Smartphone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

If you have a T-Mobile Shadow or Dash and use the Google Maps app, you've probably noticed that the "My Location" service doesn't work. That is the feature that gives a rough estimate of your location based on tower locations and signal strength - it usually works to within 1,200 yards, though often may be much closer.

This is especially cool with the new Google Latitude service that will connect you with friends based on locations. Well, it does work on your device, you just have to modify a registry key. The instructions can be found at Surreal Networks. They also have a tiny .CAB file that will do the trick for you, which is what I did since I don't have a registry editor installed on my wife's Shadow. You need to reboot the phone after installation. Once done, My Location in Google Maps will work just fine.

"Way back in November 2007, we location-enabled all of our Google Maps for mobile clients to bring location awareness to the masses and improve the local search experience. Using My Location, millions of you have been able to easily find yourselves on a map at the touch of a button. But what about finding other people? Lots of you have been requesting to see where your friends are on a map, too. Well now you can with Google Latitude. Latitude is a new feature of Google Maps for mobile, as well as an iGoogle gadget, that allows you to share your location with your friends and to see their approximate locations, if they choose to share them with you. You can use your Google account to sign in and easily invite friends to Latitude from your existing list of contacts or by entering their email addresses. Google Talk is integrated with Latitude, so you and your friends can update your status messages and profile photos on the go and see what everyone is up to. You can also call, SMS, IM, or email each other within the app."

Unlike previous Google Maps for mobile innovations, Google is making the new Latitude feature available to Windows Mobile users from day one. To start spying on connecting with your friends, fire up your mobile browser and grab the app from google.com/latitude. It's 100% opt-in, and you can choose just how much or how little information you want to share, and with whom.

"Previously, when you went to google.com from your phone’s browser and performed a local search, the results were tailored to the last location you entered. Now, using the Gears Geolocation API, Search with My Location approximates your actual location using the same Cell ID technology used by Google maps for mobile. So if you want to find sushi nearby, just type "sushi" and Google will return local business listings around you. If you want to know the forecast, type "weather". If you want to search somewhere else, specify a location in the query like "pizza Kansas City."

• On your mobile device, go to www.google.com/m
• Click the Location link
• Tell it to install Gears. A Windows CE CAB will be downloaded that you need to install.
• Soft reset your device when the install is done.
• Launch PIE and allow Google Gears access to your browser

It isn't perfect. It thinks I am 13 miles northwest of my present location, which is odd. The tower locator system that the Google Maps tool uses can always get me to within half a mile of my real location, and usually under 1,000 yards. It also isn't on the iGoogle page yet on your device, so you either have to pick the iGoogle personalized page to search from, or the generic Google Mobile page, but not both.

Right now it is limited to the US and UK, and there are a list of unsupported devices, so check the blog post before installing.

"Slam is a Microsoft Research Community Technologies Group research project, developed in conjunction with the Microsoft Photo and Imaging eXperience (PIX) team. It is a mobile device-based application that enables lightweight, group-centric real-time communication, location awareness and photo-sharing. The core concept behind Slam is a �Slam�, a group of people with whom you can exchange messages and photos. When you send a message in Slam, it is automatically sent to everyone in the group to which you sent it. For smartphone users that have the Slam client installed, their phone will buzz and they will have an indication on their phone�s home screen that there is a new message. For SMS users, they will receive the message as an SMS from the Slam server. Like smartphone users, SMS users can be members of multiple slam groups. SMS users will send / receive messages to a different phone number for each slam group they a member of."



I was really looking forward to trying this program out but unfortunately it does not appear that I will be able to do so anytime soon. The problem with SLAM is that it needs to be installed directly to your phone. Through the website you enter in your mobile phone number and cellular carrier and you receive a SMS with a download location. Here is the fun part, the program is over 2MB in size which you have to download to your phone!

I have two questions for the people at Microsoft that created this program. Question one, do they know how long it would take to download over 2MB worth of data on a GPRS or EDGE connection? Question two, who do you actually know that can afford 2MB of free space on their handset? Even after a fresh install I'm left with only 9MB of free space on my Cingular 2125 and even less than that on my older WM2003 devices. I'm starting to think that no one over there actually uses a Windows Mobile Smartphone. :(

"Perdiemco Location & Tracking (PLT) software allows you to track your trip and lets others locate and follow you online. You set the passcodes so only those that you want can see your trip. You can also take pictures or leave messages with your pda or phone and put them online for others to see. You can set zones for tracking (with alerts) too. These are "boxes" you create. You can track inside a zone or be alerted when someone enters or leaves a zone. PLT offers privacy and 'a need to know', So you can turn off anyone's ability to locate you at anytime. PLT allows you to access and use your GPS on-the-fly from any location connected to the Internet. Get reliable, convenient and secure access to GPS information from home or on the road."

GPS seems to be a hot topic as of late. We're seeing a lot of GPS enabled applications springing up. Perdiemco's Location and Tracking software does just what you would expect - it logs your location information. To run Perdiemco's solution, you need to have a Windows Mobile Smartphone or Pocket PC, Bluetooth GPS, .Net Compact Framework 2, and Active Sync 4.1. Once you have everything in place, this free software will help you log your travels. :)

"Verizon Wireless plans to add a location-based service to accompany its cellphone, designed for young kids, called the Migo. Software for the location based service, created by Autodesk, will allow parents to track their child's Migo phone within yards of their own phone or Internet site. Amazingly, the phone will even alert a parent via a text message if their child leaves a pre-designated area. The service is expected to cost between US$10-15 a month and has a planned launch in May."

That sounds like a great service, but $10 a month? Isn't that a little on the pricey side? It looks like Verizon has a nice service here, too bad they're ruined it with the price. :(

"Sprint yesterday announced new services for roadside assistance and directory assistance callers. When users of either service call in for help or directions, they can now ask the operator to locate them using their phone's assisted GPS instead of having to know where they are. There is no extra fee beyond normal charges for network location. Sprint also said they intend to extend location based services to user accessible data services like local weather, movies, traffic information and more."

Hopefully someday we'll have a GPS embedded Smartphone that can take advantage of this. :(

"CellTrack is free and open source utility for tracking the location of GSM cellular phones. Currently C500 smartphones running Windows Mobile are supported. A free CellTrack client can be downloaded and installed on your phone. This runs in the background and collects information on the GSM cell towers in your phone's vicinity. This information can be used to estimate the geographical location of your phone. The client can be configred to automatically perform certain actions when the phone location changes. For example, CellTrack can be configured to automatically switch your phone to silent when entering work, or to divert all calls to your home line when you are at home."



CellTrack is a software that can run on HTC Typhoon (C500/SP3i/SMT5600) based Smartphones and report your location using the GSM cell tower information. The beta version of this application does not have all the features implemented yet, but I love the concept and its potential. 8) You can configure this application to report your location information to the central cell tower database and soon you will be able to do cool things like displaying your current location on your blog, website, or forum signature. And one piece of advice, don't let your spouse find out about this application. ;-)

"TinyGPS enables receiving information about location of your phone in your GSM network. It also shows name of your current location (if your GSM operator provides it). You can teach your phone locations which are important for you like: home, school, work, train station, church etc. Then you can set up events based on entering or leaving chosen location. For example your phone can automatically switch profile to Silent when you come home. If you commute to work by train you can set up alarm which will wake you up when you arrive to the train station even if your train is late!"



Has anyone installed this yet? It should run on any unlocked 2003-based device. You are encouraged to try it before buying, just in case it doesn't work on your device. You can download a trial version, or purchase a copy for $17.95 here. [Affiliate]

Mobile Gadget News has a nice interview with Alex Nano of Microsoft Canada. The discussion focuses on the new MapPoint Location Server. MapPoint Location Server will allow an enterprise to track its people through their mobile devices. Currently, Bell Mobility and Sprint have implementations.

Check out the interview for more details.

Recently added to the MDC agenda is this preconference workshop on the upcomming MapPoint Location Server. There are two key things that developers should be flocking to this year's MDC to learn. One of them is how to create location-aware applications. (I'll talk about the other one later, but here's a hint: it has to do with the recently announced Motorola MPx) I don't know of anyone in the mobile software industry that does not believe location-based applications are going to be a real big thing real soon. MDC 2004 is where you get to talk to the experts about how you can become a part of the technological evolution that lies just around the corner.



In addition to this pre-conference day, there are going to be at least two sessions on this topic (SRV335 and SRV339). I've also heard some rumors that a hands-on lab is in the works. I'm planning to be at all of them - how about you?

Chandu Thota works for the MapPoint group at Microsoft and posted an interesting photo to his blog today. This shows an app built using a pre-release version of the MapPoint Location Server. Man... that's one product with a lot of potential to stir up the industry. There's going to a few talks about this at MDC for developers who want to get the scoop on what it will do and how to use it.