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Windows Phone 7.5: Building Location-aware Applications

You're reading from   Windows Phone 7.5: Building Location-aware Applications Build your first Windows Phone application with Location and Maps with this book and ebook.

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jul 2012
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781849687249
Length 148 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
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Table of Contents (11) Chapters Close

Windows Phone 7.5: Building Location-aware Applications
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
1. www.PacktPub.com
2. Preface
1. The Location-based World FREE CHAPTER 2. Using Location in Windows Phone 7.5 3. Using Maps in your Windows Phone App 4. Events App - PacktEvents 5. Location-aware News App — PacktNews

Life without GPS: Wi-Fi based location detection


There are alternate ways to detect location from mobile phone devices using their Wi-Fi MAC addresses (access points that connect to the internet) to determine/approximate the user's location.

Wi-Fi based positioning returns the approximate location, which may not be the exact latitude-longitude pair, but it does not provide a high level of precision.

Companies such as Skyhook Wireless and Google (with Google Latitude) were the first to provide this service. Microsoft launched a similar service under the "Managed Driving" name in July 2011, which uses cars driven around cities collecting Wi-Fi information broadcasted by public Wi-Fi access points. This coupled with location obtained from Windows mobile devices completes the data aggregation loop for Microsoft's own positioning database.

Skyhook Wireless location is pretty much public, with provisions for end users to add their location data to its database via a web interface, which is then available to all implementations of Skyhook wireless API users. Their database uses over 250 million Wi-Fi access points and cellular tower information for location analysis. Skyhook deploys data collection vehicles to conduct the access point survey, similarly to the Google Street View cars. The accuracy provided by Skyhook Wireless is 10 meters. To know more about Skyhook Wireless coverage go to:

http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/coverage.php

To get an idea on how Skyhook Wireless works:

  1. 1. Visit http://loki.com/findme.

  2. 2. Install the Java add-on it prompts.

  3. 3. Wait for a few seconds and you should see your location detected; if not you can submit your Wi-Fi Access Point to Skyhook Wireless at:

    http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/submit_ap.php

The following screenshot shows my location on loki.com:

You have been reading a chapter from
Windows Phone 7.5: Building Location-aware Applications
Published in: Jul 2012
Publisher: Packt
ISBN-13: 9781849687249
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