Transcript Geolocation

Geolocation
Serving Sociologists | Advancing Sociology | Promoting Sociology to Society
Geolocation
• Determining your geographic position of a
person, place or thing.
– In the internet era, this involves computers,
routers, tablets, smartphones and GPS based
systems
Serving Sociologists | Advancing Sociology | Promoting Sociology to Society
How Geolocation is Determined
• GPS (common in smartphones)
• IP Address (can me a little off as the location
returned could be a proxy server, firewall, etc)
• WiFi – positions uses one or more Wifi access
points to triangulate your location
• Cell Phone – older models may use cell phone
towers
Serving Sociologists | Advancing Sociology | Promoting Sociology to Society
Geocoding
• Geocoding – converting addresses into
geocordinates
• Reverse Geocoding – getting an address
from geocoordinates
Serving Sociologists | Advancing Sociology | Promoting Sociology to Society
Mobile Applications
• Yelp was first on the scene in 2004.
– First social media to connect businesses with
people
• Google Latitude
– Uses google maps to find your friends (if they allow
it)
• Checkins (Gowalla, Foursquare, Facebook
Places)
Serving Sociologists | Advancing Sociology | Promoting Sociology to Society
Things you can do with Geolocation
• Geomarketing – using an ip address to customize
results
– Google for searches
– Facebook for advertising
– Text messaging to deliver store advertisements when
you are out driving
• Crowdsourcing
– Yelp puts tips and reviews in database, marketing depts
shape advertisements around this
Serving Sociologists | Advancing Sociology | Promoting Sociology to Society
Automatic Checkins s
• Checking-in is expected to become
automatic in the future
– May get a warning on your phone
Serving Sociologists | Advancing Sociology | Promoting Sociology to Society
Geotagging
• Adding geospatial metadata to photographs,
videos, text messages, tweets and webpages
– Twitter
– Flickr
Serving Sociologists | Advancing Sociology | Promoting Sociology to Society
Geo-applications
• Safety-tracking for children
– Devices to monitor your child’s location
• Taxi-service
– Send your location to a taxi-service & they send
the nearest available taxi
Serving Sociologists | Advancing Sociology | Promoting Sociology to Society
Geolocation Examples
• Map of recent earthquakes around the
world.
• Crisis in Darfur
• Appalachian Mountaintop Removal Tour
• Google Moon
• Google Mars
Serving Sociologists | Advancing Sociology | Promoting Sociology to Society
Privacy
• Social media companies must answer
questions like: should a users location be made
private like a bank account
• How do you share data between users
• Concept of privacy different for those born
after 1990
• Geotagging is a concern as it can make private
information (your home address public)
Serving Sociologists | Advancing Sociology | Promoting Sociology to Society
You can make a map!
• Google Fusion Tables
• Google MyPlaces
Serving Sociologists | Advancing Sociology | Promoting Sociology to Society