Fireeagle is now public, but I have had an account for a while now. The idea of managing my location around a few web services was pretty interesting, but in order to manage something, you have to have it.
So how could I automatically update my location? I’ve tried some python scripts associated with MarcoPolo, but it would only update my three work areas (atm). The best solution was my pda to update my location. Although the TyTN has a GPS chip inside, it lacks a GPS antenna that makes it useless. I don’t want to carry (or even buy!) a bluetooth gps dongle with me, so I googled around to see if there was any solution with CellID triangulation. Google Maps Mobile does use this solution and it works pretty well. The problem is that they use a proprietary database of coordinates of GSM antennas. Navizon provides a software to emulate the GPS through CellID, but I didn’t like the free application they provided. What about an open database?
I found OpenCellID and CellSpotting (this last one with bluetooth and wifi devices too) but none of them was enough populated to be of any use.
Yesterday, Dale Lane posted about the same problem and today he released his solution: A Windows Mobile application to record the coordinates of the CellIDs. One day that I’ll take a tour around Coimbra (usually when I got visits), I’ll get a GPS, or my fathers old iPAQ hw6940 and populate the OpenCellID database with Coimbra’s cells. And you could do the same, specially if you have a GPS enabled phone.