Find your way with WiFi
Next time you're in a city or mall and your GPS craps out on you, WiFi may spring to the rescue. A new bit of software called Place Lab uses triangulation (the same method used to track cellphone location) of signal strength from the three nearest hotspots (and a map of 26,000 base stations) to determine location. It's inventors at Intel's labs have so far only managed to get an accuracy of 20-30 meters but are eventually trying to equal GPS. It all goes according to plan this could mature into a viable alternative/complement to GPS. There's no extra equipment to buy and the software is free. Since we're pushing for ubiquitous WiFi coverage anyway it pays to wring as many uses out of it as possible.
