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21 October 2008, 11:46

Google's Gears on laptops gets Wi-Fi based geolocation

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Google has announced the addition of Wi-Fi based geolocation in Gears. Earlier this year, Google incorporated a Geolocation API in Gears which could obtain location based information from GPS devices. With the new enhancement and using Wi-Fi information, specifically local access point information, Gears can locate a user within 200 metres which is sufficient for many locality based search services. Google pointed to Lastminute.com's Radar application which uses Gears to identify local hotels and ITN's Google Earth mashup which identifies news stories in the local area.

Gears is available for Chrome, Safari, Firefox and, according to the announcement, Opera soon. Gears is also built into Android's web browser. A new simplified version of the W3C Geolocation API was also submitted by Google to the W3C before the announcement of Wi-Fi based geolocation.

(djwm)

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