It’s been a year since iPhone added geolocation to its browser. It’s also now available in Android and in many desktop browsers. The standard provides a device’s location to any website through a couple lines of JavaScript. So, why do so few take advantage of data that important?
There are some who have used it well, of course. Twitter famously activated geo-tweets on its website earlier this year. On either the mobile or desktop browser versions of Twitter, users can choose to associate their location with a tweet.
In the hoopla over the Facebook Places launch, it’s easy to miss that Places went live on the mobile web first, then in the iPhone app. It is not yet part of the native Android, Blackberry or Palm apps. But any browser with geolocation? Yep.
Still, there are numerous sites that should really be incorporating location into their websites, starting with the check-in darlings Gowalla and Foursquare. Neither of their mobile sites ask for the user’s location. In fact, Gowalla doesn’t even let you check-in from the web. Compare these to web-only Burbn, which beat both Foursquare and Gowalla in the geolocation time trials.
The Starbucks website still requires typing an address or postal code to find a coffee shop, the local search archetype. The company has an iPhone app that looks up based on your location, but hasn’t added the few lines necessary to do the same in any web browser.
One reason is that there aren’t many examples of how this interaction should take place. Twitter provides one for adding location context, but how about using your location for a search? One good approach comes from perhaps an unlikely place: MapQuest.
The mapping granddaddy’s mobile site (which requires you access it via a mobile phone) offers to use your current location when you click into an input field. From there, you can get get directions or, yes, find coffee shops.
Though the ability to use someone’s location (with permission) is fairly ubiquitous, sites that take advantage of it are not. There is plenty of interest in adding the same functionality to native apps, which are more difficult to build and require longer lead times. Is the cool factor really enough to ignore perhaps the most important web standard in some time? If not, then where are all the location web apps?
This is true, but according my tests the geolocation using Javascript needs much more time than app-based one. Maybe creating a good functional webapp is just not as cool as making well animated and designed app.
What do you think on a Foursquare-like service that would enable you to check into dynamic objects (for example persons) and then people can report this objects location by a single click on their mobile. And if you are getting close to this object again, you’d be notified on your mobile?
We’re building one during the garage48.org event: http://www.facebook.com/gospotit
How do you find it?
Don’t you think, Lauri, that there are already too much of those checkin-like apps? Few days ago I was thinking about some generic app which could enable anyone to check into anything. Just imagine you would have like a hundred of options with hundreds of sub-options for each and you could select anything and check into it. With ability to Tweet those check-ins they would look interesting: “XYZ watching ABC movie”, “XYZ cooking @ABC’s recipe”, “XYZ is drinking with @ABC, @DEF at @4SQR_LOC”
Wouldn’t that be the end of all checkin-like apps? ;)
Cool, thanks for the answer.
With our app, we see the we can help communities and also local authorities with serving the society. For example people can spot and report about garbage on the streets, roads in bad condition etc.
Also, you could spot moving objects (like some celebrities) – and if somebody is interested in this celeb, he/she would get notified (on mobile) if happens to move to the same location :)
I also think its better thats applications to be written without using Java codes on them.
I prefer applications with other languages and also the interface of application is very important for me and i think for all people.
Yeah, we’re excited about HTML5. The one thing we really wish it gave us was access to the device’s camera….
http://WWW.indoorLBS.com shows why