I’ve been using Google Latitude in the US to plot my movements, wondering how powerful this technology is and can be in the future – for example, the potential for the system to auto-generate way-points on Google Maps, with links to Facebook / Picasa photos and YouTube videos all uploaded from the mobile.
The accuracy and speed of GPS (roaming on AT&T) in the US is significantly better and faster respectively than on Dialog in Sri Lanka.
Without being connected to the GSM network and on WiFi (on an unknown but extremely fast service provider in my hotel), my Bold places me on the Hudson in Up-State New York but around 1Km from my actual location.
Around 2 minutes after connecting to 3G on AT&T, the location is spot on.
From around a 1km radius to around 10m or less.
The iPhone with assisted GPS may be faster at pinpointing location, but the Bold does the job well enough. Where the two phones differ is in the plethora of social networking GPS applications available for the iPhone versus the paucity of such programmes for the Bold. Though both devices can tag geo-location to photos taken on them, the iPhone wins hands down in the quality of applications that leverage its (more advanced) GPS functionality.
Whereas the eye candy and functionality of Brightkite.com on the iPhone is the Rolls Royce today of location aware social networking apps on a high end mobile, Google Latitude’s appeal lies in its simplicity, tie in with Google Maps (and in the future, the multimedia platforms and other location data on Google data centres) and the ability to run it on a broader range of devices. Plus, it’s taken the wind out of the sails from technologies like InSTEDD’s GeoChat, which still has an edge over Latitude with a superior feature set, but one that with just one sweep can be adopted by Google.
Intend to use these emergent technologies in the near future for some work in Sri Lanka, where street level information is non-existent, but GPS tagged mobile phone notes from across Sri Lanka may prompt micro-blogging citizen journalism with pithy insights not captured by mainstream media.
An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance.
I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002.
I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents.
Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs.
Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts.
I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.
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2 thoughts on “Mobile GPS for location tagged micro-blogging?”
ICT for Peacebuilding (#ICT4Peace) 
2 thoughts on “Mobile GPS for location tagged micro-blogging?”