CoreLocation
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Skyhook hones in on another partner, Samsung's Wave to geo-locate like no other
Skyhook Wireless seems to have located itself yet another major partner in its continued quest to pinpoint every single cellphone owner in the world. Sure, we're exaggerating a bit just to get you riled up, but there's no arguing the fact that the company fulfills "hundreds of millions of location requests every day across over 100 million handsets, netbooks and cameras." Or so it says, anyway. The latest company to buy into Skyhook's geo-locating promise -- which uses a mysterious combination of GPS, cellular and WiFi data to get a darn good lock on your current position in most any environment -- is Samsung, with the Bada-equipped Wave (S8500) first to tout it. As time goes on, even more Sammy phones will utilize Skyhook's technology, though we're left to wonder what exactly those models will be. Anyone up for educated guessing?
Motorola gives Google the boot, turns to Skyhook for location services
Well, this is... something. Out of seemingly nowhere, Motorola has just made the decision to shun Google's location services in favor of those from Skyhook, proudly becoming the "first Android device maker to abandon Google for its location services." According to the release -- which feels atypically jovial to us -- the device maker will marry Skyhook's GPS, WiFi and cellular location in the "vast majority" of its phone models, and since Skyhook will be baked into the OS, every single app can reap the benefits. Reportedly, developers are pretty stoked about the news, and it's pretty clear that Motorola is equally confident that Skyhook's location solution is the best on the market. Not like Google really needs any more frenemies right now, but hey -- you won't find us kvetching about anyone keeping the Big Shot on its toes.
Snow Leopard gets hip to CoreLocation and multitouch
We're in the Q1 2009, folks, and while we'd love to believe that the release of Snow Leopard is imminent, it looks like all we'll have to be sustained by is rumors and innuendo for the time being. According to "insiders" at, well, Apple Insider, the eagerly awaited operating system will be taking some cues from the iPhone, adding both CoreLocation and opening up the multitouch trackpad to third-party developers. Since MacBooks don't currently have GPS, we're guessing CoreLocation will be powered by Skyhook's WiFi-positioning service, but anything can happen down the line. With all the buzz over Google Latitude making its way onto all manner of devices, including the G1, select Blackberrys, and (someday!) the iPhone and iPod touch. With Mac sales being particularly laptop-heavy lately, it looks like location awareness is shaping up to be the must-have functionality of the coming year. Fabulous, darling. Fabulous.
Your iPhone probably isn't calling home, just might not want you up in its Core Location
It appears we can all breathe a big sigh of relief when it comes to our iPhone apps. According to John Gruber (Daring Fireball), that suspicious looking URL discovered in firmware 2.x which appeared to be set to deactivate applications may be something slightly more innocuous. According to Gruber -- via "an informed source at Apple" -- the "clbl" in the aforementioned URL stands for "Core Location Blacklist" and is actually used to stipulate that specific pieces of software don't have access to... you guessed it... Core Location. Gruber argues that this makes sense, as the API is covered by fairly strict rules in Apple's SDK. So it looks like (at a glance) this was much ado about nothing -- thanks to a little misinterpretation by Jonathan Zdziarski -- though we are considering getting hot under the collar that Apple reserves the right to deny Core Location access. How dare they?[Thanks, Paul]
