Patent suggests location-based social networking for iPhone
Imagine you and a friend are on a phone call, and both of you own iPhones. You're trying to meet up somewhere downtown in a city neither of you know very well, so the best answer you can give your friend when he asks, "Where are you now?" is "Uhhh..." followed by several seconds of silence. It's already possible to share your location using the Maps app on the iPhone -- find your current location, tap on the blue marker on the map, tap "Share Location," and then send it to your friend either as an e-mail or MMS. Then your friend receives the e-mail or MMS with your location, opens it in Maps, and has the option of finding directions to your location from his current location.If that sounds like a lot of unnecessarily complex steps to answer the simple question of "Where are you," you're in luck, because according to a new patent application, Apple agrees with you. By putting "Request location info" and "Release location info" buttons on the call screen in the Phone app, it would be possible to share your location or request someone else's with a single button press. The same process applies -- the iPhone polls its GPS to find out where you are, then transmits that info to your friend's iPhone -- but instead of having to jump through all the hoops yourself, the OS handles it for you in the background. Once your phone receives a request for location info it comes up in a notification, probably very similar to the notifications location-based apps already use when they request permission to use location data. If you agree to release your location data to the caller, it's transmitted in a fully encrypted signal to the caller's iPhone. Your location data would then show up on your friend's iPhone, complete with the option to find directions.
Some other interesting information has come out of this patent application. In describing the type of call this feature could be applied to, Apple says, "Note that the reference to 'voice call' here is not limited to a conventional, sound-only conversation. It may also include video of the two users, synchronized with their audio. The call may be a cellular network telephone call that has been initiated by either user." This shows further evidence that Apple is researching the possibility of including video conferencing capabilities in a future iteration of the iPhone.
Additionally, Apple seems to be exploring greater location-awareness options for its own apps, including weather and a Yellow Pages app. The patent also refers to several apps as "Widgets" -- Calculator, Alarm Clock, and Dictionary all fall under an application module subset referred to as "Widget Modules." There's two possibilities here: either these apps are still being referred to as widgets because their basic interfaces grew out of OS X's Dashboard Widgets (an explanation I've heard a few times before), or Apple is looking toward bringing Dashboard-style functionality to a future version of the iPhone OS, with smaller apps like Calculator and Alarm Clock being implemented as "widgets" rather than standalone apps. This has been offered as one possible explanation for the mysterious absence of several of Apple's apps from the iPad.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Farris said 2:25AM on 2-07-2010
... something like Loopt, but built in? I wonder what the Loopt folks will think of this.
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MC SE7EN said 2:33AM on 2-07-2010
I'm pretty sure the other built-in apps were just on the second screen of the iPad in the demo and the pics. I thought I saw them when Steve held it up and his hand moved the screen over (yeah, they could have been App Store apps, but for some reason, I'm pretty sure they weren't.)
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Paul said 3:49AM on 2-07-2010
Does the iPhone screen capture above have location services or is it just a fluke that its location is about 500 metres down the road from?
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Chris Rawson said 1:32PM on 2-07-2010
I used a different location than my current location. For some reason, I didn't think broadcasting my home address to the internet was a good idea.
Cronick said 4:00AM on 2-07-2010
This is a great idea. I often get lost, especially on $2 pitcher-of-beer night at the Midway Biker Bar and people have to come find me. No more chasing cars on the highway with a baseball bat at 3 in the morning for me. No siree!
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mack said 5:43AM on 2-07-2010
This is an interesting insight into a possible future extension of built-in iPhone functionality, but how can anyone seriously consider this idea something that can be patented? There are hundreds of location sharing communications applications already in the market.
It just points to how ridiculous the whole patent mess has become. A system originally designed to protect the poor inventor against commercial exploitation is now the tool of big businesses and clever lawyers.
Nowadays patents are wielded as financial weapons by mega-rich organisations who receive licence fees for doing nothing and are well rewarded despite their inability to bring useful products to market. These wealthy companies take every opportunity to gouge into each other's profits in long drawn out legal disputes that act against the very progress and innovation that patents are supposed to foster.
We desperately need to rethink the patent process to rule out the mentality of greed that seeks to copyright the human DNA sequence or collect licence fees from the bleeding obvious. Otherwise before too long some bright spark will think its an original idea to patent breathing or walking:
"In this patent application we will show how placing one foot in front of the other can be an effective means of making forward progress for humans in an upright position..."
I'm not suggesting Apple is necessarily entirely at fault here. I'm proposing that the whole patent system is rotten and open to abuse.
For all I know Apple may not be intending to exercise any of its patents. It may be simply seeking to protect itself so that it is able to countersue whenever the folks at Nokia run out of energy and ideas and fall back on the lazy person's excuse of patent infringement to cover for their increasingly obsolescent products and dwindling market share.
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bill said 7:45AM on 2-07-2010
It's a great idea, but may be limited by service area of the mobile provider. Turning on Data Roaming is a scary thought. It just points to the fact that the providers need to rethink their packages.
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Justin said 10:39AM on 2-07-2010
Who said anything about data roaming? Just b/c a city is unfamiliar or you need to share location data doesn't mean you're in another country.
Timm said 10:23AM on 2-07-2010
Wowsers! Next thing you know they'll add an accuracy setting in the event that you don't want someone to know EXACTLY where you are standing...
Nothing about this feature is very ingenious or "magical." Other apps have been sharing this info for a long time now. Apple is finally adding functionality that should have been built-in in the first place.
It surprises me that this wasn't added when the GPS functionality was added to the iPhone line.
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Dave said 10:42AM on 2-07-2010
Surprise no one has mentioned Google Latitude here. You can see your friends location real time as well as your own on a Google Map (as long as they are logged into the Google Latitude web page as well at the same time). Works great with the iPhone.
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joseph le brech said 12:21PM on 2-07-2010
Think of pictochat on nds, but this time you can find people to actually play the games with you via a browser.
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loup407 said 12:38PM on 2-07-2010
I like the "internet tethering"...nice tease for those of us stuck with AT&T.
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Steve said 1:25PM on 2-07-2010
My sincerest condolences at being stuck in Palmerston North
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Luke Vink said 3:25PM on 2-07-2010
Go new zealand. Keep on appearing randomly in screenshots.... and some major films with giant blue aliens and small men with hairy feet.
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Brent said 12:07AM on 2-08-2010
Next headline: Nokia sues Apple again.
I just looked on my Nokia N97 and there was a button that said "Share Location" and you can use it to share your location.
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Ryan said 10:00AM on 2-08-2010
Awesome... now can we please get Latitude?
...Oh right... Steve and Eric hate each other....
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