iPhone, Wi-Fi and Location
Matéria do International Herald Tribune mostra com os aparelhos portáteis iPhone e iPod Touch têm sistemas de localização sem usar GPS, triangulando o usuário a partir dos hotspots (wi-fi). Algo parecido com o sistema de localização do Google, o MyLocation, que usa as celulas dos telefones celulares para localizar e posicionar o usuário em mapas.
No caso da triangulação por zonas de acesso Wi-Fi, vemos dois fenômentos interessantes aqui: 1. o crescente aumento dos pontos de acesso a internet sem fio nas cidades, criando não apenas “pontos”, mas “zonas de conexão” e; 2. o uso dos hotspots Wi-Fi para outro fim, o da localização, revelando a flexibilidade e a complexidades dos atuais territórios informacionais.
iPhone and Maps
Terchos da matéria:
“There’s no GPS inside the phone, so ‘how do we actually arrive at the location?’ Jobs asked, showing the location-finding ability on an iPhone by plotting a route from the convention center to the nearest Apple store – without having to type in his starting point.
‘We’re working with two companies to do that: Google, and a company called Skyhook Wireless,’ he said. ‘And it works pretty doggone well.’
Skyhook’s technology uses signals from Wi-Fi hot spots to triangulate and find a person’s location, instead of using a chip that lets a mobile device communicate with the Global Positioning System. Skyhook, based in Boston and founded in 2003 by Ted Morgan and Michael Shean, has gathered and catalogued the Wi-Fi fingerprint of streets in thousands of cities and towns by driving along roads and collecting the unique signatures of 23 million Wi-Fi signals that flow out of houses, businesses and public access points. The company uses that data to let Wi-Fi-enabled devices know where they are.(…)”