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Google's Android and its Location Awareness
posted by Satri
on Wednesday February 06, @07:45PM
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from the paranoid-android-don't-need-a-map dept.
from the paranoid-android-don't-need-a-map dept.
The Google Android mobile phone platform was featured in a few geoblogs entry since its announcement (including on Slashgeo). In an November post, Google's Ed Parsons describes the location management in Android: "With Android the Location Manager component is part of the core application framework, meaning that all user applications have access to the devices location. At a simple level this means that applications like the address book as access to the device location, so your contacts rather than sorted alphabetically could be sorted based on distance from your locations." More recently, All Points Blog informed us there is already a spatial database for Android, and even a location-based "paintball" game named WiFi Army. Development for the platform is fostered by challenges with significant prizes and several companies are jumping on the Android location bandwagon.
Android is not fully open source, from the Wikipedia page: "Android has been criticized by some because it is not really open-sourced despite what was announced by Google (some parts of the SDK are still proprietary software), and some believe it is a conscious decision to control the platform by Google." On a more or less unrelated note, Nokia, with the acquisition of Qt, may sooner than later include Google Earth on its smartphones.
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Google's Android: 3D globe but no Google Earth 1 comment
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Ogle Earth has video along with a report about this new development. Here is their summary : "Four minutes into this demo of Google's Android mobile platform, you get to see a 3D globe that you can spin by dragging your finger across the touch screen"..."But it's not Google Earth; it's an application that the presenter, Steve Horowitz, calls "global time", presumably because it can show you what time of day it is on different parts of the planet. I bet this is what the New York Times supposed was Google Earth, and it is certainly what Robert Scoble erroneously refers to as "a Google earth map" in his post about that video. (Still, if he hadn't called it that, my RSS reader's filters wouldn't have picked it up, so I can't complain too loudly:-)". Head on over to Ogle Earth to see the video and get an in depth analysis.
Over on SlashDot, there is currently a conversation going on about the announcement of the Android SDK which was released today, which is somewhat related. Head on over there for the full detail.
Over on SlashDot, there is currently a conversation going on about the announcement of the Android SDK which was released today, which is somewhat related. Head on over there for the full detail.
Nokia's Maps 2.0 now in Beta
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BBC News writes about Nokia's Maps 2.0 beta release. Some exerpts from the article:
* "Nokia is taking navigation services out of the car so it can always be with you," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, president and CEO of the firm.
* "Nokia's announcement underlines its belief that GPS chips will become as ubiquitous in mobile phones as cameras. It has already made a $6bn (£3bn) investment in mapping company NavTeq to show that it is putting its money where its mouth is." * Mr Kallasvuo said: "Navigation is one of the foundations of the context-aware mobile phone. We believe it will be as important as voice capability was 20 years ago."
* "Nokia is taking navigation services out of the car so it can always be with you," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, president and CEO of the firm.
* "Nokia's announcement underlines its belief that GPS chips will become as ubiquitous in mobile phones as cameras. It has already made a $6bn (£3bn) investment in mapping company NavTeq to show that it is putting its money where its mouth is." * Mr Kallasvuo said: "Navigation is one of the foundations of the context-aware mobile phone. We believe it will be as important as voice capability was 20 years ago."
Industry: World Map Game 8 comments
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Chris Spagnuolo's GeoScrum blog has a very nice game for the GIS professional on it. It written completely in flash and is very fun to play. It involves being given a random location on the earth, and few seconds to click that location on the map. Give it a go and post your scores here so the rest of the GeoCommunity can make fun of your low scores :). Update: 04/10 13:59 GMT by S : This game was mentioned before on Slashgeo previously. I also copied some other previous geo-games below. And since many shared their score, here's mine: 527,701 pts, Level: 12, Trav. IQ: 127 (I admit this score was not done on my first try, but I haven't played often ;-). Update #2: Thanks to Marc K. for the submission of the same story prior the publishing of this one (yours has been pending too long in our system - thanks for your efforts).
Google's Android and its Location Awareness
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