One of the best features of the iPhone is its location awareness. Using Cell tower/WiFi proximity and now GPS with the iPhone 3G, it knows where it is and can use this information in a growing number of location aware applications. In theory the iPod Touch can do the same using only wireless access point data, but unless you live in a city the service is pretty hit and miss. I live in a reasonably sized UK town and my iTouch can’t tell where it is.
I recently found an article on macosxhints that explains how WiFi is used to calculate a location. Skyhook Wireless are the company that provides WiFi location data to Apple. Skyhook have employees driving around populated areas in cars fitted with WiFi access point scanners and location recording equipment. Once an access point’s MAC address has been logged this goes into a database, and when your iTouch or iPhone sees that access point (and has a wireless data connection so it can access the database) it knows roughly where it is. For the iPod touch that means you need a WiFi connection and a mapped access point nearby.
Wireless coverage can be checked at a page on the Skyhook Wireless site. My house is around half a mile fom the nearest mapped access point so location awareness doesn’t work in my house. To help fix this Skyhook allow you to submit your own location and wireless access point MAC address for inclusion in the database. I did this on 11th July so will provide an update if the service starts working.
The problem when this service doesn’t work is that none of the location aware application will work. Why doesn’t the iTouch allow you to manually specify your location? It can’t be that difficult to add a prompt for user input after a failed attempt at determining the location. This would at least allow use of the service for finding directions and location details. I guess the focus is all on iPhone at the moment and Apple want us to buy that device, but with rumors of an iPod Touch V2 coming soon I hope Apple will make the service work for us townies.
Did Skyhook ever update your location when you submitted location and MAC address form?
They did, I think it took about 3 weeks for my details to be added. I can now use any of the location aware services from home.