After I heard that Skyhook Wireless was announcing a deal that would put its geolocation technology into a line of Dell Netbooks, I talked with the company's CEO, Ted Morgan. I'd last talked to Morgan three years ago when he pitched me on the merits of Wi-Fi over traditional satellite GPS location-finding technologies. Ironically, the Dell deal puts Skyhook technology only in those Netbooks ordered with the optional GPS hardware in them, even though all Netbooks have Wi-Fi. But as Morgan described it to me, the best real-world solution for geolocation today is a combination of GPS and Wi-Fi.
Below, more observations on location technologies from the CEO of Skyhook.
With more devices getting GPS satellite radios, isn't Skyhook's Wi-Fi-based business in danger? When I asked Morgan about this, he said, in fact, that it's the opposite. Wi-Fi, he says, is the critical geolocaton technology for devices like the iPhone. Two-thirds to three-quarters of the time, he says, when the iPhone locates itself, it's doing so using the Skyhook Wi-Fi geolocation software built in to the phone, and not GPS.
There are several challenges with GPS, according to Morgan. As most everyone knows, it doesn't work indoors. It's also slow, even when it does work. "Time to fix" for a device that's been powered off is 30 seconds at best, and for instant-on, quick-grab apps like you have on a smartphone or Netbook, that's just too slow. 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. Dedicated GPS devices, like dash-top navigators, also have antenna devoted to GPS, but phones in particular give priority to telephone communications and short-change their GPS antenna designs.
Of course, when you're out of Wi-Fi range or moving fast (driving), or have a device that is continuously powered-up, GPS works well. That's what it was designed for. But in many other use cases, you can't get a good fix with GPS technology.
How do you maintain a geo-database of Wi-Fi hot spots, especially when more and more of them are now behind security passwords? As before, Morgan says, Skyhook employees and contractors "wardrive" down millions of miles of roads to correlate location (from GPS) with the signatures of Wi-Fi access points. Morgan said that Wi-Fi beacons are unique even when security is turned on, so that's not a factor.
Another way that Skyhook keeps its data current is by using the information it gleans from Skyhook users. That's right: When your iPhone geolocates itself it also sends Wi-Fi beacon data back to Skyhook, which helps keep the system's location database current.
Dell Netbooks with Skyhook software will tell what's going on around you (but so will any geo-aware browser, like Firefox 3.5).
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)So Wi-Fi and GPS are complementary? Yes, Morgan says. A lot of the current geolocation systems are "hybrid." He says Skyhook has "tons of patents" based on blending data from Wi-Fi, GPS, and cell tower signals to determine location. For example, he says that Skyhook can use data from only two GPS satellites (traditional GPS-only systems need contact with four) to geolocate, if the device is also able to correlate with nearby Wi-Fi signals.
Why so expensive? I repeated my complaint to Morgan about the ridiculous $9.99 a month price that AT&T was charging for turn-by-turn directions on the iPhone now, and he agreed that it was too high. "The thing to watch is what TomTom prices at," he said, when it comes out with its turn-by-turn iPhone software. Morgan agreed that GPS services are priced too high right now, but he says it's because the mapping companies are charging developers and manufacturers too much for their data. TomTom, he says, could break the price barrier if it releases a fairly priced iPhone navigation app.
Regarding Firefox, which uses Google's geolocation technology, not Skyhook's. Mozilla built Skyhook technology into earlier builds of Firefox 3.5, but it eventually shifted to Google's location-finding technology. Morgan says, "It was a bummer for us, but it's really too bad for Firefox users since it's not as good." He sees Firefox as being strongly attached to Google, so it wasn't a surprising move. And, he says, at least the browsers are all zeroing in on the same standard for communicating location data, even if their underlying geolocating technologies may vary.
When are we going to get geolocation as a standard feature in cameras? Skyhook put Wi-Fi geolocation in an EyeFi card, but the technology hasn't made it into more than a few experimental camera models yet. "The camera guys have the longest product cycles," Morgan says." They're like the old automakers." Also, he says the power drain of Wi-Fi and the time-to-fix issues make it hard to get accurate location data and attach it to photos. He speculates that maybe in 2010 we'll see more location-award digital cameras.
Do we need location clearinghouses, like Yahoo Fire Eagle and Google Latitude? Morgan thinks it's too early, and that the search companies are not the right ones to push these services. "There has to be multiple places you want to send your data before you need a gateway, and these guys built the gateways first." And he said he'd look rather to Apple, Nokia, and RIM to make these services work. "If you own the device," Morgan says, "you own the user."
Opera, announced Thursday that it has inked a deal with Skyhook Wireless that will bring geolocation to its browser. According to the company, those who download the geolocation-equipped Opera browser will be able to share their location with any site that supports it and get information about related products and services in their area.
Skyhook played an integral role in making the geolocation possible. The company's Wi-Fi Position System makes it possible for any computer or mobile phone with a wireless adapter to be located.
In conjunction with the release of a new Opera build that supports geolocation, the company also released an API that will allow Web developers to add the Skyhook location platform to their site, so they can interact with Opera browser users. Download the browser here.
AOL might have enjoyed its best days in the late 1990s, but the company is still the most beloved ISP, according to a new study from Forrester Research. Forrester polled nearly 4,600 consumers about their experience dealing with ISPs. AOL topped the list for usefulness and simplicity. Overall, the company's "Customer Experience Index" rating was 71 percent, putting it atop the list of ISPs across the U.S.
Visible Measures, a company that provides video tracking and measurement services, announced Tuesday that it has raised $10 million in a Series C funding round that was led by Northgate Capital. According to the company, it plans to use the funding to expand its operation.
Mortgage search site, Home-Account, announced Thursday that it has raised $1 million in seed funding from Charles River Ventures and other investors. The company will use the funding to invest in its growth for its recently launched site.
As expected, Mozilla Labs released a Firefox plug-in Tuesday called Geode that lets Web sites figure out a person's approximate geographic location and use it in online services--as long as you grant the software permission to access the information.
Geode, a preview of technology to arrive in Firefox 3.1, taps into technology called Loki from Skyhook that deduces a computer's location from the signals of nearby wireless networks, according to a Mozilla Labs blog post on Geode.
To show the technology off, Mozilla shared an application called Food Finder that shows the user's approximate location and nearby dining establishments. Others that work with the technology are Pownce, a microblogging site that can record users' locations as they post notes or photos, and Yahoo's Fire Eagle, which lets users govern which applications get access to their location information.
There's one thing I find interesting about the general thrust of this technology. The Internet has broken down geographic barriers, letting people stay in touch with high school buddies, tap into a global market for used books, and find comrades with shared interests such as speaking Latin or photographing mating insects.
But a lot of new work on the Net is trying to unlock the location information. After all, people often need to keep from getting lost or to find their friends at the concert. And of course, plenty of advertisers would like to target ads at people who are likely to walk past a storefront.
Although Geode today uses Skyhook's service, Firefox 3.1 will be configurable to select other options as well, such as a GPS device, Mozilla said.
The Food Finder demonstration application showed my location, almost, with a blue dot, and nearby pastry shops listed at Yelp.
(Credit: CNET News)Mozilla envisions more than just more intelligent online maps. Its other examples: local news based on where a person actually is located, a Web site log-in process that only works if a person is at a specific location, and an RSS feed reader that changes what subscriptions it shows users depending on whether they're at work or home.
Web designers who want to take advantage of the feature can use the W3C's Geolocation Specification, currently in draft form.
Geode asks permission before letting a Web site use your geographic information.
(Credit: CNET News)Skyhook Wireless announced Monday that it is integrating GPS into its geolocation service to get an even more accurate fix for location-based services.
Up until now, Skyhook's geolocation service, which is used on Apple's iPhone, among other services and devices, has used Wi-Fi hot spots to get a fix on location. The service works very well in densely populated areas where there are a lot of Wi-Fi radios transmitting signals. And it's great for locating places indoors or in cities with a lot of tall buildings, all places where satellite-based GPS, or Global Positioning System, technology has difficulty getting a location fix.
But for all of the benefits of Wi-Fi, it doesn't work in rural areas where hot spots are few and far between. This is where the GPS technology comes in.
"Our technology works great in populated areas," said Ted Morgan, co-founder and CEO of Skyhook. "But on the open road it's more difficult. Now with GPS integrated, iPhone users, for example, can get turn-by-turn navigation anywhere they go."
The way the Skyhook service originally worked is that it would triangulate and get a fix on location-based data on known Wi-Fi hot spots. The company has a database of where Wi-Fi hot spots all over the country are located. Specifically, it uses the Mac address, a unique identifier that every piece of hardware on the Internet must have, to identify the router, and it matches that identifier with the location. Using multiple signals in the same geographic location, the Skyhook technology is able to pinpoint a location.
Now Skyhook has integrated GPS into its technology, which it is putting in chipsets that go into mobile phones and other devices that also have GPS recievers. GPS will allow Skyhook to cover more ground with its geolocation technology. The Wi-Fi/GPS technology should also help services that used GPS only to get information about location more quickly. Because GPS uses three or four low-orbiting satellites to pinpoint a location, it can take a few seconds before it's able to calculate a location. Skyhook's Wi-Fi technology can get location information much faster.
So where might we see this new technology? The original Wi-Fi-based Skyhook technology is already on the iPhone. Morgan couldn't say for sure that the new "hybrid" Wi-Fi/GPS technology will be used on the iPhone 3G that comes out next week. But one of the upgrades in the new iPhone 3G is the addition of a GPS chip, so it would make sense that the Skyhook technology would be used on it. Morgan did say that Apple has access to all of its technology.
Skyhook Wireless' geopositioning can be useful, but rarely does it save you from a $400 speeding ticket. A start-up named Trapster is trying to change that.
The company has taken a creative spin on using geopositioning to help lead-footed drivers avoid known and newly discovered speed traps and other police dragnets. By installing the application on your mobile phone you'll get heads up on speed cameras, red-light cameras, hiding places, and live police while out and about. The application uses Skyhook Wireless' Wi-Fi and cell tower location positioning system to keep tabs on where you are while you're driving around. It also blends in GPS to give you more precise positioning on city streets.
The data comes from other tipsters on the Trapster network, and is updated frequently. Creator Pete Tenereillo tells me there only need to be about 10 active users in each city to provide a reasonable amount of coverage for live police and new traps on major thoroughfares, a number which has already been met in places like Rhode Island, Florida, and San Diego.
To keep users tipping, the service uses a karma system and a confidence scale to make sure tips aren't providing useless tips. Users can also create new trap alerts for others right on their phones. Tenereillo says the ratio of people tipping to simple leechers is hovering at about 40 percent. Part of that is because of the simplicity of adding new traps, which is a one button affair if you have the application running on your Nokia or Blackberry smartphone.
Coming in a couple of weeks is an iPhone version of the application which will take advantage of the geopositioning that made its way into the maps application in an earlier software update. iPhone users will get the same audio alerts and live-positioning locating, with less position accuracy because of the lack of GPS, something Tenereillo is hoping will be added in the next hardware revision.
Despite the free price, there are a few hindrances. The stock warning sounds are a little alarming, but you can go in and rename and rerecord the warning with your own voice. You're also missing out on the radar and laser protection you'd get with a real radar detector, which tend to work a little faster than the mobile phone alerts. I'm still in love with the idea though, and for the cheapskate out there with a compatible handset, this is almost as good an alternative as being a safe and responsible driver.
Related: Avoid traffic jams with Commuter Feed
See speed traps and other police gotchas in your area with Trapster. While not as accurate for things like highway speed traps, knowing if you're close to a red light or speed camera could save you from a big ticket if you're a leadfoot driver.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
We knew it was going to happen one of these days; with all this talk about telling everyone where you are, from Twitter maps to Dodgeball, it was only a matter of time before a mainstream instant-messaging service decided to integrate location-based features. Well, now we have it. Sort of.
A company called Skyhook Wireless, which appears to specialize in location-based Wi-Fi data services, has built a plugin for AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) that will allow you to share your location through Skyhook's Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) -- kind of an alternative to GPS. (Skyhook also created the Loki software--you can see Rafe's video demo here.)
With this plugin, you can opt in or out of sharing your location to other AIM users to let them know where you are. You can also check out the locations of other AIM users running the Skyhook plugin. Then you can find out how far away you are, chart your buddies on a MapQuest map, or discover who's closest to you geographically. So, like so many other things, this plugin will really only be useful if a sizable number of people are implementing it.
Attention Mac, Linux, and Vista users: AIM Location requires AIM 6.0, which is available only to Windows 2000 and XP. But if you fall under that category, you can get the plugin at Download.com.
I should note that while this is not an official add-on, AIM is hosting it, and I did hear about it thanks to a tip from an AOL publicist. Interpret that as you will.
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