LOST in a strange city with no GPS? Don’t worry. Wi-Fi hotspots can now tell you where you are.
Skyhook Wireless of Boston last week launched its urban Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS). It works in an analogous way to GPS, except that instead of using satellites as “landmarks”, Wi-Fi hotspots do the job.
The WPS database includes the position and unique network card code number for 1.5 million hotspots in 25 US cities. By monitoring several signals at once and using the database to perform a triangulation, WPS software works out your position.
The software runs on any Wi-Fi…
