Chapter 1. The Location-based World

Location-based services (LBS) are pioneering and revolutionary services that have taken the Internet world by storm. The exponential growth of smartphones has led to increased demands for location-aware apps. The popular technology news blog Gigaom.com predicts that by the year 2016, LBS will be worth $10 billion. You can read the full report at:

http://gigaom.com/2011/06/09/location-based-services-worth-10b-by-2016/

Location-based services are a revolutionary, yet still fresh-from-the-oven, breed of services that have grown tremendously to carve themselves a new industry in just a few years. LBS is the next stage of evolution for search, on the Web and mobile, adding the location context (where am I or things around me?) to search. To quote from Wikipedia on the definition of LBS:

You may have already used LBS when you use Twitter, Facebook, or when you visit hyperlocal web pages such as CitySeekr.com, Yelp.com, Qype.co.uk, and Eventful.com to find the top venues in the city or events happening in your city. Want to know how location is determined? Continue reading the chapter to understand the different methods of location detection, and which one is the right choice for you.

In this chapter we shall understand: