Skyhook Wireless at 3GSM

Skyhook Wireless announced at 3GSM the collaboration with SiRF to create a single positioning system that combines the best of both GPS and Wi-Fi technologies. I could also get a glimpse in the upcoming Skyhook-enabled iRiver W10.

Jed Rice, Skyhook Wireless, at the Mobile Monday Global Peer Awards.

Relation to my thesis: Location sensor fusion is now happening in the industry. In the context of my research, the limitation of this approach is still at a network level to communicate the sensed position. While WiFi access points can be used for triangulation, an open access cannot be legally used to exchange data. In consequence, collaborative (and synchronous) location-aware application must uniquely rely on GSM.

At the Mobile Monday Global Peer Awards, Jed Rice announced that Skyhook had “scanned” Barcelona over the last past weeks. This is certainly an opportunities to play around with their APIs and prototype my upcoming experiments. Skyhook nurtures tight relations with the academic world and have been involved in facilitating pervasive and big games in partnership with Kevin Slavin and Frank Lantz’s company area/code. The same Keven Slavin who teaches urban computing at NYU with Adam Greenfield. Small world.

I love the happy contradictions of 3GSM. Ironically, once again this year, it was almost impossible to get decent WiFi connexion. I was also presented a path description to a restaurant drawn on by an LBS specialist on the back of his business card: