Mobile, IT, location based services
Locale Android App Gets Skyhook
Wade Roush 3/24/09
Boston’s Skyhook Wireless and two forty four a.m., the startup behind the Locale location-awareness application for the Google Android mobile operating system, announced today that Locale now includes Skyhook’s XPS hybrid location-finding software. Carter Jernigan of two forty four a.m. says Locale originally tapped into the native GPS and Wi-Fi-based location finding capabilities of Android phones such as the T-Mobile G1, but Google’s database of the locations of Wi-Fi networks was not nearly as extensive as Skyhook’s—hence the switch. “Often times I’ll walk into a building and Google’s service might give me a location within a 1-mile range, but Skyhook will be within 100 feet or less,” says Jernigan. Locale, originally developed by Jernigan and fellow MIT students as part of a class project for MIT professor Hal Abelson, was the winner of the $275,000 top prize in Google’s Android Developer Challenge in September, 2008. It’s available free at the Android Market, the mobile-accessible database of Android apps.
Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com, call him at (617) 252-7323, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/wroush.
