Location, location, location

location based services


Recent conversations with well informed people lead me to believe that the consensus view of location based services is tending toward the idea that people really aren't interested in such things given that they have never taken off. I think this is a flawed perspective in a couple of ways - the main issue being the technology.
Currently, there are two deployed location technologies. The first, thanks to Uncle Sam and soon the Europeans is GPS. The second is radio triangulation using existing mobile telephone base station signals.
GPS was originally designed as a missile guidance system. I have not seen too many missiles in flight (thank goodness) but am told that they don't fly at street level until they have reached their destination and therefore don't worry too much about buildings getting in the way of their GPS signal. Unfortunately, this is not true for your average city pedestrian and anyone who has attempted to use GPS location based services in a place like London will tell you that they simply don't work very well.
Radio triangulation using the mobile networks solves the signal strenght problem but suffers from what I will call a "resolution" problem. The density of mobile network base stations allows for location of a device but not with the accuracy necessary to add enough value to make services worth bothering with (telling me where I am within a city block is interesting but can be more confusing than helpful).
There are, however, technologies that could easily solve the problems above but they have not been deployed for numerous reasons which include the sour view of location service value.
The problem is that I believe location is one of key peices in the emerging peer-to-peer world. After all, if you want to interact with someone it is sometimes very helpful to know where to find them (not always, of course). Sadly, my cool GPS based location software on my phone currently thinks I am somewhere just outside Birmingham as I write this in London...