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."

1 KM (0.6 miles) is close?

[bluemonq]

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...

[E. T. Moonshade]

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.

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

[colonslash]

That's better than somewhere in Canada; a map zoomed in to near your current location could be much more helpful, especially because of slow networks and high bandwidth costs

Re:1 KM (0.6 miles) is close?

[ConcreteJungle]

Not every invention you see started off being perfectly usable. That's what development is for. The very cellphones that one will be using this on were not exactly convenient to carry around once upon a time, were they?

It could be useful

[xarien]

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

The few posters so far really lack imagination

[geekoid]

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

[cybermage]

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!"

Re:Still...

[TubeSteak]

It's not terribly useful if you're truly lost.

Define truly lost.

If you're "truly lost" in [major city] then stop and ask someone.

If you're "truly lost" out in the middle of nowhere, a 10 city block guesstimate from your phone is more than enough to get you back on the right path.

For anything in between those two extremes, I can't imagine how the guesstimate won't be helpful. I mean... how lost can you be that you don't know what street you're on? And you're staring at a map.

For those complaining of accuracy...

[the_wishbone]

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.

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

[ILuvRamen]

lol that's not what it will tell you. When you're inside a building it will tell you you're 2 miles away from the tower. And in the elevator it will tell you you're 4 miles away from the tower. And as soon as you walk out, you're suddenly one mile from the tower! All it can go by is the signal strength as far as I know. That's so stupid. With one tower, it can tell you you're somewhere on a ring around the tower. With two it can approximate a linear area that you're in. With 3 towers it can tell you where you are. Even with 3, it won't be accurate because signal strength goes up and down. Plus with multiple towers, they'd kinda have to be owned by the same network and have the same radio tower technology and receivers or it wouldn't work very well.
Just get a damn GPS phone, people.

Re:1 KM (0.6 miles) is close?

[DigitAl56K]

Yes, 1KM is pretty close for a non-GPS-equipped phone.

Think about the workflow - Google Maps can automatically zoom you in to a really small area of global mapping data, and in most cases you're going to want to browse 1KM or greater anyway to have an overview of where you are, what the nearby roads are, and where you are going. You can easily zoom in and out or scroll around from there, getting to exactly what you want to view in seconds.

The alternative is to have you sit there and type in your location, which perhaps you don't even know (but could recognize if you could see the nearby road layouts or satellite view), or to have you zoom all the way down from the continental map of the US manually over a cell connection (i.e. quite slowly).

If you had to drive to your relatives on Thanksgiving you would have used this feature to get ballpark, and then corrected it, and then typed in a destination. Hopefully, though, you know where your relatives live :P

Side: I just got an 8310 (Blackberry Curve), it has GPS built in and with a fix of 5 satellites it seems to be accurate to about 10 meters or less, and this feature also works with Google Maps (as well as MapQuest, TeleNav, Blackberry maps, and maybe some others I haven't tried).

Privacy?

[bhmit1]

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

[Jimmy_B]

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.

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

[lucas teh geek]

you're only thinking in two dimensions. the intersection of two spheres is a circle

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

[kevinbr]

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.