Wireless, provider of the Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) and the XPS Hybrid Location System, is today demonstrating Wi-Fi positioning on the latest version of Symbian OSTM, v9.5. Symbian, the market leader in open operating systems for mobile phones, will support Skyhook’s Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) through Symbian’s LBS architecture, enabling fast and accurate location acquisition in urban and indoor environments.
A demonstration of this technology is being showcased on the Symbian stand at the Symbian Smartphone Show, October 21-22 in London.
New location-based services such as pedestrian navigation, local search and advertising, friend finding, social networking, local events and geo-tagging of photos require location technology that works everywhere, says Skyhook. While existing mobile location technology such as A-GPS and cellular triangulation are an important part of the solution, these technologies have accuracy and availability issues indoors.
The Wi-Fi Positioning System can be integrated with Symbian’s LBS architecture to optimize location accuracy and “fix” times.
Skyhook’s Wi-Fi Positioning System uses Wi-Fi while their XPS combines cellular/WiFi location info with GPS satellites. In order for GPS to provide a location reading, at least four satellites must be acquired by the GPS device. With XPS, a fix on just two GPS satellites can improve overall accuracy of a location reading. Skyhook says XPS leverages the largest and most extensive Wi-Fi reference database in the world, with coverage in North America, Europe and Asia.
“Skyhook’s Wi-Fi Positioning System is a good illustration of the diverse location acquisition support of our LBS architecture,” said Mike Whittingham, VP ecosystem development, Symbian. “It’s an innovative solution that will enable the future revenue opportunities of location-based services.”
“Symbian is the leading provider of smartphone operating systems, and this collaboration represents an important milestone for Skyhook Wireless,” said Mike Shean, vice president of business development for Skyhook Wireless. “This demonstration shows how Wi-Fi-based positioning can be used by Symbian OS-based devices to enable many innovative and location aware applications.”
Meanwhile, Google Gears (right), a browser plug-in that lets you work in web apps offline, has been updated with enhanced geo-location powers for laptops, so now developers can “securely locate users to within 200m accuracy” in hundreds of cities in either IE, Firefox, Safari or Chrome, and soon, Opera. It’s similar to Skyhook, which the iPhone uses, and triangulates your position against nearby Wi-Fi access points.
In related news, AppLoop has launched a beta mobile application generator which lets you turn any RSS feed into a mobile application for either iPhone or Android (coming soon).
According to Read/Write Web, the company wants to enable everyone to make a mobile app — no programming experience required. Their new Mobile Application Generator creates a mobile-ready application in less than two minutes. Just enter the URL of your blog. It competes with MediaLets.
Their AppLoop will provide developers with a self-service platform for tracking mobile application usage, distributing ads on top of these apps. It also claims to be the first ever real-time, location-based mobile ad network.
By leveraging the iPhone 3G’s native GPS capabilities, AppLoop will tell when a consumer is close to a specified business address and then serve up ads for that business accordingly. Competitor Smaato, has also developed a mobile advertising platform that enables dynamic response advertising for mobile phones with event and location driven mobile advertisements.
Handango, the leading retailer of smartphone apps, says it will be the first retailer to offer both paid and free apps for the Android phone, anticipated to launch tomorrow (Oct 22). Customers can purchase apps via the Web and then download them to their device.
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