By Monica Alleven
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Skyhook Wireless is offering an update to its Loki product that uses Wi-Fi to determine location. The announcement was made at the O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference this week.
The product, Loki 2.0, is a free application that uses Skyhook's Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS). It supports Windows Mobile; support for Linux, Java and others will follow in the future.
Skyhook executives say the company spent the better part of the last year working with the geoweb community, including mobile location-based services (LBS) developers, to develop the new platform.
One of the key capabilities of Loki 2.0 is a Javascript API that allows any Web developer to location-enable their user experience by embedding a few lines of Javascript into their site. For example, local news or search content can change based on the location. "We're integrating the location and making it easy for content sites to use that location," says Skyhook CEO Ted Morgan. The API can be downloaded from the Loki Website, www.loki.com/developers.
Skyhook offers an alternative or complement to GPS, which requires communications with the satellites. The company tracked Wi-Fi access points across the country to develop its system. "We perform extremely well indoors and in urban settings," Morgan says. With coverage fairly extensive now in the United States and Canada, the company is looking to expand even more in Europe and Asia.
In March, Skyhook announced that it is powering the next-generation location-based plug-in for users of AOL's AIM service. The plug-in allows desktop AIM users to set and share their location with AIM buddies using Skyhook's system.
Last year, Loki was a category winner among navigation applications in the Navteq Global LBS Challenge.