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[Jan. 28th, 2008|11:44 am]
Nate Bunnyfield
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After I got my ipod touch yesterday, I became completely perplexed by how it could geolocate it's current position without any GPS or cell phone circuitry.
(No one I talked to all day seemed to share my curiosity on this.)
Then today, I got fed up with solving this riddle and just looked it up.
http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/
Looks like the heart of it is a massive, self-healing, wardriven database.
Accordingly, the time-to-first-fix is phenomenally faster than GPS. It also thrives indoors in well-populated areas where GPS might be unusable.
http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/coverage.php |
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![[User Picture]](https://l-userpic.livejournal.com/68653408/68943) | From:  six2
2008-01-28 06:39 pm (UTC)
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If only it was useful in the backcountry. It seems like paired with GPS it'd be great, getting a bearing faster and if designed correctly, aiding the GPS in knowing where in the sky to look.
Steve did a surprisingly in-depth explanation of how this works in the Macworld keynote.
If you haven't seen it, it's availible for download off Apple's main page. | |
