where are you, who who, who who...

Good writeup about "skyhook" technology, which had a bunch of
their workers drive around the country and marking down the
locations of umptity umptity umptity 802.11 signals...

"... Metropolitan areas today are blanketed by overlapping
Wi-Fi signals. At a typical Manhattan intersection, you might
be in range of 20 base stations.

"Skyhook's big idea: If you could somehow correlate those
beacon signals with their physical locations, you could
pinpoint your own location, G.P.S.-style, but without G.P.S.."

rest:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/te...h/26pogue.html

danny burstein wrote:

> "Skyhook's big idea: If you could somehow correlate those
> beacon signals with their physical locations, you could
> pinpoint your own location, G.P.S.-style, but without G.P.S.."

The idea has been around around for quite a while.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6058
http://placelab.org/
I don't know what happened to it but since they considered
using WIGLE for the database I presume they didn't have sufficient funds
to create a sufficiently large one of their own. Given the rate at which
some people change their equipment any database has the potential for
large errors, although the cell tower option would probably be more stable.

On Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:39:27 +0100, LR <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>danny burstein wrote:
>
>> "Skyhook's big idea: If you could somehow correlate those
>> beacon signals with their physical locations, you could
>> pinpoint your own location, G.P.S.-style, but without G.P.S.."
>
>The idea has been around around for quite a while.
>http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6058
>http://placelab.org/
>I don't know what happened to it but since they considered
>using WIGLE for the database I presume they didn't have sufficient funds
>to create a sufficiently large one of their own. Given the rate at which
>some people change their equipment any database has the potential for
>large errors, although the cell tower option would probably be more stable.

Don't forget about Microsoft Location Finder:
<http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5a588766-3697-4906-a239-f4222c91e324&DisplayLang=en>
It uses wi-fi access point locations. If that's not avaiable, it uses
reverse DNS lookup.

Then, there's Loki for social networking:
<http://www.loki.com>

and of course, Google Maps:
<http://www.google.com/mobile/default/maps/index.html>

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558 (E-Mail Removed)
# http://802.11junk.com (E-Mail Removed)
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

Jeff Liebermann <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Don't forget about Microsoft Location Finder:
> <http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5a588766-3697-4906-a239-f4222c91e324&DisplayLang=en>
> It uses wi-fi access point locations. If that's not avaiable, it uses
> reverse DNS lookup.

It would seem that Microsoft has forgotten it. That's quite the stale listing.
A general search shows most articles from around 2006, the date of that
link.

A search of Microsoft Knowledge Base turns up nothing.

It used to be a very obvious option in the maps.live.com site, but now it's
gone. Virtual Earth doesn't offer it any more, and there are so many
Microsoft mapping programs that I gave up looking for one that has it. It
might still be part of MapPoint, but I always was confused whether that
included Streets and Trips or not.

I thought it was clever technology, and pinpointed my location a few times,
but I don't think I ever saw a way to enter information into their
database, or how their database was derived.

I haven't installed it on my current laptop. Does it still work for you?


--
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley Lake, CA, USA GPS: 38.8,-122.5

On Tue, 1 Jul 2008 15:46:53 +0000 (UTC), (E-Mail Removed) wrote:

>Jeff Liebermann <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> Don't forget about Microsoft Location Finder:
>> <http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5a588766-3697-4906-a239-f4222c91e324&DisplayLang=en>
>> It uses wi-fi access point locations. If that's not avaiable, it uses
>> reverse DNS lookup.

>It would seem that Microsoft has forgotten it. That's quite the stale listing.
>A general search shows most articles from around 2006, the date of that
>link.
>
>A search of Microsoft Knowledge Base turns up nothing.

The name got changed to Microsoft Live Search Maps and is part of the
MS Live Search collection:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_Search>

>It used to be a very obvious option in the maps.live.com site, but now it's
>gone. Virtual Earth doesn't offer it any more, and there are so many
>Microsoft mapping programs that I gave up looking for one that has it. It
>might still be part of MapPoint, but I always was confused whether that
>included Streets and Trips or not.

Yep. Seems to be gone.

>I thought it was clever technology, and pinpointed my location a few times,
>but I don't think I ever saw a way to enter information into their
>database, or how their database was derived.
>
>I haven't installed it on my current laptop. Does it still work for you?

I don't have it installed on any of my machines. However, it was
installed with MS Streets and Traps on a customers machine now in my
office. The problem is that I can't uninstall it because it demands
the CD, which has disappeared. I'll try it when I get to the office.

Note that there are various web sites that will guess your city by IP
address:
<http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?Getlocation>
<http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/lookup-results>
Not as nice as by hotspot, but useful.

--
Jeff Liebermann (E-Mail Removed)
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:27:20 -0700, Jeff Liebermann <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>>I haven't installed it on my current laptop. Does it still work for you?

>I don't have it installed on any of my machines. However, it was
>installed with MS Streets and Traps on a customers machine now in my
>office. The problem is that I can't uninstall it because it demands
>the CD, which has disappeared. I'll try it when I get to the office.

It doesn't work. I right click on the icon in the system tray, select
"Locate Me" and it takes me to:
<http://maps.live.com/?autolocate=true>
However, no location marker appears in the map display.
Oh well...


--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558 (E-Mail Removed)
# http://802.11junk.com (E-Mail Removed)
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

Jeff Liebermann <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Note that there are various web sites that will guess your city by IP
> address:
> <http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?Getlocation>
> <http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/lookup-results>
> Not as nice as by hotspot, but useful.

For purposes of searching for a nearby business, or gaining routing
knowledge to some other point, the IP address that you have is probably
particularly unuseful. At best it will be the provider's local head end,
not your connected WAP.

If you have a cell phone that will run Google Maps with "My Location", that
can do better job of location, although it either doesn't work on my
phone, or won't bother because it can't get enough information in my remote
locale. maps.google.com/gmm My phone help-about shows myl:N/A.
That might be correct, that I am in North America, but it probably means
something else. ;-)

--
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley Lake, CA, USA GPS: 38.8,-122.5