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Monday June 30, 2008
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 Skyhook Wireless is no newbie when it comes to location systems. The company has been building its Wi-Fi positioning system (WPS) for years by mapping the location of any and every hotspot and open wireless network it can find in major cities (8,000 to date in North America alone). It was the basis for their Loki location platform, which in its initial form was a browser add-on that would add location as another factor for travelers posting online at social networks or sharing sites. After all, it's nice to have your photos automatically geotagged. (WPS is also found in the Eye-Fi Explore Secure Digital Card that adds Wi-Fi to digital cameras.)
Today the company announced XPS 2.0, which it calls a "next-generation hybrid positioning system." Instead of just using Wi-Fi, XPS will also incorporate data from GPS satellites and cell phone towers. They've long stated that WPS works better in big cities, where the satellites and towers have a hard time triangulating your position. But combine all three and you may never, ever get lost again.
Skyhook pushes the service for handhelds. Many phones already use assisted GPS (the assist comes from the cell towers), but so far Skyhook hasn't announced any deals with big phone chip makers. That's what it needs to really go big with XPS 2.0, though it does have a new deal with Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip maker CSR, which is a start. WPS is available on the iPhone at the moment, but like with laptops, it is only useful for receiving location data if the iPhone is connected to a Wi-Fi network.
Skyhook says it now has mapped locations covering about 70 percent of the population, and they're in the process of mapping cities in Europe, Japan, Korea, and Australia, with China in the pipeline.
Posted By:
Eric Griffith
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