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Building a location based iPhone App: from idea to my first users

missionlab.posterous.com

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Re: Building a location based iPhone App: from idea to my first users

#5
does anyone know why the default location is cupertino in the ios simulator? i want to think it's because of speed (why take time to find your location during each run?), but i'm starting to wonder if it's because the difficulty in getting an accurate location lock on a wifi network for example.

i've found that detecting geolocation on a non-mobile device such as a laptop (even using the latest w3c navigator.geolocation standard) is pretty unreliable. it took me some searching to figure out that the function has an infinite timeout by default, which makes debugging interesting. sometimes just doesn't get the location at all. a professor had expressed the same sentiments in more length here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3397585/navigator-geoloca...

Re: Building a location based iPhone App: from idea to my first users

#8
post #5

does anyone know why the default location is cupertino in the ios simulator? i want to think it's because of speed (why take time to find your location during each run?), but i'm starting to wonder if it's because the difficulty in getting an accurate location lock on a wifi network for example. i've found that detecting geolocation on a non-mobile device such as a laptop (even using the latest w3c navigator.geolocat…

I'm sure the reasons are just a) they wanted to hard-code a location for the simulator, since it doesn't have a GPS, and b) Apple is located in Cupertino.

For my GPS-app, we have code to simulate fake GPS readings on the simulator.

Re: Building a location based iPhone App: from idea to my first users

#9
I think this is a great idea. I would add one feature: send a 2nd text message when you're within 1 mile. (Or whatever distance you choose.) My girlfriend wants me to notify her before I actually get to her apartment. Having my smartphone do this for me automatically would be awesome! (This way I don't need to use my phone while I'm driving.)
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