If you're a BlackBerry developer you may be interested in knowing that Research In Motion officially launched the Wi-Fi geolocation service a little over a week ago. Using Wi-Fi Access Point data that has been collected anonymously from your BlackBerry, this technology can provide location based sharing apps (such as foursquare or Twitter) a quick and accurate location fix.

Wi-Fi geolocation is faster and more convenient than GPS-based and Cell-site based location as well as uses less bandwidth, though the accuracy falls somewhere between that of GPS and Cell-site. APIs are available for devices running BlackBerry 6 OS and and higher, though service provisioning may take up to 3 more weeks. For complete details, head on over to the source link below. Thanks for sending this in Ray!

Source: BlackBerry Developer's Blog

Back during the BlackBerry Developers Conference last year, Research In Motion showed off a new, at the time yet to be released geolocation feature. The feature itself allowed developers to be able to quickly get your current location information simply based off the cell towers in which you were attached too. The idea behind this of course, is that many applications can now access your location data without ever having to initialize your device GPS which, if used often enough can severely drain your battery. As we were advised:

Today, RIM introduced a new geolocation feature of the Locate Service. The Geolocation service uses cell towers to gather quick location information and deliver it to applications on BlackBerry smartphones. Because it uses cell tower information, no GPS is required – meaning developers can have their applications call on location information in areas where there is no GPS coverage.

The location data provided by the Geolocation service is quick and general, so not as specific as GPS information, but perfect for applications that need to point to close by areas of interest or other geographical points/information without going into too many details. And once a user is back in GPS coverage, the application can call for more detailed information, if needed.

The Geolocation service joins existing capabilities in the Locate Service for the BlackBerry Application Platform, which include:

• Reverse geocoding capabilities enable applications to convert a user’s latitude and longitude to an address
• Integration with BlackBerry Maps Service offers a variety of app features, ranging from navigation directions to POI recommendations. BlackBerry Maps Service compliments Locate Service by providing map displays that can be invoked or embedded to indicate a user’s location

This is certainly great news for developers and BlackBerry users. These days, more and more applications seem to be relying on your GPS location data. To have a non intrusive, non power consuming way to access that data is huge. It does come with a few caveats however, you must have a device running OS 5.0+ and carriers need to support these capabilities. That said, most carriers allow this access already and well, if you're running a device with less then 5.0 you should really look into upgrading anyways.

• Click Here To Learn More About The New Locate Service And Developer API Availability>>

We got the above sneak peek of Root Mobile from CES this year and launch was promised to be soon. Here we are, just a few short weeks later and Root Mobile has now gone live and is certainly ready to track the coverage offered by your carrier.

“No one carrier is best everywhere, but everyone can find the carrier and phone that are best for them,” said Root Wireless CEO Paul Griff.  “It’s encouraging that thousands of smartphone enthusiasts have pre-registered to help map wireless network performance and we expect that, as the effort is more widely understood, the data provided by crowdsourcing consumers’ phones will provoke fundamental changes in the way that people evaluate and purchase their wireless service.”

Intially, Root Mobile was US only but that has since changed. US and Canadian carriers are now both supported. So, if you've ever questioned your carriers' true coverage areas, Root Mobile can help you put your coverage in comparison to others around you. The application can be downloaded, run in the background and then you can view the data as you see fit. All devices with GPS are supported with the exception of Storms running OS 4.7, so give it a shot and help out.

• Download The Mobile Application From The Root Mobile Website>>