Google Maps GPS Simulator

garbletext writes "A new version of Google Maps introduced this week includes a beta feature dubbed My Location that was designed to simulate the GPS experience on mobile phones and handheld devices that do not include GPS hardware, like Apple's iPhone. Essentially, the My Location feature takes information broadcast from mobile towers near non-GPS equipped mobile phones to approximate the device's current location on the map down to about 10 city blocks. "It's not GPS, but it comes pretty close (approximately 1000m close, on average)," the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant explained on its website. "We're still in beta, but we're excited to launch this feature and are constantly working to improve our coverage and accuracy." The My Location feature is currently available for most web-enabled mobile phones, including Java, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Nokia/Symbian devices."

iPhone

Except this doesn't actually work on iPhone.

Re:iPhone

once it emerges from the beta stage.

So, knowing Google, it'll be ready for the iPhone 6G in 2013?

Wow! This is exactly what I always wanted!!!

Now I can pay to have my cellphone tell me I'm somewhere in downtown Toronto. Just what I've always wanted - I always keep forgetting these minor details.

Re:Wow! This is exactly what I always wanted!!!

Remember, this is just telling you where you are, not where you should or would like to be.

Which probably isn't in downtown Toronto.

And no matter where you go, there you are.

Re:Wow! This is exactly what I always wanted!!!

Location on a phone has always been potentially very useful as a part of user context. You might not be able to use it as a turn by turn mapping guide, but what the stupid mobile operators forget is that other people could think of useful location services. Example: Travel Agent. I used to fly from Nice to London via Frankfurt a lot. My connection in Frankfurt is at 9:15. If my phone reports that I am in Frankfurt at 9:30 and the flight left at 9:15, then I missed my flight. An application could use this to automatically rebook me.

I order a taxi from an office. Today I wait on the street because I do not know within a minute when he will arrive. With location, when the taxi enters the same cell as me, it could trigger an SMS for me to go down to see taxi. Saving me time and money.

Wap Link: Give me the weather HERE. I remember years ago showing a friend the weather forecast on the phone. After I typed in the City, he asked why? He was right of course , the phone knew what city I was in.

Going for a train - rush or have a cup of coffee and wait? Push the button "Next Train" and application knows you are in work not home and tell you next train from work to home. Or vice a versa.

Too many people stupidly believe that location has no real use unless it can locate a person within meters. The granularity is fine as a basis to give contextual input to many many app.

I could go on and on, but for 7 years the mobile operators have blown their lead in this space all because the idiot marketing people believe that if THEY cannot imagine a service no would could possibly want such a service. I had to laugh at Vodafone idiot CEO in a recent interview discussing how he "owned" location as a service and Apple did not. He owned it for 7 years and did fuck all with it.

1 KM (0.6 miles) is close?

So, hypothetically speaking, if I had been driving to my relatives' house on, say, Thanksgiving, and I possibly took a right turn instead of a left one and ended up 3 miles away before turning back, I was, in theory, also pretty close?

Still...

It's not terribly useful if you're truly lost. Once they can get the triangulation between towers to work better, it'll be pretty damn slick. Until then, 'tis just a toy.

1000 metres on *average*?

Um... What's the standard deviation on that?

While I like the sentiment, I suspect the usefulness is going to be... limited... It'll be as easy to put in the street names and such.

 

MapPoint?

I believe MapPoint Location Server [microsoft.com] had these same features based on GPRS/GSM available back in 2004. For a price of course :)

It could be useful

The usefulness will come from the fact that you now have a localized map of roughly where you are. As long as you think of it as a personalized map service instead of a GPS replacement service, it still quite handy

Out of beta..

Apple has promised to continuously update and improve upon the feature set of its inaugural mobile handset, making it more than likely that the feature will turn up once it emerges from the beta stage.

Oh, good, once a Google feature gets out of beta iPhone users can expect support. That'll only be a couple of years, then...

The few posters so far really lack imagination

No, it's not going to tell you your exact location. But if you need to get somewhere it can give you direct starting within 1000 feet of where you are.

It is NOT for Geo caching, or to give you constant real time updates as you hurl down the road.
So if you are in downtown Toronto and decide you want to check out the new book store in BF Canada, you can get a close start position on Google maps. If you can't figure it our from there, then please stop using technology.Any technology.

Not Exactly Global

If it's based on the deployment of Cell towers, it's not exactly a *Global* Positioning System. I think GPSs are more useful in remote areas than urban ones and probably less dangerous [betanews.com] there too.

I think this product might lead people into a false sense of security:

"Hey, I think were lost out here in the middle of the Oregon woods in a blizzard. Better check the GPS on my iPhone.

"WTF?

"We're doomed!"

good. VZW can lick my sweaty...

I was so excited to get my sexy VZW Blackberry World Edition phone cause it had GPS. To later learn that the GPS is gimped and VZW wont let it talk to 3rd party apps.

Hopefully this gets me 'good enough' placement on the map.

It sorta worked

It found my location to "within 2400 meters". It is about 2K off actually.

But I am impressed by the fact alone that it started zoomed right into my city. And I am connected with WiFi, not even GPRS.

Pretty swift if you ask me.

For those complaining of accuracy...

It may not be as accurate as full-on GPS, but now you can do searches for nearby businesses...without having to type in your location. I don't know how many times I've been looking for something NEARBY and either didn't know what zip code or city I was in (keep in mind in a place like LA, something might be nearby but technically in a different city, and sometimes it wouldn't find things unless you gave it specific locations - I know this from experience). I finally resorted to doing a browser Google search because the maps app just wasn't finding stuff.
 
I've also noticed that now, when you search without putting in a location (i.e. "pizza" instead of "pizza los angeles ca") it will search the nearby area visible on the map. With the previous version, for some reason, it kept giving me locations in the UK when I didn't specify a city/state in the US instead of just searching the area of the map that was currently visible.
 
Too bad the "My Location" feature doesn't currently work on Sprint Touch and Mogul phones (whether this is a Google or Sprint thing, who knows...) as it says the phones aren't reporting any cell towers (you can see this in Help>About where it says "myl: N/A". Oh, well...hopefully it will work sometime in the future.

Source CNET article

Not sure why the post linked to an appleinsider article... this is a general google maps mobile thing.

Here's a more detailed article from cnet [news.com]

I can't wait to use it - it looks like they're using the beta to build up a database of towers around the world :)

Result for me - half block off

Working pretty well on my BB - About one half block from exact location. Pretty cool for the price.

...but it's close?

I don't think 1 km can really be considered close to gps. GPS needs to be "close enough" to tell you when you are coming to your exit at 140 kph. I still think that you can use this for basic by hand navigation. Just look for an intersection and then at least this tool will give you a smaller square in which to search for your present actual location. Then, you can set you location and ask how to get where you need to be. By no means can this replace a real navi, but in a pinch it can save your butt.

Privacy?

Where are they getting the information about what tower you're connected to and how strong the signal is? If it's from the app running on the phone, and you selected to install the app (plus agree to a very long disclaimer) then I have fewer issues. But if they are getting the information from the phone company or from the network requests (e.g. http headers added by phone company) then I'd question if the phone company is giving away private information on their customers.

And if they get the information from the app on the phone, I'd be curious of what api's there are to do this ourselves and if that access infringes on some kind of separation between the phone and app that users and phone companies may want (e.g. apps dialing 900 numbers or racking up charges for sms messages without your knowledge).

(And FYI, testing this on a Sprint Treo 600 claims to download the 2.0 version, but it's really the 1.2 version after the installer runs, so it doesn't work for me yet.)

It's bot meant to be a GPS replacement

The purpose of this is not to tell you where you are. It's to get you to the right map, without needing to type a location using clumsy cell-phone input. Once you're looking at a map, you can figure out where you are by looking at street signs. Think of it as a road atlas which always opens to the right page.

Navizon does this on iPhone now

google Navizon

my mini review

OK
my review -

GOOD

My Location actually WORKS !
My Location works outside of the USA (at least in the UK)
well put together app not a resource hog on my symbian Nokia Series 60 v2 phone (e50)

BAD

you cant do ANYTHING with "My Location" except watch a pretty blue point on the map
No My Location for route finding
No traffic outside USA
Route does not work for a found location it adds a ")" at the end for some reason.

Nice but you need to actaully finish it or it's just a plaything

I am curious what Database of cell locations is google using do you gut think ?
(the phone companies often lie about locations in there headers so you have to build your own (wiggle) or use OFCOM in the uk)

regards

John Jones

http://www.johnjones.me.uk/ [johnjones.me.uk]

This seems like

This seems like it will be great technology when technology catches up............. wait a minute:\

Blackberry 7520

Too bad google maps won't use the built in GPS on my 7520... it'll talk to a bluetooth gps receiver though.

Though, with the below dialup speeds of the blackberry, and 8 dollar a meg transfer charges, I'm not sure I'd want to do much with google maps anyways.

"My location" doesn't work on this unit anyways.

Nice alternative

Given that Google maps only finds my location on my GPS equipped Blackberry 8800 about 25% of the time, it will be nice to have an alternative. Now if they could just get traffic information that was worth a damn and actually works consistently. I haven't been able to get traffic information for my commute for the last two days. It says "No Traffic Information Available." despite the fact that I'm in downtown Los Angeles. Trust me, there is all sorts of traffic info available... I'm sitting in it. ;)

And what about the other major features?

A few other very interesting features were released this week for Google Maps... and I'm sorry that this story is all we got on /. so far. Here's a copy from the site in my sig.

Google Maps Adds Terrain
Google Lat Lon Blog [blogspot.com] announces the addition of terrain to their free Google Maps [google.com] site. In addition to adding the Terrain button, they've removed the Hybrid button. They explain, "You may notice in this screenshot that the handy "Hybrid" button, which shows satellite images overlaid with labels and roads, seems to have gone missing. Don't worry -- this view can now be accessed by clicking the "Satellite" button and checking the "Show labels" check box that will appear under the "Satellite" button."

New Google Maps Features Launched Including Collaborative Mapping
In addition to the important new terrain layer [slashgeo.org] announced yesterday, Google Maps received a few significant updates, first, Google Maps searches are now providing a thumbnail of the related street view photo [blogspot.com], second, the My Maps feature somehow becomes Our Maps, allowing to collaborate directly on someone else's My Maps [blogspot.com], this has a lot of potential of getting big, and last, you can more easily share KML and KMZ files and GeoRSS feeds through My Maps [blogspot.com]. From the Our Maps announcement: "Just click the "Collaborate" link and enter the email addresses of the people you want to invite. They'll receive an email invitation with a link to the map. Once they open the map, they should be able to edit it, as long as they are signed into a Google Account that's associated with that email address. You can also open your map to the world so anyone can edit it by selecting the "Allow anyone to edit this map" checkbox."

Works on my N75

I killed the old version I had (1.7-something), downloaded 2.0, fired it up. Nothing. "Your location is currently unavailable." Rebooted the phone, now it works great. It's showing the blue dot about half a block from my actual location. I'm well within the grey circle around the dot. Pretty awesome for not using GPS.

Cell Info

A few years ago, I had an Ericsson T28 (GSM), and it had a function called Cell Info.
All of my others phones (GSM) have had it, but I only ever noticed it when I was in Denmark in 2003.
Living in Stockholm (Sweden), I never noticed it, and turning it on did nothing - but as soon as I crossed the bridge, it would tell me exactly where I was, right under where it told me which operator I was connected to.

(example)
S Comviq
Main Boulevard 3, Copenhagen

My guess at the time was that three (or more) towers were triangulating me, and that the towers had some built in map, since it was sending me that information. My guess isn't any better today, and I haven't gotten cell info again since then, but I also haven't been back to Copenhagen.

Pretty cool - but as far as privacy issues go.. if anyone could program a phone to ask the network - or clone that phones ID - and have the towers tell you where subscriber with phone number 123 456 789 is, that wouldn't be all to great. It also isn't impossible that people working for the operator could query this.

Je nais sais pas.

Killer App = My Location + Business

OK, so this is spiffy. But imagine you're a business: think of all the ridiculously profitable stuff you could do with this kind of location info (once the user grants it)?

-- Google pushes to your phone which nearby businesses are having sales at the moment.

-- During non-peak hours, Starbucks sends you a coupon for a half-price latte redeemable in the next 15 minutes.

-- Capital One, knowing your buying habits, lets you know which nearby clothing stores they can get you a discount at.

-- Match.com tells you which matches are in the area to meet up with.

-- LinkedIn lets you know there's a consultant nearby at lunch with just the kind of Indian outsourcing experience you need.

-- Facebook takes your location info, accidentally leaks it to a Facebook app, and Ron Paul supporters swarm your location with placards and chants.

In other words, massively delivered location-contextual ads and services are the next big thing. This is huge!

AT&T had this years ago

I'm pretty sure AT&T had this capability several years ago. I can remember testing it out on my mobile phone, probably around 5 years ago. The only thing it was really useful for was to find a certain type of place "nearby", which means within a short drive, but it never told you what your location actually is, just what is near you. When I tested it, it seemed more accurate then I expected (or just lucky). It was recommending locations that were within a block or two of where I was, in opposite directions.

At least more advanced than that old Palm version

...which just displayed a big fat cross on the screen one line of text stating "You are here".

Just tried it - 650-750m from accurate..

OK - I just tried it out - it put me 650-750 meters from my actual location. It seems to have drawn a 1k radius around the dot indicating that you are in that general area. To be honest, this looks very useful to me - Roll on a windows mobile API for me to use it in my own apps without paying license to someone. There isn't a pizza, taxi, video store or motorway (freeway) junction that would be selected incorrectly from using this location rather than my actual one.

Units

Driving distances in feet? Ah, Americans. I trust they're going to broaden its appeal to the rest of us!

Placelab

Why not use PlaceLab?

http://placelab.org/publications/pubs/pervasive-placelab-2005-final.pdf [placelab.org]

"Place Lab is software providing low-cost, easy-to-use device positioning for location-enhanced computing applications. Place Lab tries to provide positioning which works worldwide, both indoors and out (unlike GPS which only works well outside). Place Lab clients can determine their location privately without constant interaction with a central service (unlike badge tracking or mobile phone location services where the service owns your location information).

The Place Lab approach is to allow devices like notebooks, PDAs and cell phones to locate themselves by listening for radio beacons such as 802.11 access points, GSM cell phone towers, and fixed Bluetooth devices that already exist in large numbers around us in the environment. These beacons all have unique or semi-unique IDs, for example, a MAC address. Clients compute their own location by hearing one or more IDs, looking up the associated beacons' positions in a locally cached map, and estimating their own position referenced to the beacons' positions. "

Tested... Does not work

We found your position within a 5000Mt precision. And the little tool was pretending I was somewhere in roma city center while I actually was around 6000 mt from the position. Not bad, I guess from the previuos alpha version that supposely was indicating me being actually on earth or within one satellite distance. You still need a GPS receiver for positioning. And anyway anyone heard of the mtfuxx called Galileo? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_positioning_system [wikipedia.org] Doesen't the project be awaiable nowadays? Did it got a takedown notice under the DCMA?

Skyhook tries to do this via WiFi

Thought some of you might find this interesting...

From their site:

Skyhook's Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) is the world's first location platform to use the native 802.11 radio already on a mobile device to deliver accurate positioning across the US. And soon the world.

http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/ [skyhookwireless.com]

Never tried it myself.

Isn't this just "Assisted GPS?"

I believe Sprint has had something like this for a while now. "Sprint Family Locator" [nextel.com] lets you see where your kids are using GPS, or, when unavailable, cell signal approximation.

My understanding is that many GPS apps use "Assisted GPS" like this, triangulating from cell towers for location help, since traditional GPS requires a clear view of the sky and that's not always practical (you're indoors, or in an urban or actual canyon, etc).

Finally catching up with Orange UK

WAY back when (When the Matrix was new out, and I'd just gotten my new Nokia 7110 with WAP), Orange had a service that would find local businesses/amenities based on triangulation of cell towers (As phones at the time didn't have GPS). You'd go into the WAP portal and choose "Where's the nearest", it'd ask you for the kind of service you were looking for (Restaraunt, phone, ATM etc), and would tell you where they were (Street name/number, it couldn't tell which direction you were as it was a one-time lookup). The system's accuracy was around 10 meters, and (when I left the UK) they were starting to offer turn-by-turn directions (Using SMS and triangulation), and child location monitoring using their cellphones.

Treo 700p?

Anyone have any luck getting this to work on a Treo 700p? The update doesn't seem to be applying to mine :(

5 miles out

I'm sat in London's West end, but it seems to think that I'm actually in East Finchley. Still needs a little work, I think.

Navizon

There's a 3rd party app that runs on iPhone called Navizon, it does this exact same thing, and it works pretty well. As others have stated, this is not GPS, more like a neighborhood level positioner. It's also the only 3rd party iPhone app I know of that charges money for the software. Its free for a trial period, so if you have installer.app cranking, give it a shot.

It essentially finds your location based on cell tower, then opens the google maps application with your neighborhood on the screen. Search for Peet's or whatever and it'll bring up the closest locations.

Google maps GPS not just on Helios anymore

Finally! I was worried that Google maps with GPS would be exclusive to Helio [gizmodo.com], and I was beginning to begrudge Google for the apparent exclusivity.

Well, so far a mixed bag for me...

Installed it on my 7105t, slick.

Since it's Beta, I won't whine about the shortcuts that don't work, key mappings that don't work, nor the interesting quirks in the map display. Overall, it's usable.

But I was in an area where there is often only one tower in range, and My Location was off by as much as 5 miles. It was mostly off in a quadrant that was WSW to WNW. Today, in an area with two good towers and one weak one (and the weak one is my carrier, so it grabs me at all costs - I watch my bars go from 5 to 1 when I actually make a call...) and I'm located within an unmeasurable 100m. Not bad.

My wife installed it too. She thinks it will be cool. She's a complete Luddite. We'll see.

For now, one snap with a twist.

Until Google = service provider, this is useless

I have a non-GPS-enabled phone (a Sanyo Katana, for the curious) that I use as a GPS navigation device because I run software (Telenav) provided by my service carrier. The thing is accurate to a few meters and works by triangulating off of 3 or more cell towers. Google can't utilize this so they're limited to 1000m -- that's pretty damn useless.

gps simulator

I tried it, but it did not work at all (in Sweden). It downloaded 50-100 Kbyte of data for every pan-operation. That is expensive. There are better alternatives (5 times less data) at www.idevio.com // Magnus

For $200...

Given your posting record thus far, I'm gonna side with Sean Connery on this one and say that you're missing a space after that "e".

Re:It doesn't work?

Make sure you actually have version 2.0.0. I've been trying to download it for my Treo since noon and still get the older verison even though the link says 2.0.0.

WARNING: Obscured Shocksite Redirect

Add parent to lameness filter for obscured URL.

Re:Read more here

Stupid I know, but until slash starts cradling us with some form of protection, I wrote the following

javascript:(function(){
var i,x,l,h;
        for(i=0;x=document.links[i];++i){
        l=x.href.toLowerCase();
        if(l.indexOf('google')>=0 && l.indexOf('btni')>=0) {
                x.href = x.href.replace(/btni/gi, "btnG");
                h=document.createTextNode("[I'm Feeling unlucky]");
                x.parentNode.insertBefore(h, x.nextSibling);
        }
} })()

incorporate into greasemonkey or your own standard method and forget about feeling lucky.

Is this a google vulnerability though or just creative thinking?
If google actually checked the link and rejected commands if invalid parameter data is present then we would land on a harmless search page no matter what.

(incidentally, will some regex wiz work their magic on the initial link test)

Re:It doesn't work?

I think it's only supported in some locations - something at the end of their little video [youtube.com] suggested as much; "You might get an error message. If so, try again at another location nearby."

I get the message, "Your current location is temporarily unavailable." (which made me smile).