“Location, location, location” is a well known mantra for real estate agents. Context awareness is also a key success factor for mbile applications. Tomi Ahonen calls the mobile phone “the seventh mass media” and highlights seven unique properties the mobile has:
1 – The mobile phone is the first personal mass media
2 – The mobile is permanently carried media
3 – The mobile is the only always-on mass media
4 – Mobile is the only mass media with a built-in payment mechanism
5 – Mobile is only media available at the point of creative inspiration
6 – Mobile is only media with accurate audience measurement
7 – Mobile captures the social context of media consumption
In order to fully maximize the value of these unique properties you need location awareness. With the Sony Ericsson JP8.5, available in Sony Ericsson Yari and Sony Ericsson Aino, we’re adding more and better support for location based services.
For example:
- We now support the LMX format. When an LMX file appears in the device, a list with actions will be presented to the user (Show on map, Navigate to etc.) This can be used also by applications to get access to the map and navigation applications.
- We now support KML files in the browser. When you link a KML file (e.g., http://foo.com/… /companylocation.kml) the phone will launch Google Maps with the URL of the KML file as the inparameter so that the geographic data is displayed to the user.
- You can also use the Ericsson Labs vector maps API SDK to build applications with maps. It includes map data from TeleAtlas and OpenStreetMap.
- Ever since JP 7.3 it’s been possible to query the phone for network properties that can be used to determine the location of the device.
Consider this blog post an open call to our developer community to be as creative and innovative as we know you can be and come up with location based applications like something we’ve never seen before. As usual, you can submit your application over at the app store submit site. We’re looking forward to your contribution!
Erik Starck
Community Manager, Developer World
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/sonyericssondev!
I have a business where I provide a mobile meteorological service for aviators via the Swedish Luftfartsverket website.
What I would really like is the RSS reader (panel) on the X1i to support LBS in some way.
My RSS feed contains the GeoRSS namespace:
http://maps.google.com/?q=http://pilot.prismakonsult.se/wapmet/rss.asp to the RSS feed is LBS enabled.
Why not let the RSS reader add a header containing the lat/lon in the http request?
I support the query string today
http://pilot.prismakonsult.se/wapmet/rss.asp?lon=22.1&lat=65.5
* * *
In the “normal” browser environment, this is pretty much already fixed with client side scripting.
Use this link from Google Chrome, Firefox 3.5x or from any browser with Google Chrome plugin installed(ex. MS Pocket IE on the X1i)
http://pilot.prismakonsult.se/wapmet/xsl/geo.htm
This will get you the MET-report for an aerodrome near you.
/JoP
And what about browser on the phone? Do you support W3C Geolocation API?
Hi Dmitry and Peter,
Thank you for taking time to post your comments and inights, I will enagage our Location Based software teams to review your feedback.
This is the first time we have really done this. So I was interested to see comments, I hope we get more people involved too.
It is really valuable to me to start these dialogues and I intend to bring more disucssions like this outside the company to the experts like you both for comment.
Kind Regards,
Si.
I’m writing my masters thesis in computer science on the topic of location-based services. In order to test and develop my applications for sony-ericsson phones, it would be great if there was some way of measuring power consumption on the phone while the apps are running so that they can be optimized for lower energy-consumption. Does such utilities exist?
Regards
Esben: hi, yes you can use JSR 256, the Sensor API. See this doc:
http://developer.sonyericsson.com/community/docs/DOC-2956