Visser Labs

Location-aware web applications powered by Geode

This is very cool, location-aware web applications. In the very near future your next visit to Dominos, BoM or RetailMeNot will blow your mind away as the site requests your geographical location so that it can provide local content and recommendations.

Using the Geode test site - powered by The Food Finder - I allowed Geode to detect my exaction without any prior assistance and was rapidly presented with a map indicating my current location; down to the house number on my street in my suburb.

How Geode collected this data is beyond me as this article was published whilst I was connected to a home wireless router which is connected to an ADSL2+ modem with no external GPS or 3G devices available!

I’m both excited and terrified at the same time, let me explain why. Firstly checking the weather outside the office before lunch is going to be dead simple (open web page > provide geographical location > look at exact satellite imagery and conditions). My concern starts with the prompting for geographical location or lack thereof when the system is eventually circumvented, we’re looking at a brand new invasion of privacy, one with drastic concerns.

Beta releases of Firefox 3.1 include Geode capabilities, so do alpha releases of Mozilla’s mobile browser Fennec. Mozilla have made available a Firefox 3 compatible addon available for immediate download.

Find out more by reading Mozilla Lab’s article, Introducing Geode.