Location in iPhone Web Apps
One of the key limitations of developing Web applications for iPhone is that you are not allowed to access the hardware on the device via the Web browser. For example, you cannot access the camera on the iPhone; neither can you access the accelerometer. This seriously limits the kinds of applications you can develop on the iPhone. One notable exception, however, is the support for tracking the location of devices, through a combination of GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular triangulation. more...
Location, Location, Location
Location based services (LBS) has been a buzz word and a hype since birth of mobile services. I'm not saying that it is a failure! more...
Using Google Maps in Android
Google Maps is one of the many applications bundled with the Android platform. In addition to simply using the Maps application, you can also embed it into your own applications and make it do some very cool things. In this article, I will show you how to use Google Maps in your Android applications and how to programmatically perform the following: Change the views of Google Maps Obtain the latitude and longitude of locations in Google Maps Perform geocoding and reverse geocoding Add markers to Google Maps more...
Developing Location Based Services: Introducing the Location API for J2ME
Many mobile phones today support the Location API for J2ME under JSR-179. Using the location API, you can easily develop useful location based mobile Java applications. In this article, we demonstrate how to develop and test a mobile location based client server application using JSR-179, servlets and Google Maps. more...
Using OpenCellID cell information in a mapping application
We've just published part II of our OpenCellID feature. This time we look at making use of the OpenCellID positioning information introduced in the first part, and using it to display a device's location on an open source map, with a result similar to the Google Maps "MyLocation" feature. Thanks to Thomas Landspurg for this great contribution. more...
Adding Location to a non-GPS Phone - Part II
In the first part of this article, we introduced the concept of CellID, and OpenCellID – an open source database of CellIDs that can be used to build location based services, and we created a small program to determine location from CellID information. This time, we will go a step further and display a map on a mobile device, using the open source "OpenStreetMap", and we position the map using the device's location. This will deliver an experience similar to that offered by the Google Maps for Mobile "MyLocation" feature, and will run on top of JavaME. more...
Open source LBS
Location based services are becoming more and more prevalent every day, with innovative applications that make use of location, like FireEagle, and Google Maps for Mobile, popping up all the time. We've just published the first part of a two-part piece on Location via CellID, and the open source database of CellIDs, OpenCellID. more...
Adding location to a non GPS phone: introducing CellID
In this two part article (see part II here), we will introduce mobile positioning based on CellID, and we will take a look at OpenCellID, the open source database of CellIDs. We will demonstrate how to use OpenCellID through some simple examples. more...
LBS in Opera Mini?
Random thought: if Google can manage to make cell ID-based location information work in its J2ME map applications, couldn't Opera do the same with Opera Mini? more...
Mobile Web Design - Beyond Simple XHTML Pages II
SVG, or Scalable Vector Graphics, is "a language for describing two-dimensional graphics and graphical applications in XML."3 Or in English, SVG enables a designer to render vector images and animations within the browser using numerical coordinates rather than pixels. SVG Tiny is a baseline profile of SVG, implementable on a range of devices, and described by the W3C thusly: more...