A review of Foursquare, Layar and the Foursquare Layer
March 13th, 2010 by Ivo
Location Based Services are hot
Ever since phones have been equipped with GPS devices it's been possible to provide applications with information about the user's location. I used to have a Nokia N95. It had a GPS but other than Google Maps, I never did anything useful with it. When I switched to the iPhone a couple of months ago, I started to use more and more apps that are location aware. The main reason why it works for me on the iPhone is that the iPhone just always seems to know where I am, whereas the N95 only knew where I was when I asked for it. How is this different? If I'm inside a building where GPS signal is blocked, the iPhone still knows where I am, because it remembered the last time it had a GPS signal. The N95 on the other hand would only start to read its GPS device when I started an app, which worst case meant I didn't have a location at all and best case meant I had to wait up to a minute before it had a fix. Usability win for the iPhone.
How is the location generally used? The basic premise is that applications now know where you are, so the most common application is to display maps and your location on them. But what is also fun is that games you play can now compare your score against the score of people in your neighborhood, search engines can show more relevant results based on where you are, shop applications know what shop you are near, travel applications know where you are located so you don't need to enter your start address; the possibilities are endless.
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