Google has been adding features to its maps at a fast and furious pace. Yesterday, it was terrain and wiki-style collaboration for its Web-based maps. Today, it updated its mobile maps to pinpoint your locations by triangulating between cell towers (or if you have GPS on your phone, it uses that, but only 15 percent of phones sold this year even support GPS). I just downloaded the My Location app to my Blackberry (sans GPS), and it pinpointed me to within a block of my location in Manhattan. I’m a little blinking blue dot on the map. Although, if I move around the office, it picks up another set of cell towers and puts me nearly six blocks away. Oh, wait, now it has me nearly perfectly on the right block. Now it has me around the corner again. At least it’s got the right neighborhood—and Manhattan does have a lot of cell towers.
Here’s a video explaining how it works:
Great, I always wanted to know where I am.
That’s pretty cool. I wouldn’t dump my GPS for triangulation though.
where can i find a way to use triangulation for cellphone
It’s nice to have options. Google is so thoughtful.
“It’s nice to have options. Google is so thoughtful.”
It’s not like they’re trying to do everything on god’s earth to get you sucking on the Google teet, then when you’re unweanable, siphon off pennies and or dollars whenever and where ever they can.
Google isn’t free as in freedom, they’re free as in Beer. And just you wait until they cash in on the windfall stage of their ventures. Do some evil.
Signal TOA (time of arrival) systems are not meant to replace GPS, obviously!
And regarding the performance of such systems, environments such as the inner city, like NYC, have a significant multi path problem that degrades accuracy. But, if you phone is devoid of GPS, why knock it!
In open areas free from reflected signal paths, TOA systems can be as accurate as GPS, depending on the precision of the central timebase and software introduced errors.
This was my field before stumbling into my present career as an analyst. I miss working on real things. hmmmmm…..mid-life career retrofit.
@3: Yeah, they’re so thoughtful. What a great, caring company! In no way do they want to squeeze every little cent out of you.
Tra la la, I love Google, they’re so warm and fluffy!
Will this work on the iPhone? If not, they need to rush to add it because this is one of the main features the iPhone is missing.
I guess this doesn’t work on my iPhone.
Thanks, Apple. Can you at least tell me how to get rid of the “iTunes Store” advertisement on my iPhone’s home screen?
It’s great except for one thing. I’m not sure why they have such a strangle 5 digit short code (33669). With such a unique phrase as “BLUEDOT” couldn’t they use it on their existing short codes like GOOGLE (466453)?
Also is anyone have problems with embedded YouTube videos? I tried scrolling through the loaded movie to look up the short code number and it stopped playing. However I viewed the video on YouTube’s site and there was no problem. Just wondering if it was just me.
I thought the number of phones with GPS capabilities was much higher than 15%. The number that have any kind of GPS software or services is small, but I was under the impression that the majority of new cellphones now had a GPS chip.
“they’re so warm and fluffy!”
You don’t happen to work at Microsoft, AOL or anything right?
I thought so.
@ HATER
Really, they take your money everyday I’m sure.
Just how many checks have you sent to Google thus far?
Go back to work at yahoo.
lol
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# The Hater
November 28th, 2007 at 10:49 am
@3: Yeah, they’re so thoughtful. What a great, caring company! In no way do they want to squeeze every little cent out of you.
Tra la la, I love Google, they’re so warm and fluffy!
“Just how many checks have you sent to Google thus far?”
Google got me for about 2k on adsense so far. They did send me a crappy little personal calendar a few years back though. BTW, that dude is probably from Microsoft. I can tell. Hey dude from MS, I loved that GQ “lawyer” you sent to court against me a few months ago. He smelled like booze and cheap cologne. Good thing he was connected to the hive, or else he could have fallen over from the hard work of having to stand up.
=~ s/adsense/adwords/;
I installed it on my phone, but get this error when I click “My Location (0)”: “Your current location is temporarily unavailable.” …if my location was unavailable, how would I be here? I want to use this feature!
Not to be pedantic, but triangulation does not seem correct. Shouldn’t it be trilateration or mulitlateration?
Will it work only in the USA or outside as well ?? Im trying now
@12, 13: Oh, you’re all so smart. Well done exposing me! Let me say this – like Upton Sinclair might say, you can get a better look at the jungle from the inside the walls of the kingdom. Oh, hmm, I may have said too much..
Ich bin ein Googler.
eric, I am surprised you did not mention yahoo fireeagle which techcrunch has an article weeks ago. http://www.tech...eo-information/
“Ich bin ein Googler.” I take it back I was wrong. You’re not a Googler nor are you German. You could have been a softie though. People that I know from Google, almost all of them are dry and would never use metaphoric phrasing like that. I do know some people at MS like that though, like Mr. Marcucci, and I use the term Mr. very loosely.
Triangulation services have been around for a while – though I don’t recall the name of the specific one I’m thinking of. The original business plan was to tie advertising to location aware devices (as well as proximity search, etc – i.e. “greek restaurants close to my location.” Evidently didn’t amount to much as its fully off the radar.
http://techwatc...google+location
doesn’t work on my razr v3m
@20: Chris, your intelligence and amazingly perceptive powers never cease to blow me away. Such accuracy! No, wrong word..such generalization! Enjoying your poutine today, are you?
Also, read a book on JFK.
“@20: Chris, your intelligence and amazingly perceptive powers never cease to blow me away. Such accuracy! No, wrong word..such generalization! Enjoying your poutine today, are you?”
Consider I had to infer about a random person on the internet. That’s 1/1billion people it could have been(English speakers), then to cross reference that against about 75k softies and about 15k employees at Google, minus about 30% who don’t have spectacular English language skills.
If you do work at either MS or Google consider my generalization powers to be god like to have picked that needle out of the haystack of the internet. You should see my search engine. I had an honest to god Googler contact me this morning about it.
Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.
What else Google wants to collect under the name of service!
This is an awesome feature! How to access it on iPhone?
Complain a little more Erick about a sweet free service.
work it my s-e k800i…thx
I have been waiting for this feature! I downloaded it on my Blackberry and it works…. kind of. “My location” is about a mile away from my actual location. But I’m in a building maybe that’s why. I’m not going to complain even about it being a mile off…. because I’ve been on the road many times and been like where the hell am I?? And had to scroll all over on Google Maps to find my general location. At least it will narrow it down with little to no effort.
Thanks Google!
Any idea on whether they will use this service to help display ads on digital displays (e.g., outside sidewalk billboards) that target the search requests or other info emitted from the cellphone? Or, is this not accurate enough on pinpointing the location of the cellphone?
Techcrunch takes so long to load that I try whenever possible to just read it through google reader. It freezes my browser with all of your ads. It’s great that you have a lot of advertisers, but if it makes people leave the site it doesn’t mean much. Good content nonetheless.
Hey guys, sorry for interrupting your little family fight, but the address http://www.goog.../gmm/index.html returns a 404 error for a long time. So, they give us TOA but they forget the HTML code behind.
All those who want to use this feature on iphone can use an application i am currently writing… it would send text msg of you location to everyone in your phonebook every 15 minutes…
so the next time you are having “client dinner”… watch out for your wife!
Technology get scary sometimes… Invasion of Privacy. Did you know Facebook stole massive data from private government and ConnectU.
I think Google should create strong privacy lock. Google guys sign up facebook and got identity stolen by facebook.
iPhone please.
@1:
You made my day.
I needed that laugh.
Skeptical dude: Download Firefox. Install Ad Blocker Plus. TechCrunch and the Internet will be far more enjoyable for you…
The previous version of google maps worked fine for my Sprint Katana 1 (scp-6600) but when I went to download, install and run the new version, I get a “Game/Application Terminated” message. No Java exception information unfortunately.
Hopefully this is a bug that wasn’t found when testing with my exact model and google will shortly fix. So, for the moment, anyone know how and where I can download the previous version?
Also, you guys seriously think that the rest of us are interested in hearing about your little squabble? Exchange emails/numbers and take it somewhere else!
Google Maps 2.0 instantly crashes my (pretty old) Blackberry
Anyone gotten this to work on a Treo 700p?
I installed the new app (version 2) but this functionality doesn’t appear to be there.
Chris Bucchere
http://www.feedhaus.com
Don’t know, whether you know http://www.qype.de .
They a re doing this since at least 4 month. I installed it on my SE K800i and it worked like a charm.
Roland
Upps,
not qype. I meant http://www.myquiro.de. Sorry.
Roland
Not the most accurate thing (nearly 2 miles off for me), but that might be because I am in the burbs. I will have to give it a try in the city.
Awesome feature if it does prove to be a little more accurate because it will at least drop you in the right zipcode.
This feature would have kept me from crashing my last rental car. BBs are at least 10 time more dangerous to use while driving that regular phone and Google Maps has got to be twice as dangerous as that.
Nuvi please
My old SonyEricsson T68i from AT&T had a triangulation package like this that would let me find coffee shops etc near by as well as other AT&T customers. I hated that they did away with it during the transition to Cingular – I guess I was the only one using it.
We are going to sue over this, since MSwifiStreetLocator had this first!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
@39. Version 2.0 instantly crashes my BB, too. It’s a new 8830 from Verizon.
Loopt’s best bet now is to try to sell to Facebook for $2-$3 million.
One has been able to triangulate lat. and long. in Australia for ages by sending an SMS. But it hasn’t been highly publicised. Good if you are lost and need to contact emergency services.
My main question: Are they patenting 0-click?
I love the total innocence and naivety of the video, especially as it gives out serious health warnings to anyone who is even considering punching in the keywords ‘Tottenham Court Road’.
What next for Google Maps on your Mobile – warnings such as, ‘Punching in Keywords for Map Locations can seriously damage your health’.
Could someone who is using this service please try a test and find out which is more faster.
(a) Punching in the keywords ‘Tottenham Court Road’.
(b) Punching the 0 button and waiting for your Blue Dot Locator.
Sorry if I may cause you to starve in testing the letter ‘a’ option, but don’t blame me, blame Google as they never gave out a Public Warning for using Keywords on Google Maps.
Plus what nerd used Tottenham Court Road as an valid indicator in using this new Google Maps Service.
I live in London and Tottenham Court Road has so many signs and points of interest that shouts out the name of the street, that even Mr Magoo would know where he is.
Does the nerd that made this video know that TCR is a one way street, or that the Queen musical ‘We Will Rock You’ is playing there.
Or perhaps the starving man that is lost there could enjoy a real big feast in TCR, by popping in to the local ‘Spearmint Rhino’.
Ahh London. Red Buses and Mary Poppins.