Opera has released a browser build today with Geolocation API support via Skyhook Wireless’ Loki service. This means that Opera users, whether sitting at home on the desktop computer or out and about on their mobile phones, can share their location with any website enabling the provided information to be organized around where they are.
For instance, conduct a product search and you’re more likely to see results pertaining to retailers near your location. Those pesky ads you’re forced to look at will be more relevant, promoting businesses near you. And even social network content can be organized based on what friends are nearby.
This may sound like nothing new, but remember that usually geolocation is built into applications. By enabling Skyhook location through the W3C Geolocation API, the same sort of friend-finding, product-finding, or local search functions available via popular iPhone and Android apps will be available anywhere you use the Opera browser.
It’s great for web developers as well. By adding a few lines of JavaScript code provided by Skyhook’s Loki location platform to a web site, Opera browsers will recognize it and adjust to provide locally contextual content to the visitor. For instance, if you visit a Starbucks web site with the Skyhook code embedded, you might be returned a map of nearby Starbucks locations or coupons for a location near you.
Taking privacy into consideration, this build requires you to approve location sharing every time you visit a web site that wants it. Brightkite is a good example to try out. I’m sure in a final release Opera would find a way to let users opt-in one time for each browsing session rather than having an annoying popup appear every time you visit a new site.
Mozilla also supports the W3C Geolocation API with its Firefox browser though it’s not as nicely integrated as Opera’s. Skyhook does provide the location information for the Geode plug-in available for Firefox, but in the latest build, application developers are responsible for deriving location via the API.
In the next couple of years, browser-based geolocation will become ubiquitous. It’s the next logical step in the growing location-based services market as it will eliminate the need for developers to spend time and money implementing location directly into applications. If every browser supported location, a small snippet of code would be the only requirement to code a geo-aware app. And privacy concerns aside, widespread geo-awareness means more relevant and useful information for the people that use applications, search engines, email and a plethora of other popular technologies. That’s a good thing in my opinion.
You can download the Opera Gogi build here, and you’ll also need an SVCSetup application if you use Windows XP.
