Several months ago when I was doing a survey of J2ME and other handset apps, one of the applications that caught my eye was from a company called Psiloc that makes a product called MiniGPS. I have continued with getting familiar with the Sony Ericsson P910 that I am just crazy about, and last night decided to get a copy of MiniGPS.
It is a really cool application. While most of us in the United States are in the nether region between LBS and non-location aware handsets, this application identifies the cell tower that you are attached to. You can go around and check the cell tower where you are located at during your travels and assign an ID to the tower. For example my home, the Intercasting office, and the Starbucks by my house. Once you have identified these locations, you can actually program events to correspond with your connection to that cell tower. For example, I could send an SMS to my wife when I hit the cell tower past the merge of Interstate 5 and 805 indicating that I am getting close to home. If I took the coastal route I could send her a different SMS telling her I took the Del Mar route.
Of course most of this is novelty today, but it speaks to the power of what LBS will be able to do and also the importance of location as a new metatag for a variety actions that we take as we move around in our increasingly connected world.
1 comment:
it's just a pity that miniGPS is only available for symbian and not J2ME.
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