Posted: May 10th, 2005 | No Comments »
Via SiliconValley.com, a Redwood City start-up is prototyping a system that uses TV signal to do positioning. The goal is to embed it in mobile phones. I would work more or less the same way as other radio frequency positioning:
The engineers created a radio receiver chip that could zero in on the TV signal and get the synchronization information. Using precision timing, they figure out how far a TV signal travels before it is picked up by a device equipped with Rosum chips. Next, they compare the measurements against other data that they collect with their own listening stations and then finally calculate the device’s position. The Rosum engineers call this process “multilateration,” which is akin to navigational triangulation.
Posted: May 7th, 2005 | No Comments »
Mates is a location-based social networking systemdeveloped at the University of Michigan and aimed at introducing and connecting people based on both their physical location and other properties they might have in common (classmates, neighboors, …). Positioning is done via GPS, WiFi and self positioning. I would love to see how their WiFi positioning works or how they mix these technologies. The IM application (based on GAIM) seems to rely on pre-defined locations (and not on position + map).
The most intersting aspect of this project is that they provided an open WSDL, so any type of clients could rely on the Mates relationship engine.
Posted: May 6th, 2005 | No Comments »
Cisco has announced a wireless tracking appliance designed to allow organisations to monitor the location of devices – or people – within a wireless local area network. The Cisco 2700 Series Wireless Location Appliance, scheduled to ship in June 2005, uses technology acquired when Cisco bought wireless switch start-up Airespace earlier this year.
(via The Register)
Funny to see that Cisco tailored this kit uniquely towards tracking things and people in hospitals and factories.
Posted: May 6th, 2005 | No Comments »
Bonjour (formerly known as RendezVous) is now available for Windows. It will be interesting to see if there will be any unpredicted usage. There is an Bonjour SDK available for Windows also now.
