Accurate location for friend-finding apps is one thing–and another thing completely when you’re trying to hunt down a lost mobile phone. France-based Kijiten knows this, today announcing the incorporation of Skyhook Wireless’ hybrid positioning technology into its Where Is My Android (WIMA) application.
WIMA lets you track a lost or stolen Android phone on Google Maps even without an internet connection. You can also control certain features of the phone from WIMA’s website so, for instance, you can take pictures of the missing phone’s surroundings.
With the integration of Skyhook, WIMA now works indoors, locating a phone to within 10 to 20 meters. With traditional GPS, indoor positioning is hit or miss (usually miss with mobile phones), but Skyhook’s massive database of Wi-Fi access points and their respective locations gets around this problem.
Skyhook released an SDK for Android some time ago and many Android apps have integrated it to augment the GPS positioning offered by the Android SDK (ShopSavvy, Locale and What’s That? are a few examples) . Skyhook’s hybrid system mashes up GPS, Wi-Fi hotspots and cell tower locations to enable a highly accurate location fix.
That said, and on a completely unrelated endnote, Mozilla should have stayed with Skyhook for its Firefox 3.5 geolocation integration. Google’s Location Services aren’t shabby by any means, but they’re not nearly as accurate as what Skyhook offers!
