In a previous post: I talked about localized
website service (social networking was my specific example) by
finding where you were in the world through a mobile phone. Some
mobile phones have GPS, but I wanted something that didn't need GPS
so that everyone-well let's be honest: I (since my current phone
doesn't have GPS)-could use it. There was an interesting thing
based on triangulating on the response time of the signal from
multiple mobile phone towers. How this might work: at any given
time, your mobile phone is in range of more than one "cell" tower.
Each tower creates the "cell" (for the clever at home, yes, this is
where we get the term "cell phone"). But you can't generally have
one tower stop and have another start exactly: they overlap (if you
have a spot where they stop and then don't start immediately: you
drop calls and have no service in that dead spot: so overlapping is
a good alternative [you could also, presumably, move calls from
busy towers to less-busy towers]).
So, if you know where in the world these
towers are (which you do, because they don't move around) and you
can measure how long a signal takes to get from your mobile phone
to the tower and back and (critical last piece) you have
information on more than 1 tower... you can figure out where in the
world that phone (and by extension, you) are.
So what? Well, for starters, that's great for mapping: it shows
a map of where you are (like the mall's "you are here"). Or, you
want to show your friends where you are at any given point ("hey
you are right around the corner from me? Let's go to that
Starbucks" - you could also call someone, but you may not be
thinking of that person right at that moment and having a permanant
conference call with all your friends might eat up all your minutes
in a hurry). Or, you can tag your location into photos you take -
called "getotagging" (Flickr will show photos on a map based on
where you took them but, unless your phone has GPS, you have to add
that information manually). And that's just a few ideas: I'm sure
there are more.
Well, my whole point was this might be an interesting thing to
try. Except Google beat me to it. Read it on GigaOm here: http://gigaom.com/2007/11/28/google-my-location/.
Also here:
http://venturebeat.com/2007/11/28/google-releases-killer-my-location-feature-for-cellphones/.
While it would have been fun to play with on my own, I can now
just download
it and try it (though I doubt they have much coverage in
Canada).