GPS

Senate hearings become Apple witch hunt.

by alec on May 11, 2011

Apple and Google took a drubbing from the US Senate yesterday over location based services. At issue — Apple’s use of GPS data collected on iPhone in order to improve the accuracy and speed of location fixes.

As I wrote in July 2009, iPhone (and I’m sure all other mobile handsets today) uses assisted GPS, or AGPS, which is an amalgam of WiFi, cell tower location, and GPS data, to locate the device. It is a dramatic improvement over GPS alone. Early mobile location services were simply too slow. It could take a minute or two – sometime three – to fix location on a handset that supported GPS but not AGPS, and who has time to wait that long just to find the location of the nearest Starbucks?

I think there is legitimate concern when any company collects identifiable personal location data. The iPhone apparently does this when it tracks your location on your own handset in order to deliver you, personally, a better experience. iPhone keeps a database of locations I’ve visited on my handset. Periodically, according to Apple’s claims, personally identifiable information about me is stripped from the data, and then submitted to Apple to improve the quality of their global location database.

I’m okay with that. Some might not be, but I am.

What Apple claims to be doing is no different than how many other businesses anonymously “crowd-source” data from individuals in order to provide a better service for others – think Amazon recommendations, for example, or the way in which Microsoft collects anonymous crash reports from PC’s. Moreover, the improvement in service that has resulted from the collection of this data is dramatic. There simply wouldn’t be any location based services on handsets if Apple hadn’t done this.

What the Senate committee needs to do is to ensure that the location data being collected, and how that data is being used, is disclosed sufficiently to the customer in order to allow the customer to determine what is disclosed. And any data which is collected needs to be stripped of personally identifiable information and made anonymous before it is transmitted to Apple or any other vendor.

I believe Apple was mostly doing the right things with this data already. And while we should all welcome any privacy oversight that the US Senate is willing to offer, it should concern everyone that what appears to be a heavily politicized process will result in a diminished quality of service as Apple releases “bug fixes” to appease the committee in this high profile hearing.

Let’s hope this doesn’t degenerate into a witch hunt.

Apple defends iPhone hot-spot logging (msnbc.msn.com)
The difference between Apple and Google at the Senate hearings (tuaw.com)
Sen. Al Franken vs. Apple’s ‘Bud’ Tribble: The transcript (tech.fortune.cnn.com)
Senate panel grills Apple, Google on location data (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

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Bell to interfere with GPS?

by alec on September 24, 2008

Speculation is running rampant that Bell plans to interfere with GPS on BlackBerry mobile phone devices in the near future. The rapidy spreading rumour says that in the coming weeks Bell will cause users of free GPS mapping applications (Google maps, or BlackBerry maps, for example) to experience GPS lock times of 2 to 10 minutes, up from the 15 to 20 seconds usually experienced. Users will be able to spend $10/month to regain access to high speed GPS locks by subscribing to Bell’s own GPS service, called GPS Nav.

Assisted GPS, which is the technology used by today’s GPS handsets, can make a GPS fix simple and quick to establish. It works by using the phone’s cellular system to also communicate with the cell towers, adding another level of accuracy to the fix. If Bell were to simply turn of AGPS for non-subscribers, the effect described would be a delay of 2 to 10 minutes. I personally experienced this over the past summer travelling in Europe in countries where I had no data access on my Nokia N78.

Let’s hope the bean counters at Bell are thinking twice. A move like this would more than likely result in the mass of cell phone users interested in navigation simply picking up and moving to Rogers where no such restriction exists.

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SquawkBox Conference Call Sept 15: Trapster.com

September 15, 2008

Our guest today was Trapster.com’s Pete Tenereillo, who I met last week at DEMO. Trapster is a social network for reporting speed traps. Integrating GPS, mobility, the web and social networks, it’s a pretty interesting use of technology to solve the age old problem of the speed trap. We caught up with Pete, and asked him about Trapster and some of his other projects, including Awarespot and JotYou.

Squawk Box September 15 - Trapster.com [ 38:17 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Dipwa offers cheap pink GPS

September 12, 2008

Dipwa.ca is a “deal a day” web shopping site, similar to Woot, but available to Canadians. Visit the site each day to find out the daily deal, and whether you want to buy it. Today’s deal is the ASUS R300 GPS system. This unknown GPS came to market in 2007 at a retail price of [...]

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GPS is too slow for a lot of location based services.

June 11, 2008

Image via Wikipedia A lot of folks have high hopes for the new location services with GPS coming on iPhone 3G. I’m reserving judgement. Having been a GPS user for some time, including using phone based GPS on various Nokia devices and the Blackberry 8310, I’m just not that excited. The most exciting location tool [...]

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Being Geeky

August 23, 2005

People have accused me in the past of being geeky. It’s just happened again, in fact! I am currently cruising down highway 401 in the passenger seat of my business partner Howard’s VW Beetle. We’re travelling 125 KPH on a heading of 43.9N 78.6W about 50K from Pickering. How do I know this, and how [...]

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Streets and Trips 2005

May 15, 2005

I just got Microsoft Streets and Trips 2005, with the optional GPS. Very cool. I always knew Ottawa was flat, but I had no idea just how flat. According to my GPS, sitting on my back deck as I write this, I am just 183 feet above sea level. I’m also hundreds, maybe even thousands, [...]

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