Have any of you heard of Skyhook Wireless? It’s the reason the GPS Â in your iPhone is so fast. The company keeps track of the location of Wi-Fi hot spots around the world, giving it second look up times to all kinds of devices. But, some of us haven’t experienced that glowing blue circle, that symbol of location actually working. These poor souls, own iPod touches.
Apple have enabled the iPod touch to share location info, using Skyhook’s technology, but it never seems to work. This is because the wireless network you are using has NO IDEA where it is. You will need to remedy this manually. Are you ready to give up your privacy? Finally prepared to begin using the location options in all those apps you love? Tired of typing in your home address in the Maps app? Then here we go.
Skyhook Wireless give you the option to add your own wireless network to their database. Simply go here, and fill out the form. They state that it will take approximately a week for the data to fully integrate into their XPS system. When I did it, something went wrong, causing my data to take about a month before it finally worked. Here are a few tips to hopefully streamline your submission.
Tip 1: You will need to make sure that the MAC address you give them is the permanent one for your router’s wireless radio. This is not the MAC address printed on your router’s case. One way to get this number is to visit your router’s settings through your networking menus. Another path is to use an app, either for the computer or iPhone. A good one for PCs is inSSIDer, Macs should use iStumbler. The iPhone app I would use is called iNet – Network Scanner, a paid application. Get it below.
Tip 2: Submit the data on Thursday mornings for the best chance to get into the system. (An inside tip from an employee there)
There you are. (see what I did there?)
Just be sure to get the right MAC address and you should be able to use the location data on an iPod touch in no time. Enjoy!
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