Saturday, August 23, 2008

Two Ways to Find You

Google have released two new ways to find a web user's location without requiring any user input.

1. The AJAX API Property (dead link removed)
screen shot of where are you
The AJAX API Property retrieves an approximate location from a user's IP address. Google Blogoscoped has released an example Google Map that uses the AJAX API property to centre the map on the user's location and provide the results of an image search based on the user's location. 

2. The Gears Geolocation API (service now discontinued)
The Gears Geolocation API provides a way to get a more precise estimate of a user's location. On mobile devices with Gears installed, the Geolocation API can triangulate a location on nearby cell-phone masts to get a more accurate position fix.


1 comment:

Alrond said...

At the beginning, Google Geolocation API has determined the location for only Americans, for the other it has returned "unknown". Later this service was advanced, but it often does not show results even for developed countries as yet. For such cases, there is a simple javascript extension to the Google API, which gives back the country of user.