A click on the Share Location button will share the current location with the website while a click on Don’t Share will prevent it.

To be precise, the following information will be send to the website:

Your computer’s IP address,
Information about the nearby wireless access points, and
A random client identifier, which is assigned by Google, that expires every 2 weeks.

Firefox users who never intend to use the geolocation feature might want to disable it permanently. This can be done easily by typing [about:config] in the Firefox address bar to open the Firefox configuration. The feature can now be disabled by entering [geo.enabled] into the Filter form at the top and pressing the enter key. The geo.enabled parameter should now be displayed. The easiest way to disable geolocation is to double-click the entry so that the Value displays false afterwards.

You find more information about geolocation on the Location-Aware browsing page over at Mozilla which also explains how to get remove permissions that have already been granted to websites and the random client identification number.

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So, a very interesting question is how does such technology work?

They consult a service called Skyhook Wireless. They drive around settlements in several countries and record the GPS co-ordinates of where they pick up certain wireless access points, so when users send the access point’s MAC to them, it can return the co-ordinates. Many areas aren’t covered but if you would still like to use it, and let others use it, one can manually add details to the system. The same system is used to correct erroneous listings.

Many services already make use of WiFi-based location services.

For example, GPS units may struggle to provide an accurate location indoors or in an urban environment, but Skyhook Wireless doesn’t have this problem. Software like Google Maps on the iPhone use WiFi-based location in such scenarios.

Several online websites also use WiFi-based location services to return information based on the locality. Some are social networking, like brightkite and Fire Eagle to local search, although these services tend to be American. MyLoki is another service which relies on geolocation, and this allows location data to be exported to RSS feeds, Facebook or even Twitter. It can also grab data from ‘channels’ and plot things nearby on a map. These ‘channels’ include everything from Starbucks coffee shops to geotagged photos, Yelp reviews and cinemas.

Google Gears uses its own geolocation service, which websites like ITN use, but this is much worse than Geode/Skyhook, being accurate for me to about 150 miles instead of 15 meters!

Skyhook-based locations are built into the iPhone, the Opera web-browser and Mozilla Geode.

Privacy concerns are put to ease as data is only sent if you confirm the website can have access to it, and the software lets you specify how accurate a location you’re willing to send.

The idea of geolocation and WiFi positioning is fantastic. Eventually, it will allow you to open your laptop and then share your location with others, should you choose, or find the nearest restaurant in a distant city!

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Only a few digital cameras support that the geolocation is automatically added to the Exif data of the picture, but don’t worry if your camera can’t do it automatically. Panorado Flyer makes it easy to edit the data and add the geolocation to the image. This is done by using Google Images to find the location that the image was taken and adding the coordinates found using the context menu.

I think that this is an excellent way to spice up those boring “we are back from holidays, take a look at all the pictures that we have taken” kind of events. This tool would be even nicer if it would be possible to create automatic slideshows showing the images and Google Earth locations and burn those information on a DVD to view on tv.

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