Which is kind of the point. Chromebooks (and laptops) are designed to be taken on the road and used away from home. So perhaps not as portable as a CleverPhone but still portable. So it ought to be able to take part in all the location stuff, and especially all Google's location stuff. Even if there's no GPS, wifi-cell tower location is good enough for most purposes.
Interesting, what advantages do you think it could give Chromebooks? Cost and battery life will be affected.
Julian Bond - 2013-12-05 16:46:09+0000 - Updated: 2013-12-05 16:49:17+0000
+Mark Dodsworth Well reverse the order of my questions. Take the Chromebook on the road to a cafe, airport, motel, business trip or just into the office. Now go and check in to G+, make a geo-located G+ post, geo-located facebook post, geo-located Tweet, Check in to Foursquare, Centre a Google map on you, get directions from where you are to tonight's restaurant, check out Google Local, Check Nearby G+ Posts, etc etc. There's obviously loads of location aware stuff available now.
So the first problem is that not all of that is available in the Chrome Browser and hence in your Chromebook. It damn well should be! One of the good things about the Chromebook series is that it's pushing the idea that everything should "just work" in the browser, regardless of what machine the browser is running on. There shouldn't be any differences in function just because it's not a cleverphone or tablet. And frankly since a Netbook or the small Chromebooks are pretty much tablets with a keyboard, there's really no reason why the use cases should be seen as being much different.[1]
And the second problem is that telling the apps where the Chromebook currently is may not be very accurate. Wifi, Cell phone tower is often good enough and accurate to 1-500 metres or so. But if it has to fall back to IP address it can be 5, 50 even 500 kilometers out which is clearly not good enough. And the solution to that is to just use GPS. It works!
Like Bluetooth, GPS hardware is so cheap now that it could be just included in the Netbook/Chromebook. And like Bluetooth, you may choose to turn it off to save battery power when it's not needed.
[1]Oops. Did I just open a big can of worms there? Tablets with add on keyboards. Chromebooks with touch screens. They're the same category of device aren't they, just with a different set of starting and bundled options.
So the first problem is that not all of that is available in the Chrome Browser and hence in your Chromebook. It damn well should be! One of the good things about the Chromebook series is that it's pushing the idea that everything should "just work" in the browser, regardless of what machine the browser is running on. There shouldn't be any differences in function just because it's not a cleverphone or tablet. And frankly since a Netbook or the small Chromebooks are pretty much tablets with a keyboard, there's really no reason why the use cases should be seen as being much different.[1]
And the second problem is that telling the apps where the Chromebook currently is may not be very accurate. Wifi, Cell phone tower is often good enough and accurate to 1-500 metres or so. But if it has to fall back to IP address it can be 5, 50 even 500 kilometers out which is clearly not good enough. And the solution to that is to just use GPS. It works!
Like Bluetooth, GPS hardware is so cheap now that it could be just included in the Netbook/Chromebook. And like Bluetooth, you may choose to turn it off to save battery power when it's not needed.
[1]Oops. Did I just open a big can of worms there? Tablets with add on keyboards. Chromebooks with touch screens. They're the same category of device aren't they, just with a different set of starting and bundled options.