Gossip

How a mobile location-aware device works

A fascinating session on "location-aware devices" was presented by Microsoft. At least, Sniffer has to presume it would have been fascinating. Alas! - our main reporter and Editor has a PC; which decided to tell him to go - an hour late ...

There are those who think that the Editor of NewsWireless.Net ought to be a location aware device. However, the PC he carries (Sniffer has seen it) is set to London time. It has to be, because NewsWireless.Net is a London based server, and stories have to be time-stamped London.

But this didn't matter (we thought) because Microsoft has fitted Tech.Ed with a "Web Outlook" application. It gives you all your appointments in Barcelona; for example, it says that the "MBL200 Pocket PC 'Ozone' and Next Generation Smartphone Development Platform" presentation will be at 15:00 - that's three PM. Three o'clock, got it?

So you click on the link, and it transfers all that data to your Web Outlook view. Web Outlook isn't on your PC; it's on the server. The same server, you'd think. Well, yes; but this is one of the new "service oriented" applications. It's not server oriented. That's so last decade!

So it "leverages" the intelligence of the "mobile device" - which, of course, may or may not be "location aware." Three o'clock turns into four o'clock, because the PC thinks that is what the time is. So you miss the session.

There's no correct answer to "how do you handle this?" (says the Editor) and the only thing you can be sure of is that whatever you do, you'll get it wrong for someone. On this occasion, they got it wrong for our poor Editor. He missed the session.

At least, that's his excuse ...