Description: a presentation proposed by Henri Bergius, Jussi Kukkonen
and Iain Holmes
Duration: 45 min
GeoClue is a modular geoinformation service which aims to simplify the
creation of location-aware applications. Gypsy is a GPS multiplexing
daemon which allows multiple applications to communicate with GPS
devices. Both have been designed with desktop and mobile use in mind,
and work over D-Bus.
As mobile and social aspects of computing have become more popular, the
need for collecting, sharing and utilizing geoinformation has become
more important. This need is not just about the user wanting specific
geographical information (“Where can I get ice cream?”, “How do I get to
the hotel”), but also applications needing context to be usable: A
weather applet would be much nicer if it just knew which city the user
is in, and an instant messager or microblogging client might want to
give the user an option to show current location to contacts.
GeoClue project started in October 2006 GNOME Summit with the idea of
providing an easy and reliable way for applications to obtain
information about current location. This is achieved by defining a few
fairly simple APIs, and using a variety of data providers to implement
them. Several providers are used as no single provider will be useful in
all situations: GPS does not work indoors, web services require an
ginternet connection, etc.
GeoClue participated in 2007 Google Summer of Code as part of the
maemo project. Since the SoC GeoClue development has been continued by
Garmin/OpenedHand, and a new API version will be released in spring
2008. Projects currently working on GeoClue support include the
Telepathy instant messaging framework and the Mauku microblogging tool.
The nature of GPS devices is that only one application is able to
communicate with them at a time, and so some form of middleman is
required to talk to the GPS device and pass the information on to other
clients. Gypsy was started in April 2007 with the aim to bring an easy
to use and modern GPD daemon that is suited for many situations from
modern powerful desktop systems, down to relatively low powered embedded
systems.
The presentation sheds light on what location awareness is all about. We
will explain the design and motivation behind GeoClue and Gypsy and give
some hands on examples of using them in applications. You’ll also find
out how GeoClue and Gypsy fit into different platforms (maemo, OpenMoko,
OLPC, GNOME desktop).
Links:
Geoclue
Gypsy
