Hacker News Reader

Google Maps v3 (in beta) already utilizes the sensor variable - so I dont see how this is advantageous for a mobile website. As for desktop apps - Google also has an API function to determine your location based on your IP. But I dont think it utilizes Firefox's geo-location ability.

<em>What is the benefit of this API compared to whats already available?</em>

View on HN

To me, in the context of mobile websites, it provides an answer/option to providing localized content. Given you have/want localized content/filtering of course.

Where up until now, the first answer to 'You want GPS location?' would have been 'You'll need a native app.', it's now possible to just built a webapp instead.

At least for requests that came our way for building native apps for the iPhone, the most requested feature was 'ZOMG, make it localizable!', where the rest would be just pulling data from a server.

Now, my option is to just built a mobile webapp that can use the lat/lng without much fuss (still needs to degrade gracefully in case of older phones/browsers of course).

Out of curiosity, is there a reason why 'enableHighAccuracy' property isn't set to true for android?

you can set them in your code pass them in as options, only that won't have any effect yet on blackberry.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com