The
time where GPS was used by inbuilt car navigation and some outdoor sporties only
is long time gone, today every high-end smartphone includes a GPS receiver,
slowly moving into mid-range mobile phones as well. And many smartphones either
come with a navigation software preloaded or, if nothing is available, in most
cases a version of Google Maps Mobile is available. Nevertheless, all the GPS
use is pretty much a one-way communication where a mobile phone receives the GPS
data of the current position, process it and shows it on a map. But users cannot
share this location in an easy and convenient Web 2.0-styled, way.
Let's say I'm in Paris, in the
Avenue Montaigne (fashion victims know why I selected this street) in front
of a shop. There is no easy and automated way to share the current location with
others. Sure, the mobile phone's GPS receiver knows that the current position is
<48.868407 / 2.308896> aka <48°
52' 6.27", +2° 18' 32.03>. But instead of being able to simply send a message
(E-Mail, SMS, MMS or whatever) to someone else, I have to send a message with
the real location. If the recipient wants to come to me, he or she has to enter
the address into the the mobile phone's GPS or mapping application again to see
how to come over.
Now imagine there would be a HTML tag like GPS:// and you could send your
current position as messages, straight from your GPS application which could
look like "GPS://48.868407/2.308896". The
recipient would receive the message, could click the GPS:// link which contains
your position and this could open the default GPS application on the phone to
show the location. That's what I call a hassle free use of today's technology.
Or, in the world of social networking, you could send your current position
to services like Twitter. Twitter could convert this information to a link which
can be opened on the PC in, lets say
Google Maps or
Live Maps
or any other application which might be the default GPS:// application (like
Google Earth).
But no, while we are living in the 21st Century, in some cases we have to
work with 21st Century technology like we are still in the 20th Century.
Cheers ~ Arne
