Wifi positioning backends

[Stephen Wing]

Andrew Turner wrote:
> First, the "brilliance" of geoclue is that anyone can write a backend,
...except those of us who aren't the world's best programmers :)

> Here are the other cell location projects that I know of:
Thanks for the list - I tried a few and didn't feel that they had the 
coverage of Navizon (presumably the money back element of Navizon has 
encouraged it to be widely used).

> And no doubt more. So we could go and ping any number of these, or a
> better is to build a couple of example backends and then let them come
> to us. ;)
Although I agree, providing a GPS (GPS), a wifi (hostip), a manual 
option (UI), and a method of using the mobile phone would seem to cover 
all immediate areas, and give a nice range of options for the majority 
of users.

I especially see integrating Geoclue (Maemo version) with Maemo Mapper 
would be useful for those without GPS units, especially with Mobile 
Phone support to provide more functionality than currently available 
within Maemo Mapper.  Without mobile phone support, the end user might 
as well use the functions with Maemo Mapper already.

> Regarding sharing the cell info over bluetooth - the only way this
> would work from our capabilities (unable to access the underlying
> info) is to build a small python app to poll the connected tower info
> and put that over bluetooth.

Indeed, which is why using something like Navizon who have already done 
that hard work (client on the mobile phone) may be easier...

Stephen
(a non programmer, who has a strong interest in location based services)