[Geowanking] Geowanking 2.0 conference

[Sam Critchley - A2B.cc]

Hi,

On Mon, 02 May 2005 23:23:58 +0200, Mike Liebhold <mnl at well.com> wrote:

> What we need...
>
> - cheap and reliable mobile broadband ip access over commercial wireless
> services

Both this and a non-walled garden approach to mobile device position and LBS/geoservices would sprinkle the whole area with the kind of fertiliser which made the popular internet (and especially the WWW) hit its amazing growth rate in the first place.

>
> - a cheap reliable, privacy observant geolocation infrastructure including:
>
>     ~  a DNS for wireless waypoint mac address locations for
> ubiquitious wifi and other wireles signal strength geolocation.

This can be done for Cell ID because the mobile/cellular cell IDs conform to a hierarchical structure - for GSM it's MCC (Mobile Country Code), MNC (Mobile Network Code), Area ID and Cell ID. You could easily adapt DNS and use the LOC format to resolve position, then triangulate. E164.arpa exists, so why not mob.arpa or something?

With 802.11 etc it's slightly more difficult as there's no hierarchy in the SSID system, and not all APs are on public IP addresses so you couldn't use LOC very easily.

>
>     ~  free and reliable, and privacy observant standard geolocation
> services over commercial wireless services

Hear, hear. Charging mobile users €/$/£/* 0.18 every time they want a position fix from a strictly vetted service cannot possibly lead to widespread takeup. Plus a lot of this talk of "security" is about mobile operators not wanting to restrict their users to paid content which they have developed themselves.

>
> -better functions and form factors for low cost hand-held mobile
> devices: built-in gps and other geolocation,  standard java runtime
> environment, better cheaper displays, better keypads and
> pointers,multi-band reception: cellular,wifi,bluetooth and obviously
> more power, memory, storage and battery life.

This will come when/if the market opens up.

>
> - a vigorous, and productive  co-development communities of software
> tool and system builders, and mobile platform developers.

Ditto.

>
> - an active productive community of standards and policy developers
> focusing on privacy, and technical interoperability.

These tend to evolve anyway. We have a sort of one here.

Thanks,

Sam


-- 
Sam Critchley
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