the wifi-based location service in firefox 3.5 and other browsers use google as a BSSID to lat/long translation service. The contents of the database are a mystery as to how they are updated and no user-facing edits appear to be possible. Other databases such as skyhook and wigle are not as open as I think would maximally benefit the public.
in a short amount of time, a service has been coded and setup at http://geomena.org. Its one configuration change in about:config to use it as your location provider. Every access point has a corresponding wiki page where a google maps marker can be used to adjust the location of the AP. I think this project has a huge potential to replace the existing wifi location databases, with the driving reasons being 1) to provide choices for a firefox("geode")/safari/etc compatible location service and to build an AP database that is creative commons in the style of wikipedia. The code that runs the project is all open source and the data will be available via HTTP queries or downloadable en-mass the way wikipedia provides a multi-gigabyte tarball of every story. Don --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ The Personal Telco Project - http://www.personaltelco.net/ Donate to PTP: http://www.personaltelco.net/donate Archives: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.network.wireless.portland.general/ Etiquette: http://www.personaltelco.net/index.cgi/MailingListEtiquette List information: http://lists.personaltelco.net To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
