Location-aware.

One of the biggest issues with XP and Vista in the web2.0 world is that the operating system isn’t sensor-aware. GPS hardware remains as an unidentified com port and applications wanting to access it require user configuration. In Windows 7 that changes to make geo-aware apps a real possibility. It is possible that Nokia could deliver an interesting maps and social networking application through OVI on Windows 7. In addition to HD content, maybe Nokia will be selling navigation and maps through Ovi.

UMPC Portal - Nokia Booklet. Specification Update. Price. Thoughts on Battery life / Performance - August 25, 2009

Via Engadget, which reports "The Booklet will boast a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530, and will reportedly boast a 120GB HDD, plus integrated 3G, a swappable SIM card, A-GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi."

This is not really well supported or exposed in the web interface, and most people don't know that you can use near:location as a Twitter search parameter, e.g. near:ottawa or near:45.44,-75.62

There are ways you can declare location changes in a particular tweet, e.g. the l: syntax, a Twitter nanoformat, but these are only supported by a few tools, not by Twitter directly.

The applications that I have seen with the most support for location information are smartphone Twitter clients, they typically have an icon to let you set your profile location to the current location (as determined by the phone), and some will let you do "nearby" searches based on your current location.

Providing location information for web apps has been difficult in the past because there was no API to ask the web browser where it was, but now geolocation is supported in Firefox, Safari, in Google Gears, and on various platforms.  This is being enabled by a standard W3C Geolocation API.

Now Twitter has announced the rather more logical option of having a location attached to each tweet, rather than globally to your entire account.  This is another step in adding more metadata attached to the raw 140 characters of a tweet.  This will make possible lots of interesting tools, one obvious one being to display all of the tweets posted at a particular location.

This does of course have privacy implications - and I hope that the system will provide per-tweet opt-in to sharing of location, rather than a global opt-out.  We need systems that understand you may want different granularity of sharing depending on your location - a typical example is that you may want to share your exact location when you're at a pub downtown so that friends can meet you, but you may want to share only city-level location or no info at all when you're at home.

There are already examples showing up of embedded location giving away rather more information than someone probably intended, such as a thief whose photo of stolen goods has embedded EXIF-GPS (via @jblyberg).

The official word from Twitter is

We're gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won't be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information.

from Twitter blog - Location, Location, Location - August 20, 2009

Widely reported, e.g. PC World, New York Times, CNet.

via Dean Giustini (@giustini)

Asus Eee PC 1005HA-PU1X netbook, Internet Tethering to iPhone 3GS over Bluetooth, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

iPhone 3GS on Rogers 3G network, in Ottawa.

This is the fastest download result I've seen so far, over 3Mbps down:

Download: 3216 kbps
Upload: 86 kbps
Ping: 261 ms

This is a more typical result:

Download: 1639 kbps
Upload: 147 kbps
Ping: 314 ms

If you're gathering data, I recommend testing multiple times, as the results can vary quite widely from test to test.

When you visit a location-aware website, Firefox will ask you if you want to share your location.

If you consent, Firefox gathers information about nearby wireless access points and your computer’s IP address. Then Firefox sends this information to the default geolocation service provider, Google Location Services, to get an estimate of your location. That location estimate is then shared with the requesting website.

Mozilla: Location-Aware Browsing

via The Map Room

I wonder how it finds out about nearby WAPs? Is Firefox 3.5 effectively a wifi scanner now?

The Google Code Blog gives more background

With recent launches like Google Latitude and Google Toolbar with My Location, it's clear we think location-based services are useful and fun! We also want developers everywhere to be able to use location to build cool new features and applications.

I'm pleased to announce that Google's Location Service (the same service which powers the My Location feature in many Google products), is now the default location provider in Mozilla Firefox 3.5 beta 4. This means that developers can, with users' permission, gain access to their approximate location without requiring any additional plug-ins or setting configurations. It just works!

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 beta 4 uses the W3C geolocation API, a standard being adopted by many major browsers, so you won't have to branch code in the future.

Google Location Services now in Mozilla Firefox - April 30, 2009

In a quick Google search, I didn't find any page specifically on "Google Location Service" itself.