Geolocation Services
- An Update on Apple’s Location Data Tracking
- Some developments on the iPhone/iPad tracking story since I last posted. For now, I’ll just refer you to the links. First, Peter Batty’s must-read posts on the subject: So actually, Apple isn’t recording your (accurate) iPhone location; More on Apple…
- iPhones and 3G iPads Track Their Locations
- This could be interesting. Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden report today at Where 2.0 that they’ve discovered that iPhones and 3G iPads have been recording their positions and storing them in one large — unencrypted — tracklog file, and are…
- What People Search for on Their GPS Receivers
- Mashable has infographics from TeleNav showing what people search for on their GPS receivers, based on anonymous data from 20 million subscribers….
- Google Latitude Goes Desktop
- Yesterday, Google announced that Google Latitude can now be accessed directly from a desktop web browser at google.com/latitude; previously, the only way to use Latitude on a computer was via an iGoogle widget. It remains to be seen whether this…
- Some Thoughts on Facebook Places
- The announcement of Facebook Places frankly reminds me of the last rollout of location services by an Internet giant: Google Latitude. The media freaks out about the privacy implications (see Lifehacker on how to disable the feature). Hardly anyone can…
- Why Share Your Location?
- Not everyone is comfortable sharing their precise location, even with their friends; if you’re not, you may well wonder why people actually use location-based social networks like Foursquare or Google Latitude, or enable location sharing on Twitter or (soon) Facebook….
- Foursquare, Latitude and Privacy
- Here’s an interesting piece on privacy and geolocation services. Some excerpts: “When it comes to geo-privacy there are two extremes. Foursquare makes you explicitly check into each place where you want to share your location. … On the other end…
- Geolocation Coming to Facebook
- Geolocation is apparently coming to Facebook next month. “The new location feature will have two aspects, according to the people familiar with Facebook’s plans. One will be a service offered directly by Facebook that will allow users to share their…
- Apple, iPhone Developers, and Location-Based Ads
- Apple says that iPhone developers should not use Core Location, the API that provides an iPhone user’s location, just to provide location-targeted ads. Ed Parsons and GPS Review have what I think is the correct take on this: if you’re…
- Geolocation in HTML 5
- Mark Pilgrim on the geolocation API in HTML 5, which is only supported by a couple of browsers at the moment (Firefox 3.5, the iPhone, and Android). When and where it is supported, though, a user’s location can be acquired…
- Eight Million Times in One Year
- A little reality check for those worried about Google Latitude and the like: in the U.S., your mobile phone location data is already available to law enforcement. At ISS World, it was revealed that Sprint Nextel, with 50 million customers,…
- Twitter Supports Geotagging
- Twitter geotagging is now officially available, though only through the API — which means that third-party applications can do things with it, but it won’t show up in the web interface. It’s off by default; users have to enable it….
- Google Latitude Location History Creeps Out Valleywag
- Valleywag thinks Google Latitude’s location history feature (previously) is creepy: “Google said it can now keep a detailed list of everywhere you go, play your trips back like movies and generate ‘alerts’ for unusual movements. Who wants this? The CIA?…
- Online Maps Miscellany
- I should have waited: this Google LatLong post summarizes all the Street View updates: not only Hawaii and Mexico, but also Spain and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, Latitude has added a couple of features: history and alerts. Not to disrespect the…
- Twitter Working on Adding Location
- Twitter is working on adding location to tweets: We’re gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate…
- Reactions to Google Latitude on the iPhone
- There’s a lot of web commentary trying to figure out why Apple rejected Google’s Latitude as a standalone application (which might have allowed for background processes and real-time updating), restricting it to a web application accessed via the browser (see…
- Latitude Comes to the iPhone, Work Stops on Whereyougonnabe
- Two items from the world of location services: Google Latitude is now available for the iPhone, via the onboard web browser (which supports location services) rather than the maps application; it doesn’t run in the background, so it won’t update…
- The Web Goes Local
- Clive Thompson’s piece on location services makes a point I was planning on making in a future piece, damn him, as he looks at how location services may transform the Web: The whole reason the Web revolutionized the world was…
- Geolocation and the iPhone’s Web Browser
- The iPhone’s version of Safari supports geolocation with the 3.0 software update, and it’s apparently trivial to write the code to access a user’s location; I wonder if it’s this easy with Firefox 3.5….
- Firefox 3.5 Adds Geolocation
- Firefox 3.5 (Release Candidate 1) adds geolocation as a new feature: it calculates a user’s location based the user’s IP address and nearby wireless access points; location-aware sites can then access that location if the user grants permission. Details here….
- xkcd on Google Latitude
- Web comic xkcd’s take on Google Latitude’s privacy implications is … about what you’d expect. And as succinct an explanation as there will likely ever be of why location services will probably never take off….
- Yahoo Placemaker
- Yahoo announced its new Placemaker web service at Where 2.0 last week. Placemaker takes unstructured data, extracts references to places, and returns geographic metadata — take a reference to Chicago in a block of text, for example, and it gives…
- Google Latitude Applications
- Google has added a couple of applications to Latitude, allowing users to embed their location data on a Web page or in their Google Talk status update; KML and GeoJSON feeds are also available for hackers and developers who want…
- Location Privacy
- For location services like Google Latitude to succeed, Tom Arran argues in GPS Business News, their users need to be able to trust them; for that to happen, adequate safeguards need to be in place. He points to four emerging…
- Tyler Bell on Yahoo’s Open Location Program
- As a preview of his talk at next month’s Where 2.0 conference, Yahoo’s Geo Technologies lead Tyler Bell sits down for a long interview with O’Reilly Media’s James Turner, in which they discuss Yahoo’s behind-the-scenes geo technologies (e.g., geotagging on…
- Fire Eagle, Meet Facebook
- To be honest, I haven’t been paying close attention to Yahoo’s Fire Eagle geolocation service, but since I reported on it a year ago it’s accumulated 70 applications that use it, integrating Fire Eagle location data with everything from Movable…
- Google Latitude vs. GMap-Track
- Stefan Geens of Ogle Earth compares Google Latitude with GMap-Track, a service he’s been using on his site. “Letting your mobile phone update your location at all times can be useful among close-knit groups of trusted friends in urban settings…
- Google Latitude’s Implications
- Analysts, observers and pundits are trying to grapple with the implications of Google’s Latitude, which is apparently new enough to confound our expectations about location awareness and privacy. Privacy International says that security flaws could endanger user privacy: “PI has…
- Reasons Not to Use Google Latitude
- PC World’s J. R. Raphael offers three reasons he won’t be using Google Latitude: “Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t want every aspect of my life to be public domain — even when it comes to my close friends and…
- Google Latitude
- Google Latitude is a friend-tracking tool for mobile devices; it’s also an iGoogle gadget. Using a mobile device’s built-in GPS (or manual updates), it shows the location of at least those friends who’ve added themselves to the service. See the…
- Link Roundup: Mid-July Edition
- Facebook app whereyougonnabe? gets an upgrade focusing on integration with other platforms (previously). Diana Eid takes a look at map art, focusing on three artists we’ve seen before: Matthew Cusick, Elisabeth Lecourt and Susan Stockwell (via GeoCarta). On the…
- New Facebook Application: whereyougonnabe?
- Yesterday, Peter Batty announced a new social-networking application that operates within Facebook: whereyougonnabe? In beta (naturally), this app lets you map your current and future activities and see what (and where) your friends are doing at the same time. The…
- FireEagle
- FireEagle is a new Yahoo service. (In beta, of course.) It’s a user-geolocation service with privacy controls that can tie into other applications; think of it as a Twitter for geographic coordinates. It’s one of those things, like RSS, whose…
