Skyhook Developers Blog

Skyhook Sponsoring Where 2.0 and WhereCamp

Kate Imbach — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:32:22 +0000

Skyhook is once again sponsoring Where 2.0 (May 12 - 14, Burlingame) and WhereCamp (May 17-18, Googleplex, Mountain View).

At Where 2.0, you can come see us at our booth and check out some Skyhookers at their speaking slots - Jed is on the Monetizing Maps and Mashups panel and Ryan is speaking about the LocationAware initiative.

And check if you’re a geohacker, make sure to register for WhereCamp today.

Upgraded Skyhook SDK with Location Targeted Ads Available Today

Kate Imbach — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:38:45 +0000

Today we rolled out an upgraded version of the Skyhook SDK. Lots of great upgrades inside, including:

Location targeted advertising - thanks to built-in ads from Quattro Wireless. (more…)

Skyhook Exhibiting at Symbian Partner Event

Kate Imbach — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:39:00 +0000

The Skyhook team will be at the Symbian Partner Event in London on April 29th. If you’ll be there too, please stop by our booth and say hi!

Skyhook Gets Famous in Japan

Kate Imbach — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:51:47 +0000

Skyhook was featured on a Japanese game show where celebrities compete by earning money at random jobs. We clearly need to watch more Japanese TV. Check out the clip now:

Skyhook on Japanese TV from Skyhook on Vimeo.

(more…)

Skyhook’s SDK in Neat New Apps

Kate Imbach — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 18:55:36 +0000

Skyhook’s Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) is now location-enabling Trapster and Locr - just two examples of what developers can do with a quick integration of the Skyhook SDK. (more…)

Simple: Add Loki to Meebo, Make $1000 :)

admin — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:11:33 +0000

Meebo recently announced their new platform for building 3rd party applications into their framework. Using a little bit of javascript you can build an app that you can share with IM buddy or buddies.

(more…)

Cocoa Wrapper for Skyhook’s OS X SDK

Ryan Sarver — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:43:19 +0000

Notable Mac developer Kevin Wojniak, of Pod2Go fame, just released a Cocoa wrapper for the the Mac OS X SDK. He was nice enough to make it available to the community so those of you interested in the Skyhook Developers Contest can hack away on top of it and vie for your chance at an iPhone.

You can read more and grab the code by going to Kevin’s site: http://www.kainjow.com/?p=75. Thanks Kevin!

Major Upgrade to Skyhook’s SDK & Contest with Sweet Prizes Announced

Kate Imbach — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 14:18:19 +0000

We at Skyhook have announced major upgrades to our SDK that make integrating Skyhook’s location technology into your application as easy as falling off a log. We’ve broadened platform support, made the SDK compatible with all GPS NMEA applications, improved accuracy, confidence estimation, and as always, have continued to expand our coverage area. Download the upgraded SDK for free here.
The SDK now supports Vista, Mac OS X, Symbian and Linux in addition to already supported Windows XP, Mobile, and CE. We’ve also broadened our coverage area, to 19 million access points and 70% of the US, Canadian and Australian populations. We’ve got London, Barcelona, and Amsterdam covered in Europe so far, and plan to have all major cities in Europe covered by the end of ‘07. Cross-platform and cross-continents, now you can deploy the SDK on nearly any application, on nearly any device, nearly anywhere in the world you want.

The upgraded SDK also provides developers with the ability to deploy location on a whole new class of devices. WPS can now be deployed in autonomous mode with little or no network connectivity. This is ideal for devices with only periodic connectivity, like PMPs, gaming devices, and PNDs. In addition, velocity estimation, key for accuracy in navigation, has been improved by almost 50%.

Highly accurate confidence estimation that gives developers control over how location information is displayed in their application is also now included. And if your application is GPS NMEA compatible, you can integrate the SDK with no additional work required whatsoever.

We can’t wait to see what you develop and give away the sweetest handsets around, so find out more and download the SDK rightthissecond.

Thinking out of the box — or device

Ryan Sarver — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 20:16:06 +0000

As you start think about your LBS applications its important that you think of new ways to leverage location — whether it be a new device or a new way of using location. It can open new channels of distribution and create richer, more meaningful experiences for your users in markets where location didn’t already exist. I thought I would write about an example of this in the hopes that it might help some of you think about new ways to use Skyhook.

While planning for the Where2.0 conference that happened earlier this year we tried to think of some new ways to show off the flexibilty of WPS. We had recently bought a NintendoDS at the office for “research purposes” (great perks, eh?) and knowing that homebrew code existed to get access to the wireless adapter we thought of coming up with a location-based homebrew game.

So we contaced our good friends over at area/code who are experts in location-based gaming and also the developers of the great Loki-based game Plundr to see if they would be interested in working with us on this. Sure enough they were and Plundr for the NintendoDS was born. So we spent a few weeks getting WPS running on the NintendoDS and area/code worked diligently to make a gaming platform that crossed the web and mobile devices. Plundr on the DS would allow users to interact with the same gaming environment that users on the web were seeing all while using the same positioning technology — WPS.

We eventually demoed the game along with area/code to great fanfare at Where2.0 and were pleasantly surprised by all of the great coverage and feedback that came from the event. Sites like DSFanboy, Joystiq, Kotaku and Gizmodo all covered the launch and showed a lot of interest in games of its kind.

So when you are planning your next application think about what the cross platform experience will be like — your users want access to your application no matter what medium they are using. If we don’t currently support a platform that you are interested in developing on, contact us a let us know.

Welcome to the Skyhook Developers Network

admin — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:12:40 +0000

As you can see we have re-launched skyhookwireless.com — we hope you
like it. With the coming release of SDKs for many new platforms we
wanted to re-architect the developers section a bit to help support you,
our developers, better. One of the many improvements is the addition of
this blog. This will serve as our forum for letting you know about
product updates, sample code, industry news that might be of interest to
you and probably some rambling as well.

I recommend that you join the Skyhook Developers Network Google Group as
well. I know its a mouthful to say, but its going to be an invaluable
resource if you are working with any of Skyhook’s technology. It will be
the forum for getting your questions answered, interacting with other
LBS developers like yourself and finding out about other cool apps that
people are building.

So come, make yourself comfortable and stay a while. And as always,
please let us know if you have any questions. We can always be reached
via the Google Group or directly by emailing us at
support@skyhookwireless.com