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Ask HN: Is (Desktop) HTML5 Geolocation worth anything?

7 points by jolan ↗ HN
Last night, I added HTML5 Geolocation to my 0 click weather site to provide an alternative to using the GeoIP database.

Chrome and Firefox give a location within 3-5 seconds but seem to just be using GeoIP data from Google's servers. They (and GeoIP) give my location as a town 10 miles away from me.

Safari 5 on Mac OS X is basically unusable. 95% of the time it can't return a location within 10 seconds which is already way too long for a webapp. When it does work, it gives my location within a 1 block radius which is wonderful. It appears to be doing a long 2 way exchange of wifi data to Apple; probably building upon the location service they use for the iPod Touch/wifi iPad.

What are your experiences? Do you think accurate location-based services will stay mobile only? Or will laptop/computer vendors eventually add GPS/A-GPS units?

7 comments

[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 27.7 ms ] thread
jolan
http://geoipweather.com/ is the site if you'd like to give comparing GeoIP vs HTML5 Geolocation a spin.
what
Kind of OT: is the Weather Channel's api any good? I was considering using http://www.worldweatheronline.com/weather-api.aspx so that I can query by lat/long.
jolan
Their API is good aside from going down for a couple hours every once in awhile.

I'm using yahoo's yql to get weather by lat/lon:

$req = "GET /v1/public/yql?q=";

$req .= urlencode("use 'http://github.com/yql/yql-tables/raw/master/weather/weather.... as we;select * from we where w in (select place.woeid from flickr.places where lat=\"$lat\" and lon=\"$lon\") and u='c'");

$data = $this->http_request("query.yahooapis.com ", $req);

EricButler
An app I wrote called FoursquareX (http://codebutler.github.com/foursquarex/) uses the OSX CoreLocation API (Skyhook) for geolocation. Here in Seattle it's amazingly (and somewhat horrifyingly) accurate.

As far as I know, Safari uses the same API, and always seems to work when I try it. The reliability really depends on the density of wireless networks nearby.

jolan
Neat, thank you! I suppose my problem may be that there's only a handful of wireless networks around me.

It'd be great if I could use my iPhone's location data on my desktop, hrm...

Mankhool
I think that accurate location-based services will soon be as important for lap/desk-top computers as for mobile devices. There exists not yet a single app to take advantage of the fact that "The Location is You" and that being able to connect anonymously with real people who are geographically where you need any kind of data from (whether they are mobile, at work or at home) will change the way we search for and discover information.