Guest post by Mozilla Labs recently offered a sneak peak and download of Geode. Geode is one of the first applications to use the new W3C geolocation specification API. It is currently available as a plug-in for Firefox 3 (and seems to only support Windows and Mac systems at this time). Mozilla Labs indicates it will likely be a new feature integrated in an upcoming browser release.
Given all the licensing and privacy issues this questionable improvement adds to Firefox I’m glad it is currently only available in extension form and only available for Windows and MacOS. I sincerely hope it stays that way, or I’ll be forces to search for a new browser and I really am fond of the browser I have now…
–bornagainpenguin
But the real question is: Do we need to automatically find a user’s coordinates for these!? On Mozilla Labs they mention:
“…Or Web site authentication that only allows you to login from certain physical locations, like your house.”
This would never be secure, as you can easily manipulate the coordinates sent to the login-service. An additional login would always be required. And heck, who needs the software to automatically specify your location if you only have 2? Home and work:
“For example, imagine an RSS reader that knows the difference between home and work and automatically changes its behavior appropriately.”
There are many more settings that change based on your location — other that just in your browser. So I really think this functionality should be present somewhere else. Also, your settings might not change exclusively due to geo position. I like Aaron Seigos notion of context much more, and I think people working with these kinds of thoughts should really allow themselves to think big.
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/09/plasma-context-and-nepomuk.html
http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/10/introducing-geode/
Edited 2008-10-13 12:06 UTC
Location means nothing. Few things piss me off more than when I type in http://www.foo.com and get automatically redirected to http://www.foo.se just because the web site managed to detect that I’m in Sweden. I don’t know who came up with this idea but he or she deserves to be beaten. I typed http://www.foo.com because that was the web site I wanted to go, when I want to go to http://www.foo.se I’ll type http://www.foo.se.
We need to see less of this sort of idiotic second guessing by developers, not more. I can see no good and useful purpose for this software. If I want to seperate work and home RSS feeds give me a menu and I’ll tell the software where I am and what feeds I want. I mean what happens if I’m working from home one day and want to check my ‘work’ feeds or if I want to check my ‘home’ feeds while taking a break at work.