Improve iPhone/touch location mapping database

Apr 11, '08 07:30:04AM

Contributed by: djol

The 'Find Me' location feature in Google Maps on the iPhone and iPod touch is great, but if you are in an area with wireless access points that have yet to be mapped by Skyhook (the company that provides the location-acces point data for Apple), your shown location will rely upon cellphone tower position alone and so be far less accurate.

Recently, Jazzdogg on the Australian MacTalk forum contacted Skyhook with regard to manually submitting the longitude/latitude of his own access point to improve the location feature. In response, Skyhook created a form that allows anyone to do exactly that. Whether to improve the accuracy of your iPhone's pseudo-GPS when at work or home, or to map out access points about town, you can now supplement Skyhook's database manually without having to wait for Skyhook to map your community. This is great for those of us outside of the US and UK where there is no access point-location data, or even those in less populated areas of the US and Europe where Skyhook have yet to map.

By using the iPhone app Stumbler to directly show the MAC addresses in your vicinity, you could even do this direct from your (jailbroken) iPhone or iPod touch.

Help improve the location feature for all iPhone and iPod touch users by submitting your own access point MAC address and location. Personally I feel the privacy issues are pretty minor, as my access point MAC address is already being freely broadcast, and thus simultaneously giving its general location -- but this may be something you need to consider before you submit your own. (As far as I can see though, there is no direct public exposure to the MAC-location data.)

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