I suffered the indignity of having my phone swiped on a recent trip back from New York. I keep it locked and one quick call later it was wiped of its data from afar. But being a man of opportunity this seemed like a perfect reason to take the upgrade path and get myself a Palm Pre, the phone of the moment. Well, until the next phone of the moment comes along in a few weeks and then I’ll be horribly unfashionable and out of date.
This new phone has built in WiFi which makes for a much faster browsing experience when you’re in the office or at home. It also works with the phone’s other network-enabled applications such as Google Maps. What’s interesting is that Google Maps still thinks we’re at our old office building when I get my data connection from our office WiFi.
Strange, I thought. So I dug around for a few seconds and found The blue circle comes to your desktop on Google’s Lat Long blog. It seems Google has amassed a whopping database of WiFi access points. Another quick nose around found this:
Google said on Thursday to GPS Business News that its WiFi data has been developed internally, however the company refuses to give any information about its exact coverage. “Many major domestic [US] and international cities are included in the database. We don’t release a comprehensive list of areas covered since coverage will expand continuously as usage of our location-based services grows. In cities already covered, the quality of the information will also improve”, wrote a spokesperson in an email.
So that explains it. It’ll be interesting to see how long this stale information lies around before we are refreshed into our new office location.
Sounds like it could be as simple as a Linksys router living in one place and then finding itself in another place? But since Google layered the GPS data on its truck location on top of proximity to whatever hotspots it picked up, once those routers move so does your place on the earth. It’s like Star Trek’s transporter, except you’re only there on maps and not in real life.