via adoyle on #geo Verizon is opening its network to allow any device that passes ‘qualifications’ to be allowed on the Verizon cellular network. The concept was best summarized by Dick Lynch, Verizon Wireless’ CTO:

“If someone has the technical capability of building something in their basement on a breadboard … have at it,”

This is really exciting, and smart for Verizon to go the way of, well, the internet. You don’t have to be using “approved” hardware to go onto the ‘net. You just have to match certain protocols. Albeit Verizon will probably be a little more strict, but then again they are just the first. They build the network, you bring the concepts.

Of course, you have to wonder how they’ll charge when devices show up that don’t have a concept of “minutes of talk time”. From the PC World article: “Officials declined to discuss pricing details, only saying prices would be “competitive.” More pricing details should be available after a developers conference early next year, they said.”

Now I’ll have a much better justification to pick up that Cellular Quad Band Module with GPS and onboard Python interpreter.

Mikel was inspired to put free data on his iPhone - so he figured out how to
use OpenStreetMap on his iPhone Maps Application.

We tried a number of methods - it should be as simple as changing the tile url that the Maps application queries. But initial “peeking” under the hood didn’t reveal where GMMServerURL is set. In the meantime - Mikel ended up finding the tile cache sqlite database (you don’t want to continually download tiles) and stuffing it with OSM tiles instead. So as far as the Maps application is concerned, its serving cached tiles. Pretty slick.

As Mikel points out, there are some issues to resolve - tile sizes are different on the iPhone, so the zoom levels are off. That would be easy to verify by loading a KML file with markers.

It’s also a slightly sweet answer to Google’s Cease & Desist to MGMaps for using the tiles. Mikel’s “hack” shouldn’t violate anything, he’s just be very considerate to his data provider by pre-caching tiles that have amenable TOS.

I just recently finished developing another website application with a mobile client (will post about it shortly) and ran into the common annoyance of how to deal with logging into your account from your mobile.

For Mapufacture Mobile we require the user to login once, and after that we recognize their handset and don’t require login. This new site supports OpenID (coming to Mapufacture soon too), which isn’t really an option on the mobile handset. The client is through uLocate’s WHERE platform, so sharing a session cookie from a browser isn’t an option.

Also add on to that the similar problem of having to remember dozens of usernames and passwords for different services, while you’re out and about, and have a limited screen & keypad.

This seems to be exactly what OpenID was made for. I should be able to register my device to OpenID (phone number, SMS verification, simple web client) and from then on, have a single sign-in on my mobile that then authenticates any service on that connection.

OpenID Personal Directory

Not only that, but I should be able to log into OpenID Mobile and have a bookmarked list of these services. So once I login, I can pull up my blog posting, twitter, email, phonebook, etc.

I haven’t entirely thought through the mechanics. The concept is simple enough for web-capable phones using WebKit (iPhone) or Opera or whatever. However, how do you provide this on devices or for users that don’t have a web browser - and also enable the entire phone, not just web apps or WAP sites as Laurent points out.

Perhaps this is where OAuth comes in. OpenID servers should provide OAuth capability. This way anyone can request a validation token that works with other OAuth or OpenID sites from my actual OpenID provider.

In my earlier post I explained why a mobile device was better providing a web app integration environment rather than a ‘native’ application. But, because I’m a geek, I currently use the N95 (and it has ‘uses’).

Overall, the device is very nice. It is Nokia’s best phone yet - great feel, (except there is a little play in the slider face), small, great feature set: WiFi, GPS, MicroSD, 5-megapixel camera with good optics and a flash.

The first thing that attracted me to the N95 was the good camera. I really wanted to be able to take decent shots while out and about in my life without having to carry a camera. The N95 is the perfect fit. I can take a shot, know it will look good enough for a candid photo, and have it uploaded to my online photo store immediately. Having it geotagged is a huge added flavor favor.

So getting to the GPS, besides the camera, this was the only other feature that was really a ‘must have’ for me - because of my fascination with location. Here is a list of the GPS-enabled applications that I use on a regular basis. There are some others, but I installed them just to play with them, and these are ones I use nearly daily.

Nokia Sports Tracker

great app for recording GPS tracks, can save as GPX or KML and even email. Unfortunately, no APP support (yet)

ShoZu

geotags my photos and uploads to flickr, automatically. I can also edit the title, description and add more tags

MGMaps

incredibly full featured mapping application, tracker, and local search. Recently got a cease-and-decist for using Google Maps Tiles (gee, wonder why), but fortunately I pointed out OpenStreetMap to the developer several months ago and within days he added it as an option (free maps on your phone!) Also handles displaying KML files and rumor has it, OpenSearch-Geo in the near future.

Zurfer and Zonetag

two projects from Yahoo! Research Berkeley that provide for uploading geotagged (and cell-tagged) photos to Flickr, and viewing Flickr photos taken near you

Twibble

geolocated twitter posts - also view your friends posts. Rather simplistic currently (your friends posts aren’t geolocated)

Mapufacture

more on this soon…

Missing Apps

While these apps are fun, there are definitely some missing apps or software:

• Plazes (or FireEagle, or some other generic HereIAmWhereAreMyFriends) mobile application - didn’t they use to have one?
• Atom Publishing Protocol support for grabbing nearby locations and uploading new locations and tracks
• Integration of GPS with LifeBlog

And here’s another major hiccup - The N95 has unlimited storage via memory cards - I am a technogeek, yet I still can’t get music or media onto my device. Yeah, there is a Nokia Media Manager for Mac - and my phone shows up in iTunes - but I can’t actually add anything to the device. I try to drag-n-drop and it just snaps back. Not there, no message, no music - unhappy user.

This is something so simple, and so fundamental to Nokia’s primary feature set I’m amazed that it’s so horribly implemented. So while I don’t need to carry another camera with me, and rarely carry my N800 anymore, I still carry my iPod for quick trips.

I mean what I said

As great as the N95 is, for as long as Symbian has been around there should be a lot more great applications out there. Instead, developing a J2ME or C++ application for the N95 (which may not work on the N80, or N6600, or N800, which means redeveloping for every platform) is extremely difficult and time-consuming. And that’s not even addressing the overhead required by a user to find and then choose to install your application - easily a 5-step process, that may even fail and leave unknown bits around you mobile that you later have to reflash to clean up.

Instead, Nokia should really team up with Opera to re-release and finalize the Opera Platform, a kind of iPhone WebKit competitor that allows developers to quickly build rich web-applications with hooks into the phone unit itself. I don’t want to have to worry about file systems, buttons, synchronization, et al. I just want to develop my app, send someone a link - or even better - build something like AppMarks, Leaflets, MockDock, or Gridgets (to name just a few that showed up within weeks of the iPhone release).

You may be surprised to hear me say this, but here is it — the iPhone doesn’t need GPS.

Macworld disagrees (via Directions Magazine). Specifically, Macworld said:

Add GPS support … [the iPhone] would be the ultimate mapping application if it knew where you actually were at all times

They’re confusing the issue. Geolocation does not mean GPS. GPS is a specific technology implementation of getting a location fix. It is also frought with complications that are most apparent in areas that people may use a mobile phone to find out what’s going on around them - that being urban areas, indoors, or anywhere that doesn’t have good sky coverage.

I have an N95 - that’s because I’m a geo-geek. I wanted to have programmatic access to my precise location so that I could write prototype applications for mapping, geolocation, and so forth.

I am not an average user

In fact, one of the most complained about features in the N95 has been it’s slow to fix GPS. Nokia finally got it better, from 74 seconds to 57 seconds, with their firmware upgrade.

That’s still almost 1 minute from turning GPS on (which doesn’t always happen automatically) to getting a location fix. That’s also probably in a decently clear area. This is all well and good - now I can see a moving dot in MGMaps (though not GoogleMap yet), or precisely geotag my photos.

Another problem with GPS - it’s a battery hog. I’ve killed my battery in several hours when using GPS, and even shorter if I leave the GPS on and indoors - leaving the processor to be constantly trying to calculate find GPS signals and parse their GOLD-codes (read more about how GPS works).

Personally, I get rather frustrated standing there (and anyone else waiting with me more so) staring at my phone, hoping for a fix so I can then take a photo. And remember, I’m a geek, I live for this pain - your average user won’t.

But I want my geo-aware iPhone!

My point is, geolocation does not mean having a GPS. There are numerous methods of automatically locating yourself that doesn’t require listening to satellites 24,000 miles away.

Cell Towers and WiFi are both simple, and accurate, methods of getting your location within 10 feet. This is the type of accuracy you may expect from GPS anyways. But you can get a cellular location or WiFi location in seconds - not a minute.

It also works indoors - and best of all (with respect to this post), the current revision of the iPhone has the hardware already. In fact, it would just be a software update to turn on geolocation on the iPhone.

The future is now

So I hope to hear less of people bemoaning the iPhone’s lack of a GPS chip - and instead ask the more reasonable question “Why doesn’t the iPhone do geolocation by cell or WiFi?” And while you’re at it, ask that the location gets exposed with Javascript hooks through Safari so web applications can make use of it.

You can still have your geotagged photos (what’s more interesting, that you were at [-23.538809, -46.618423] or São Paulo, Brazil?), find friends in the area, local pub search, or even maps near me.

If you want to see how something like that works - install the Loki Toolbar - which uses WiFi Geolocation - and then go to Mapufacture Search for automatic ‘nearby’ searching - no GPS required.