Can confirm also works well on Telstra (Australia) GSM/UMTS networks.

Nifty bit of software.
Many thanks to aaronsmckee for alerting us to it.

Originally Posted by Churchill

Well I installed it and My location is not available.... But thinking about it I read somewhere that it uses Celular broadcast, and I am afraid T-Mobile NL does not provide celular broadcast maybe because it is an 1800 MHZ network ???

That might be it... or it may be that Google has not added the tower id number for NL yet (it is still in beta). The way the app works is that it draws down the tower id number from the tower your using to connect with. Then it matches it up against a DB that google has of all the tower ids. So it might just be that they have not yet added NL yet or perhaps just your particular carrier (I would be intrested to see what results NL users with different carriers get).

Tower ?

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Let me ask a quick question. The location indicated. Is that the actual location of the tower or and approximation of your position ????

Originally Posted by angelome

Let me ask a quick question. The location indicated. Is that the actual location of the tower or and approximation of your position ????

its not the tower location. I work ~2 miles from home and at work it said i was within 1400 meters of the location. Which was pretty close, when I was at home it gave the same location (well about 1 block difference from the one at work) but said I was within 5000 meters of said location. Pretty neat program update. Its not the tower location because I looked at satelite view and there isn't any tower anywhere close to the blue dot

Very nice! Works ok on weak GSM signal near Swindon (UK) on T-Mobile. At home it shows within 1 ml of actual location. Now - will they enable some interaction with Google Map so you can send a web page link to someone that will show where you are on Google Map . Lots of potential with this one.

Originally Posted by illavbill

its not the tower location. I work ~2 miles from home and at work it said i was within 1400 meters of the location. Which was pretty close, when I was at home it gave the same location (well about 1 block difference from the one at work) but said I was within 5000 meters of said location. Pretty neat program update. Its not the tower location because I looked at satelite view and there isn't any tower anywhere close to the blue dot

I believe there is some extrapolation based on signal strength but the tower is the key identifier (from an article about it)

"Cellular networks work in this way that neighbouring base stations form "cells" in which users can make phone calls. Interestingly each base station sends unique "cell identification" (cell ID) so if you know where physically each base station is located you can extrapolate physical location of a phone! Apparently Google has database of cell IDs and Google Maps application sends to Google list of neighboring base stations and in return Google servers are returning approximate geographical location of your phone! "

GPS-A

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This is probably based on the GPS-A(assist) technology that 911 uses. I would guess that it uses signal strength(distance), and multiple towers(direction) to make its guess. Its pretty neat really. just installed it tonight. I had given up on google maps in favor of live search, but I think I may have just changed my mind. trying to figure out where you are, to tell it to find you kind of sucked when you were wwalking around a new town that you had never been before. This one is definatly a keeper.

Tried last night. My locationw as temporarily unavailable. I switched to 2G only and voila, it found me (well, sort of)

On Orange UK.

Tried it on mine, and got my location within 1400 meters. Its not bad, very useful if you wake up hungover in a doorway somewhere.....

Works in NJ

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I had also given up on Google Maps in favor of MS Live but I may have just changed my mind. I loaded this last night, drove for about 40 minutes on highways in northern NJ, and it was reasonably accurate. It showed my location on the highway for the most part which makes me believe the location indicated is not the tower location. Now, the location on the map leads or lags wherever I might actually be but that is OK. I was in Central and Northwest NJ in the "boonies", way out in the hills.

All in all, pretty impressive. I am sticking with it and hope that there will be continual improvements.