Mon, 24 Sep 2007 05:55:09 GMT

Glimpse of GPS Future in iPhone Hack.

Navizon’s iPhone application lets we iPhoners get a glimpse of the future, where we’ll be able to retrieve our global coordinates as if we carried around a GPS (global positioning system) receiver or mobile adapter. Navizon Virtual GPS for iPhone uses the scan of Wi-Fi networks that the device constantly creates to retrieve a latitude and longitude based on user-submitted location information. The results are plotted as a point in the Google Maps application. Installation of the program requires Nullriver’s AppTapp, and a healthy deep cleansing breath before accepting responsibility for hacking your iPhone.

Perhaps uniquely for these early iPhone applications, Navizon charges $24.99 for its software after a 15-day free trial. They say this money is plowed into its rewards program, which pays anyone with a real GPS who participates in the system based on how they capture new data. For 10,000 points, you get $19.99, where you get 10 points for each cell tower and 2 points for each Wi-Fi access point. Their full-featured software is available for a variety of mobile devices, including handhelds based on the Windows Mobile, Symbian, and BlackBerry platforms; and for Mac OS X and Windows XP and Vista.

In testing a few days ago, despite having a dozen Wi-Fi networks within reception range in my office, Navizon placed me a few miles away. Today, it put me within about 100 feet. Navizon’s software offers buddy tracking, location-based directory searches, and geotagging, allowing you to create a note that’s paired with a set of coordinates.

Navizon’s only real competition for this space is from Skyhook Wireless, which relies instead of individuals on hundreds of wardriving trucks that meander carefully around hundreds of cities worldwide to pair Wi-Fi signals with GPS-retrieved coordinates (see “Loki Here,” 2007-06-18). Skyhook licenses its constantly updating database, and offers Loki, a way of retrieving coordinates via a Web browser on the Mac. They have a more extensive toolbar with location-based directories and form-filling for Windows, which will eventually arrive under Mac OS X, as well.

Of course, what would really be nice is a true GPS chip or simulator built into the iPhone that was available from any application that could rely on locations, and that would plop coordinates into the embedded metadata of photographs taken by the handheld. All cell phones sold must include location awareness, based on GPS or cell-tower placement, to provide that information to E911 operators. So the iPhone has it – almost certainly in the form of cell-tower sniffing; Apple and AT&T are just pretending it’s not there.

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… By glenn@tidbits.com (Glenn Fleishman). [TidBITS]