

Google launches "Near me now" - alexk
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/01/finding-places-near-me-now-is-easier.html

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maxklein
Everyone seems to be talking about and implementing location based services.
It's an interesting area : but is the right problem being worked on?

I've needed to use a service like near me now just a few times in my life.
Most of the time I do not wait till I am standing in a street in a particular
place to start finding out what restaurants are around there.

A more useful service is this: searching within a crowded shopping street.
Imagine you go to a shopping street, and there are crowds and stores
everywhere. You could walk into all stores searching for that perfect bag, but
what if you could just type 'bag' into your phone and it shows you all the hot
bags currently being shopped at that street, and where exactly it is?

Real world searching is a good application of LBS. More useful than knowing
the next restaurant.

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tomstuart
Occasionally I am in desperate need of a similar service: I might need a
particular kind of screwdriver, for example, and therefore want to know the
nearest store that sells exactly that item (and ideally has it in stock). As
far as I can tell there's not even an approximate solution to this problem
yet.

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jfarmer
<http://milo.com> is trying. God bless them.

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bioweek
This is amazing. I didn't know the iPhone could provide your location to web
apps.

Let me ask you guys a question. I had an idea for a simple location based app.
It simply tells you the next high and low tide for the nearest body of water
to you. Should I just make that a web app since I can now get the iPhone's
location, or should I still do a native iPhone app?

Advice, pros, cons?

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jfarmer
<http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source.html>

The only question is fidelity of the underlying data. On mobile devices it can
be very high. Most (all?) desktop browsers that support the Geolocation API
just use the IP address, so Firefox says I live in Alameda, CA, even though I
really live in Palo Alto.

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bioweek
No, I believe the iPhone shares it's location with the website. That's what
this article is about.

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jfarmer
Yes, through that API (AFAIK). Safari and Firefox both support it, but it
depends on the fidelity of the location data available to the browser.

Obviously mobile Safari has access to better data than desktop Safari.

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madh
Makes me think Yelp might regret walking away. Of course, that is if that
Google acquisition rumor had any truth at all.

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cmelbye
Sounds like a better, more sensible solution than augmented reality for that
purpose (which has always been buggy and annoying when I try to use it outside
of a restaurant or similar).

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jrockway
The "Near me now" link does not show up on my Android devices.

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tumult
At the bottom of the Google Mobile homepage, Settings -> Allow use of device
location

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mjtokelly
Also, it's apparently only available on iPhone and Android 2.0+ for now.

