Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Location awareness on the iPhone is here

Well, the widely reported rumors were true, and today Apple released the 1.1.3 firmware update for the iPhone which provides location awareness, using cell phone triangulation. My first quick test had a much better result than I expected:
iPhone showing the new "locate me" feature
I am at home in my loft in downtown Denver and the center of the cross hair is pretty much exactly where I would have placed it on the map - within a few tens of feet of my location. I will do some more tests shortly, but it passed the first test well!

Incidentally, the photo above was automatically uploaded to flickr using my new-ish Eye-Fi card, which is a pretty cool gadget in case you haven't come across it. It's an SD card which includes Wi-Fi, and once you've done some setup, it will immediately upload pictures wirelessly to flickr or other online photo sharing services. I don't always want to do that, but for situations like this where you just want to take a photo and get it online quickly and easily, it's great!

3 comments:

Aaron said...

But much more importantly, is your order in for the MacBook Air? And did you tick the box for the SSD?

Anonymous said...

Hi Peter - That's a coincidence, I'd just spotted a review of the eye.fi card in Technology Review before I landed on your blog?!

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19636/

Looks pretty cool and seems reasonably priced too - unlike that iPhone?!

Peter Batty said...

Aaron, haven't put in my order for the MacBook Air just yet, think I will wait and have a look at it in the local Apple Store before deciding!

And Rob, not sure if you think the iPhone is uncool, or cool but unreasonably priced, but as I've said on my blog before, I've been very pleased with it, and even more so now with this new location capability :).