Google Maps: My Location

Google Maps for Mobile has unveiled a pretty sweet new feature — on a bevy of mobile phones, Google Maps is smart enough to figure out approximately where you are. Google’s system uses a method known as tower triangulation — your phone keeps a list of nearby towers, and makes note of how strong your signal is. Google accesses their database of towers and compares your signal strength and correlates it to a likely location on the map. It’s pretty slick, and has been common in parts of Europe for ages. Location-based features of mobile phones are a killer app, to be sure.

Hopefully the Apple / Google partnership is such that this feature will make it into the next iPhone firmware update. If the partnership is not such, expect me to cry and wail until Apple rectifies our pitiable situation. I blog, therefore I cry and wail.

Tweet