geolocation

"The geolocation feature is now available in Chrome 5.0.375.25 (Official Build 45690)."

With those words, posted Thursday at the bottom of a Chrome issue tracker item, the developer version of Google's browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux catches up to Firefox with one important new component of the Web. That component, geolocation, lets a browser tell a Web site the location of a person's computer once the person has given permission. (See illustration below.)

It's a handy feature, most notably for mapping or including your location in some message where it's … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--Nestled inside the badges that were handed to attendees at Facebook's F8 developer conference here on Wednesday were what looked like little paper dog tags emblazoned with Facebook's logo. These are part of something calls "Facebook Presence," which at this point is little more than a gimmick for the hordes of techies here.

But it calls up the possibility that when Facebook finally makes a concrete move into the hot "geolocation" space, it may look something like this.

Here's how the RFID-enabled "Presence" works. The tokens contains a number, which … Read more

The HTC Droid Incredible is available for pre-order, and no lie, we drooled a little bit over it. We also uncover the Google conspiracy to rid the world of http://. But the weirdest of all was our discussion of the dramatic weekend rumor mill involving the purported iPhone 4G found on a bar in either San Jose or Redwood City. Or maybe it's a fake.

HTC Droid Incredible solves the Verizon Wireless tethering conundrum http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=33207 … Read more

After a year and a half, Chrome has come a long way toward matching the features of better-established browsers. Now, with version 5 coming together, a lot of Google's work focuses on advancing the state of the browser art.

The new Chrome 5 is available in beta now for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, not that most Chrome users will ever have to know the version number if Google has anything to do with it. Chrome versions are called "milestones"--fleeting waypoints along an unfinished journey to a better browser. But what exactly will moving into … Read more

Looks like Apple may be the latest to succumb to the geomadness gripping the mobile-development space right now.

Patently Apple dug up an Apple patent application Thursday for a social-networking service called iGroups that uses geographic location data to connect iPhone and other mobile-device users.

iGroups would let friend groups attending an event to stay in touch and share information in real time. If that sounds familiar it's because similar geolocation apps that accomplish the same thing are popping up more frequently--apps like Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, Loopt, and others. According to the patent, iGroups is a bit different underneath, … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Disco lights. Bubble machines. Big-name DJs. Ashton Kutcher.

Those are just a smattering of the things you would have seen on Monday night in downtown Austin, Texas, where two of the most talked-about parties of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) were happening simultaneously. These would be, of course, the respective parties thrown by Foursquare and Gowalla, two start-ups offering very similar "geolocation" services. And at SXSWi, where everyone wants to know where everyone else is in instant real-time, this kind of social-networking app is going to be big.

Most people expected that SXSWi would see … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--It would be very clear to an uninitiated bystander at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) this week that the annual nerdstravaganza is full of people talking about a zillion location-based social-networking applications.

There are the various campaigns and tie-ins for rival check-in services Foursquare and Gowalla, the local-deals promo from iPhone app Whrrl, and the litany of "where is everyone?" mash-ups perhaps best personified by Vicarious.ly, an uber-aggregator of Foursquare and Gowalla check-ins from Austin as well as just about every other sort of social-media updates coming out of SXSWi. Developed by SimpleGeo, another … Read more

With the days leading up to this year's South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) turning into hours, all eyes are on two scrappy rival start-ups, Foursquare and Gowalla, which both want to use the Austin, Texas digital-culture bash as a strategic playing field. They're the two most talked about start-ups in location-based social networking--using GPS on a mobile device to "check in" to places around you and announce it to your friends--and neither company wants to lose out to the other.

But in the real geolocation wars, these start-ups may be little more than toy soldiers. … Read more

"We're going to be giving away, literally, hundreds of tacos," Josh Williams, founder of mobile networking start-up Gowalla, said to CNET in an interview last week about his company's plans for the annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi), which runs March 12-16 in Austin, Texas.

"We're bringing, like, playground-style balls and chalk," said Dennis Crowley, the co-founder of Gowalla rival Foursquare. "You'll be able to win prizes at ad-hoc foursquare games that you see around the convention center."

Eighteen months ago, neither Gowalla nor Foursquare existed. But their similar &… Read more