 - Location awareness is a component of presence technology that delivers information about a device's physical location to another user or application. The term is most often used in reference to mobile communication devices and cameras. However, it can also refer to a website that tracks a user's physical location to deliver targeted information, such as local search results or local business information.
A device's location is usually determined by one of three methods: GPS satellite tracking, cellular tower triangulation or, on Wi-Fi networks, by comparing nearby MAC addresses.
Location awareness is an increasing trend in hardware and
software. Here are a few of the current applications:
-
As a component of games on hand held systems.
- As digital camera add-ons (for example, in Sony's
GPS-CS1 GPS device and Jelbert's Geotagger).
- On photo-sharing websites, such as Picassa, where pictures are linked to the location where they were taken on a map.
- In memory cards (such as Eye-Fi SD) that
automatically tag the location of a picture.
- In social networking services, for example to display the location of each microblogging post to Twitter.
- In cell phones, smart phones and other devices to deliver location-specific advertisements and information.
- In GPS systems in vehicles for navigation or local information, such as traffic reports.
As location awareness becomes more prevalent, so do concerns about privacy and security. The IETF has a working group, Geographic Location/Privacy (geopriv) exploring methods of safeguarding users while furthering the technology.
| LAST UPDATED: |
02 Jul 2008
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