Knowknot Consultancy

I lent my handheld GPS to some friends a couple of years ago and recently got it back. Haven’t things moved far in just a couple of years! Mobile phones now know where I am. Some micro cameras have GPS built in.

Recently I saw a small SD memory card (32 mm × 24 mm × 2.1 mm) that can store 4GB AND geocode your photos AND wirelessly upload your pics as soon as you get near your wireless router at home. In the USA Google is giving away these little cards when you sign up for a service to store your photos online. This card doesn’t use GPS through…and it shows a difference in technology, which means that the iPhone is out-performing Google’s Android for location-based services.

GPS uses a triangulation of satellites. This isn’t much use indoors or when walking among the skyscrapers of New York City, or among the trees of the Blue Mountains for that matter. You need a good open sky for GPS to work well and it can take a while for your device to lock onto the position of the satellites it can see. I remember the times with my old GPS of asking Bianca if we could stand in the open for a few minutes in India so that I could geocode a photo (I know I’m a nerd). I wouldn’t have that patience now to find a local ATM, pizza restaurant or laundrette with my iPhone.

Some other systems find out where you are by looking at the wireless networks close to you. Each wireless network has a unique number. Most wireless networks don’t move around nor do cellular towers for your mobile phone. So if you have a list of wireless networks and cellular towers and where they are in the world you can quickly say ‘your device sees this wireless network(s) so you must be here’. Skyhook is one company that has been building the database of wireless networks to locations on the planet. If you go to their website with a wireless device (laptop, mobile phone) you can give it a go and see how well and how quickly it locates you…no GPS involved. The iPhone finds you fast as it uses the fast Wi-Fi positioning system (WPS), along with cellular tower location and GPS.

You can see how pure GPS and android works compared with this integrated system on this video.

So if geolocation can fit onto an SD memory card that Google is giving away it means that this technology is now very accessible, easy to integrate and is cheap. I would love to integrate these kinds of ‘locate me’ services into Hotfrog.com and nospuds.com.au as users are now expecting sites, services and devices to know where they are.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43105570@N03/3972458266/ with GPS receiver taped to the top.

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