11–20 of 51 posts
To save you some reading, the crux of the hack is to consider a weak GPS (etc) signal not as a lack of data, but rather as a source of data in itself: the fact that the GPS signal is weak tells you something about the user's probable location.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"if you live in NYC or SF it's a lot more useful than it's been to me" It seems like services that bring people from vast geographic distances (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) have a longer life than services the geo-limit the audience. If you're in NYC, SF, or LA, geo-limited services work due to density, but you the threshold seems to dive after a couple of cities down the list. Color was the ultimate example for me on som…
It's the density that make Foursquare more popular in SF and NYC but rather the demographics of those areas, modern, high tech centers of urban sophistication. The fly over states are more concerned with the latest developments in pickups and gun racks to care much about checking in at the hottest espresso bar.
> Foursquare already had a massive database of check-ins — location information about the places its users most liked to go. And this data didn’t just include the place where someone had checked in. It showed how strong the GPS signal was at the time, how strong each surrounding Wi-Fi hotspot signal was, what local cell towers were nearby, and so on. Leveraging this data meant that Foursquare could still grab a good…
Foursquare is looking years ahead, it seems unlikely that they'd switch to a short term strategy. You have to assume that this technique will be adopted by Apple & Google at some point.
foursquare is still around? Hyperbole aside, I thought foursquare was an excellent idea - and if more businesses around me used it, I"d probably still be using it myself. (Reading the article, it seems that if you live in NYC or SF it's a lot more useful than it's been to me.) As it is, I think the last time I even looked at it was nearly six months ago.
> Foursquare already had a massive database of check-ins — location information about the places its users most liked to go. And this data didn’t just include the place where someone had checked in. It showed how strong the GPS signal was at the time, how strong each surrounding Wi-Fi hotspot signal was, what local cell towers were nearby, and so on. Leveraging this data meant that Foursquare could still grab a good…
> Licensing out this technology Foursquare is looking years ahead, it seems unlikely that they'd switch to a short term strategy. You have to assume that this technique will be adopted by Apple & Google at some point.
A couple of weeks ago I tried using an app that uses foursquare's API and I couldn't find 4-5 restaurants in London I wanted to tag/save (each time I was sitting at the restaurants in question). Instead I had to use Google Maps to save the location of these places, otherwise I couldn't of done so.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"if you live in NYC or SF it's a lot more useful than it's been to me" It seems like services that bring people from vast geographic distances (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) have a longer life than services the geo-limit the audience. If you're in NYC, SF, or LA, geo-limited services work due to density, but you the threshold seems to dive after a couple of cities down the list. Color was the ultimate example for me on som…
It's the density that make Foursquare more popular in SF and NYC but rather the demographics of those areas, modern, high tech centers of urban sophistication. The fly over states are more concerned with the latest developments in pickups and gun racks to care much about checking in at the hottest espresso bar.
I hope with that username this is a parody account because that line is by far one of the most ignorant, prejudice lines for HN.
To save you some reading, the crux of the hack is to consider a weak GPS (etc) signal not as a lack of data, but rather as a source of data in itself: the fact that the GPS signal is weak tells you something about the user's probable location.
If not, why does my Android phone ask me to turn on wi-fi to enhance location information?
Edit: To answer my own question, the Android source code for this used to be available. At the time, they passed the visible wi-fi SSIDs and the cell-tower IDs, but not the signal strength (they had it in both cases). Not sure why they didn't pass the strength. Maybe it made caching really hard; maybe it sufficed just to pass them in order; maybe it didn't make a big enough difference... http://www.netmite.com/android/mydroid/frameworks/base/locat...
To me, this actually raises more questions. It's so surprising to me that Google don't pass the signal strengths ("everyone knows" that is how triangulation works), that I'm thinking the real secret is that the signal strength isn't actually helpful. In other words, I'd bet Google tried what FourSquare have discovered, and rejected it. Or it's patented :-)