Four years ago, a little-known developer named Niantic created Ingress. It was a location-based mobile game that set the stage for their next big game, Pokémon Go. Both are extremely fun and get you out of the house, but with very different flavours. Here's how Niantic's two hits compare.
Australian consumers should be allowed to use technologies like VPNs and proxies to defeat the efforts of companies like Netflix and HBO that stop them from accessing digital content libraries from other countries. That's the thrust of a Productivity Commission draft report into overhauling Australia's existing copyright laws that has just been released.
YouTube is notorious for having content blocked by region due to the variety of licensing schemes a content provider can put up. Unblock YouTube can get around this with a simple URL paste.
iOS: Shopping always feels more fun when you find a bargain. CloseBuys uses geolocation to identify goods on sale near where you are right now.
From the I-didn't-know-this but it's quite cool department: if you enter a search in a specific Google country site (such as google.com.au) and Chrome deduces that you're actually somewhere else, it will ask if you want the search re-routed to the local domain instead.
A new feature called My Places began showing up in Google Maps today, and it acts as a collection hub for all the locations a user has starred, rated or reviewed. It also lists all saved maps, which used to fall under the My Maps section. In case you're wondering, My Maps has been lumped under My Places.
iPhone: Apple's got a great app that rings or tracks your lost iPhone using its location data, but you can only use it if you've shelled out $119 a year for Apple's lame-duck MobileMe service. TekTrak does the same thing for $6.
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Android/iOS/Windows Mobile: If your main objection to location sharing services is that you don't want to share your location all the time, and when you do you'd like easy and private sharing, Glympse is a private and real-time location sharing tool.
Laptops are lighter and more powerful than ever; they're also easier to steal. Luckily, a genuinely versatile and powerful track-and-recover applications is also free. Here's how Prey works, and how it could save you a month's rent in new laptop cost.
Android only: The Android Market isn't much help at finding and recommending apps. Appazaar aims to work like iTunes' Genius engine for Android, but better. It recommends apps based not only on what you use, but where you're located.
Google's location history tracking was already pretty neat, if you didn't mind the potentially creepy data sharing. Its recent Dashboard update makes it a lot more useful and interesting, batching your travels together and showing your distance to, say, the moon.
Chrome only: If the new geo-locating features that just hit the dev channel builds of Google Chrome make your privacy-conscious self a little worried, you can disable them with a simple change.
GPS-enabled smartphones make it easy to get directions, weather, and many more location-based services since they automatically know where you are. With Geosense, you can bring this functionality to any Windows 7 computer even if it doesn't have a GPS chip.
There are already plans in place to restrict mobile access for 000 time wasters, but is technology being used to maximum effect to help locate genuine emergencies?
While mobile users have been able to rely on Google Maps to pinpoint their locations for some time, starting today Google Chrome 2.0 and Mozilla FireFox 3.5 users will also be able to locate their positions from their browsers.
If the new Geo-locating features in the upcoming Firefox 3.5 release just don't jive with your privacy-conscious self, you can disable them easily with a simple tweak.
The YouTube development team has released a geolocation webapp that integrates Google Maps, YouTube, and Google Gears' geolocation features to show you YouTube videos uploaded by users near you. The idea is great in theory, but unfortunately Google Gears came no where close to finding my actual location (especially compared to Geode's accuracy)—which meant I had to pretend I live in 70 miles to the west (and near Grammy-nominated singer Eric Benet).
We're convinced that location-aware hardware and software will change your life, and now Microsoft seems to feel the same way: Windows 7 will officially include geo-location tools. Unfortunately the service—which is disabled by default—currently provides users with absolutely no control over which apps can use your location. Sounds like an Orwellian's worst nightmare.
