whyPhone?

[Beep]

It's not that great; it shows what masts you've been using (so you could triangulate I suppose) but It's put me in fields 20 miles away!

[Inspector Sands]

It's not that great; it shows what masts you've been using (so you could triangulate I suppose) but It's put me in fields 20 miles away!

I don't think you'd be able to triangulate retrospectively, like all radio transmission it's only possible when you're still transmitting. It's cell data so I suppose it could be 20 miles out, how big are the cells of the older networks: Vodaphone and o2? (these have lower frequency bands therefore each cell site is bigger). It's not unlikely that your phone hooks onto a cell mast 20 miles away, if you look at the video on the second link I posted you'll see the oddities of which masts were being received and logged while on a train. It seems it has also been logging Wifi access point locations, which are more accurate.

It seems lots of people are getting rogue locations, many in Las Vegas for some reason (although there was a case I heard about recently whereby someone in New York had the location of Monaco on their phone as is was getting confused by the mobile network on a docked ship which had either just come from or was registered there!)

[Pete]

Being bored on a train the other day I decided to watch my journey on google maps.

Each time before the GPS kicked in the wifi put me in Euston station.

[Sput]

I assume this is because it's where the train's wifi routes through

[Alexia]

How does WIFI work on trains? Satellite or hotspots along the track?

EDIT: Come to think of it.. how does it work on buses?

[Inspector Sands]

I've never understood how the Wifi location is so accurate, where does it get the exact location from? Is it something that comes from the ISP (i.e. the billing address) or is it something more technical?

Incidently I seem to remember when I first used the Wifi on Virgin Trains everything thought I was in Germany - Google.de, adverts in German and no iPlayer. Presumably this is a T-Mobile hotspot thing

[Inspector Sands]

How does WIFI work on trains? Satellite or hotspots along the track?

It's a wire laid alongside the track that the train uses to connect to, the Wifi hotspots are in each carriage.

EDIT: Come to think of it.. how does it work on buses?

Which buses have it?
I'd assume it's similar to the Wifi hotspot ability of your phone, although I can't imagine a 3G connection working that well if there's more than a handful of people using it

[Gavin Scott]

CityLink, who operate between Scottish cities (presumably English ones too?) had Wifi *years* ago on their buses.

I remember thinking how extraordinary that was, and couldn't conceive how they made it work.

That said, not many people had smart phones back then.

[bilky asko]

A nice little exclusive from The Guardian today: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20 ... vacy-fears taken from http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/04/apple- ... cking.html

It seems that from the start of IOS4, iPhones and iPads have been recording your location - taken from mobile network data, not GPS - on a file on the phone. This then gets uploaded to your computer everytime the device is synced using iTunes. The people who discovered this feature have written an application to convert the data into a map: http://petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/

Even though it's been agreed to in Apples 15,200 word T&Cs (what you mean you didn't read them all?) many people, unsurprisingly, are surprised that this data is stored. I wonder how many spouses are checking out their partners location data this evening? And how many iPhone 4 users are regretting plugging their phones into their computer at work?

This article may explain some things: http://alexlevinson.wordpress.com/2011/ ... discovery/

[marksi]

CityLink, who operate between Scottish cities (presumably English ones too?) had Wifi *years* ago on their buses.

I remember thinking how extraordinary that was, and couldn't conceive how they made it work.

That said, not many people had smart phones back then.

...and having been on a Translink/Citylink journey recently I can tell you that in terms of how they have made it work, in my experience they have not.

[huddsguy]

Am also considering ditching my work blackberry, which I mainly use for data not calls, and moving to an iPad. I just have to justify the cost of buying the iPad!

Gavin - interested to know what you plan to do with your work's regarding calls - do they currently use the blackberry for telephone calls and if so what are you doing instead? Curious to know!

I've spoken to O2 and I can just switch my blackberry sim to a pay as you go so I could stick it in some cheap pay as you go phone in theory I'd just end up with three devices, or I could just divert it through to my other phone, though that would cost money.

That aspect - and the price (!) - are the only stalling point so any thoughts would be hugely appreciated!

Thank you.