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Google adds cell tower based positioning to Google Maps


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Guest Leaskovski
Posted

I wonder if they will ever put UK traffic data in.

Guest tsutton
Posted

Works great but the location is a bit off. (about 10 mins walk away from where I am sitting)

Useful for phones without GPS so you can roughly know where you are! :(

Guest pd.ryder
Posted
I wonder if they will ever put UK traffic data in.

I guess that would require data from someone like Traffic Master which would need a license, the cost of which would no doubt be passed on to us :(

:D

Posted (edited)

Anybody noticed that they changed the maps lastt night? They went back to the old ones, without the roads overlaid on top of the satelite vue (atleast in Europe). sucks :(

Here's how the "new" ones looked like yesterday http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll...p;z=12&om=1

click on show labels to see how it looks like now.

Edited by MAK11
Guest bongo_king
Posted

Not working on Vodafone 1605 (Hermes). It has the cell data on, but says location 'temporarily unavailable'. I'm in Oxford, so a urban area, and good signal strength. From their website it doesn't look like they need several masts to triangulate you....anyone else got it working on this setup/network?

Guest ingster
Posted

Works fairly well in Leeds on orange on my touch dual!

Guest Paul (MVP)
Posted

Can you imagine if you could harness this cell positioning to add geotagging data to your pictures? Now that would be awesome. GPS enabled devices can do this already - although the time to acquisition means you probably never use it - but cell positioning would be perfect.

You could even later use a PC to refine the exact position...

P

Guest johncody
Posted
Can you imagine if you could harness this cell positioning to add geotagging data to your pictures? Now that would be awesome. GPS enabled devices can do this already - although the time to acquisition means you probably never use it - but cell positioning would be perfect.

You could even later use a PC to refine the exact position...

P

I totally agree! Many cool applications don't need the pinpoint accuracy of GPS to be doable.

Posted
googlemapstowers.png
Google have just updated their 'Google Maps' application for Windows Mobile, with the most significant addition being cell tower based positioning!

Pictured to the right reporting my current location in Amsterdam using my T-Mobile Shadow (spot on by the way!), the new version of the software reports your position with varying degrees of accuracy depending on your surroundings, the density of towers in you area etc. On this basis, the positioning in metropolitan areas is expected to be more accurate than out in t'country :(

You can download the application - free of course - right now by pointing your device at http://www.google.com/gmm, and you can read more details at http://www.google.com/gmm/mylocation.html.

It's not clear which devices / operators are currently supported, so let us know how you get on! :D

P

This seems to be getting loads of coverage, but if I remember correctly, Orange UK (yes, I know) had something that did almost exactly this, three years ago through their basic web service!!!

My first smartphone was a C500 and on the 'my homepage' through Orange you could bring up a map (yes, a map with graphics and whatnot!!!) of your approximate location, which was clearly based on rough triangulation?

I'm now T-Mob so can't check if its still there these days.

Google seem to be getting a lot of back patting for this and I'm usually an Orange-basher but in this case I think Google are getting a bit of unfair kudos!

Posted
This seems to be getting loads of coverage, but if I remember correctly, Orange UK (yes, I know) had something that did almost exactly this, three years ago through their basic web service!!!

My first smartphone was a C500 and on the 'my homepage' through Orange you could bring up a map (yes, a map with graphics and whatnot!!!) of your approximate location, which was clearly based on rough triangulation?

I'm now T-Mob so can't check if its still there these days.

Google seem to be getting a lot of back patting for this and I'm usually an Orange-basher but in this case I think Google are getting a bit of unfair kudos!

Vodafone (SFR here in France) Has had the same service (with traffic etc..) for like 3or 4 years..And localisition is better than Google maps right now.

Posted

I live outside of Bogota, Colombia in the rural area mountains, own an E-ten x500+. Downloaded google maps but it does not work, does not show anything only a "dot". I am aware that for this region there is no road maps, but an a previous google map I could see some satellite photos of the region and on map it was pretty bad drawing! Any comments from people in this region?

Guest Happy Dave
Posted
I live outside of Bogota, Colombia in the rural area mountains, own an E-ten x500+. Downloaded google maps but it does not work, does not show anything only a "dot". I am aware that for this region there is no road maps, but an a previous google map I could see some satellite photos of the region and on map it was pretty bad drawing! Any comments from people in this region?

anyone else having trouble getting this to work on T-Mobile over 3G? I have it working really well on GPRS but as soon as I get 3G coverage its position unavailable. This hapens even if I turn the phone on and off again, it doesnt seem towork at all on 3G.

Vario II, T-Mobile with the official WM6 ROM

Guest Paul (MVP)
Posted

That's feasible if the 3G cell ID's are different I guess... anyone?

P (who lives in 2G coverage!)

Guest Disco Stu
Posted

I can't get it to work over 3G in Coventry (UK) using an Orange Touch Dual.

I've been trying for a week

Guest UndeadDevil
Posted (edited)

Confirmed, it does not work on 3G.

Edited by UndeadDevil
Guest Paul (MVP)
Posted

Does Navizon Lite (navizon.com) work on 3G?

Works here on 2G!

P

Guest Paul (MVP)
Posted

Yeah, I saw that... FREE API that returns lat / long! Sounds awesome :(

P

Guest Happy Dave
Posted
Does Navizon Lite (navizon.com) work on 3G?

Works here on 2G!

P

installed it, never got a position and required about 5 soft resets in an hour! Its not on my Vario II with the T-Mobile WM6 ROM anymore!

Guest Paul (MVP)
Posted

There is a coverage checker, I can't seem to find the link to it now tho! :(

P

Posted
This seems to be getting loads of coverage, but if I remember correctly, Orange UK (yes, I know) had something that did almost exactly this, three years ago through their basic web service!!!

My first smartphone was a C500 and on the 'my homepage' through Orange you could bring up a map (yes, a map with graphics and whatnot!!!) of your approximate location, which was clearly based on rough triangulation?

Google seem to be getting a lot of back patting for this and I'm usually an Orange-basher but in this case I think Google are getting a bit of unfair kudos!

As you say, most operators have had basic "location based" services for years - the most used one was traffic-line where you would hear traffic news based on which roads you were near. And some had map functionality - but they were slow to load.

the difference is that these were always operator-only services, and this is the first time i've seen a 3rd party player use the information - the key point here isn't just that cell-based location is available (no-one used Orange's technically clever but crap service), but that it is wrapped up in a really quick and easy to use application. Therefore.... all praise Google :(


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