Geolocation
Geolocation Determining your geographic position of a person, place or thing. In the internet era, this involves computers, routers, tablets, smartphones and GPS based systems
How Geolocation is Determined GPS (common in smartphones) IP Address (can me a little off as the location returned could be a proxy server, firewall, etc) WiFi – positions uses one or more Wifi access points to triangulate your location Cell Phone – older models may use cell phone towers
Geocoding Geocoding – converting addresses into geocordinates Reverse Geocoding – getting an address from geocoordinates
Mobile Applications Yelp was first on the scene in 2004. First social media to connect businesses with people Google Latitude Uses google maps to find your friends (if they allow it) Checkins (Gowalla, Foursquare, Facebook Places)
Things you can do with Geolocation Geomarketing – using an ip address to customize results Google for searches Facebook for advertising Text messaging to deliver store advertisements when you are out driving Crowdsourcing Yelp puts tips and reviews in database, marketing depts shape advertisements around this
Automatic Checkins s Checking-in is expected to become automatic in the future May get a warning on your phone
Geotagging Adding geospatial metadata to photographs, videos, text messages, tweets and webpages Twitter Flickr
Geo-applications Safety-tracking for children Taxi-service Devices to monitor your child’s location Taxi-service Send your location to a taxi-service & they send the nearest available taxi
Geolocation Examples Map of recent earthquakes around the world. Crisis in Darfur Appalachian Mountaintop Removal Tour Google Moon Google Mars
Privacy Social media companies must answer questions like: should a users location be made private like a bank account How do you share data between users Concept of privacy different for those born after 1990 Geotagging is a concern as it can make private information (your home address public)
You can make a map! Google Fusion Tables Google MyPlaces