robotnic's diary
Firefox 3.5 GeolocationHi all
Firefox is now able to calculate the users geolocation. This is done with WIFI signals.
People are a bit scared about that ;-)
If you wanna see that with openstreetmap, go to
If you click at "Follow geolocation" the map center follows you if you walk around with your computer.
Have fun
Bernhard
Posted by robotnic at Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:49:14 +0000 in English (English)Comment from Biogenesis_ at Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:49:02 +0000
How on Earth would it use WiFi signals? Using the mobile phone network I could understand as you can triangulate if the phone is getting a signal from 3 or more towers, but WiFi has no geographic data attached to it.
Comment from Biogenesis_ at Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:52:07 +0000
Just did some research: it does use WiFi by comparing your IP to a database of known access points. So it only works if you're using a public AP which is in the database.
So really it's nothing special that couldn't be done before with netstat, traceroute, and an IP geolocation database.
Comment from HannesHH at Fri, 03 Jul 2009 06:12:13 +0000
Except that it is actually rather accurate. IP geolocation is not.
Comment from Ash Kyd at Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:15:32 +0000
From whawt I'm understanding, it uses all of the APs which are in range regardless of whether you're connected or not. All FF needs to do is compare the SSIDs in your area with the ones in the central database and it can triangulate a location from that.
Check out Skyhook, which seems to be the benchmark for this thing.
