GPS For All Japanese Mobiles From 2007

The Eurotechnology newsletter has reported that Japan’s Internal and Communications Ministry is planning to change regulations to require GPS in all mobile phones from April 2007 in Japan. Apparently the plans have been known for a while and the accuracy will be in the order of 15 meters…The newsletter doesn’t give a reason for the requirement but does talk about the fact that half of Japan’s 9 million emergency calls come from mobile phones — draw your own conclusions.
The interesting part (from a content perspective) is the knowledge developers have that all phones sold from a particular point will include GPS technology, which can be said of almost nothing else. I expect location-based services to increase…
On that note, a new location-based messaging service has launced…Socialight allows users to create and share location-based messages called StickyShadows. It “works by taking the media that you create, adding location coordinates, mixing in privacy metadata and storing the final product as a StickyShadow on the server. These messages can then be viewed in the exact location they were created using the Socialight Mobile application, or on the web at http://socialight.com”.

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