In the past, web developers who needed to get latitude/longitude coordinates in Javascript were required to make server-side AJAX calls and base coordinates off of IP addresses and shaky algorithms.  The process was time-consuming (even using asynchronous calls) and burdensome to the server.  If constant updates were required, an ill-equipped server would overload.  Simply put, web browsers lacked the ability to support  robust real-time geolocation updates.

HTML5, the newest standards outlined by W3C, sought to change that with Geolocation Services.  Now, major website browsers (such as Safari and Firefox) come with the ability to retrieve latitude and longitude coordinates within Javascript as an integrated part of the browser itself.  This means that a programmer can now ask an HTML5 enabled browser to return coordinates without ever making an AJAX call.  The process follows this pattern: programmer makes request to the browser, browser pings its geolocation service provider, the geolocation service provider responds to the browser, the browser updates its Javascript coords object with the relevant information including latitude and longitude for the programmer to then work with.  The speed is incredibly fast compared to the old method, and is also incredibly accurate down to a few 100 meters.

Even more important, the programmer can register a callback function to constantly be executed asynchronously with updated positions.  This allows a lot of exciting things to be done.  For instance, I developed a very basic speedometer website (calculating MPH) at http://www.geigel.com/html5/speed.php that can be used on my iPhone.  To test this, open your mobile Safari browser to the website URL and then start driving down the road in your car.  Although the updated speed appearing on the website is not as precise or responsive as the MPH the car shows, the experiment illustrates what is now possible using HTML5.

What I find interesting beyond the mere technical/programming doors that HTML5 has opened is the behind-the-scenes battle from search-engine companies to be the exclusive provider of geolocation data for the major browsers.  After all, geolocation data doesn’t just magically come into existence simply because HTML5 says it should.  A company needs to process a request from the browser and respond quickly.  Obviously, Internet Explorer will rely on Microsoft as its sole provider of information (when, and if, IE decides to support geolocation).  Similarly, Chrome will use Google, however it is unclear if a Gears plugin will be required versus being natively built into the browser.  The real competition occurs when you begin looking at who will supply information for Firefox and Opera.  At present, Firefox relies on Google (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/geolocation/).  Opera, on the other hand, seems to currently be going with a third-party geolocation service provider named Skyhook (http://labs.opera.com/news/2009/03/26/).  Whether these browsers will stick with these providers remains to be seen.

Whatever all of this means for the future of websites, the W3C, and major players is unclear.  What is clear is that users of the technology are going to experience a richer  browsing session with location aware websites.  Equally clear is that geolocation providers will gain significant amounts of anonymous technical data about user positions, trends, etc. which can be scary for privacy-minded individuals.  Thankfully, the W3C cared enough to require in their specification that browsers should warn users when their position is being tracked, and ask that these services be activated.

Initially, several screens filled with colorful app icons was fun.  Flicking around from left to right was just part of the experience.  Eventually, most users began to wonder if there wasn’t a better way to categorize their apps rather than just having them float around in random positions.  And if you wanted to make any sense of your screens by systematically positioning your apps; you were met with an never ending time-consuming process as soon as you added a new app.  Amazingly, 3 versions of the OS has not addressed this need.  Perhaps that’s why so many users jailbreak their iPhone to use a more user-friendly OS.  Take note Apple.

2. Safari Search

I’m not talking about searching for lions or tigers or zebras on an African plain — rather I’m talking about one of the most fundamental capabilities one needs when sifting through large amounts of text — TEXT SEARCH!  I can’t count the number of times I’ve ended up on a gigantic blog and need to find one snippet or comment only to give up after having scrolled the entire page and missing it.  On a computer I’d just hit CTRL+F and search.  A new iPhone OS needs this feature.

3. Merge Contacts

There are many ways we get duplicate contact information in our iPhones.  Whether we sync to popular contact management software, receive vCard profiles in MMS or email, or simply inadvertently create a new contact in the process of quickly trying to get an email out.  The point is that duplicate data creeps into our address book one way or another.  If you have ever attempted to clean this up you know that it turns into a time-consuming process testing the extent of your sanity.  A native function of the address book app should allow you to merge contacts on a field by field basis choosing which data to keep.  Not terribly difficult to do.

4. YouTube Account Management

The YouTube app is fun and useful… unless you have a YouTube account and want to do something useful with it.  iPhone 3Gs allows you to upload video taken on your device via your YouTube account.  A very cool feature.  But any attempt to edit details of your video — let alone delete the video — requires you to login to the actual YouTube website.  You might be saying, “That’s okay, I’ll just access my account via Safari on the iPhone.”  Sadly, both the Touch and Mobile versions of the YouTube website don’t allow this functionality either.  In order to make any meaningful changes to your videos (i.e. edit comments, edit tags, edit names, delete, etc.) you will have to view the Full version of YouTube within Safari.  Lame and/or fail.

5. Multi-Tasking

I personally don’t buy the argument that iPhone hardware isn’t capable of handling multi-tasking.  Even if users were limited to only 5 concurrently running apps it would be better than what we have now.  There are some things we do in one app that we would like to leave to a background process while we move on to another item.  For example, if we are waiting for a webpage to load we might want to check out Facebook.  When we leave Safari to go to the home screen in order to start Facebook; Safari stops working.  That means if I come back to Safari (even a couple minutes later) the page I had meant to navigate to will still be in limbo.  Am I really to believe that a few processing cycles can’t be diverted to a separate app?  Surely email I’ve “sent” in the mail app is still delivered even when I leave that app.  Why can’t the same be applied to other apps?

Now imagine being seated at a restaurant that supports ONOSYS‘ soon to be debuted iPhone ordering app.  With the flick of a finger you can browse the entire menu, select what meals you and your family want, and place the order with almost no staff involvment.  This type of scenario would not only speed up the order-to-fulfillment process (which would make restaurants happy) but would also cut down on tons of human mistakes that invariably occur.  I also think this would become an extremely hip and cool app for people with iPhones to flaunt.  There are over 40 million iPhone users nationwide who use their device for everything under the sun — why not order food?

Stan Garber, of ONOSYS, will be in Chicago this week at the Marketing Executives Group Conference (MEG) and National Restaurant Association Show to debut the app.  I subscribe to ONOSYS‘ newsletter called “Quick Bites” which includes more details.  Here’s the newsletter in it’s entirety that arrived to my inbox this afternoon:

Got an iPhone? Get a pizza.

ONOSYS is taking the wraps off of the industry’s hottest iPhone ordering system in Chicago this week at the Marketing Executives Group Conference (MEG) and National Restaurant Association Show, and you can see for yourself how your customers can order anything from your menu with just a touch of their finger on the screen of their iPhone. 

With over 40 million phones sold, the iPhone has revolutionized mobile computing, and ONOSYS has harnessed that mobile power in a simple, elegant and powerful ordering system. 

Coming to Chicago this week? I’d love to show you the next wave in online ordering: mobile transactions. See how our mobile ordering system can help you reach more customers, increase order size and satisfy your customers who are on the go. 

Want to track me down? Email me (stan@onosys.com) to set up a time to get together, or call me on my cell (440-785-2870) if you have a few minutes of free time at the Show. 

Stan Garber 

P.S.: If you see a guy on the show floor wearing “ONOSYS Orange” shoes, that’s me. Stop and say hello and I’ll show you how mobile ordering works on the fly! 

Out of the thousands of apps currently flooding Apple’s App Store I believe this has real potential.  If the ONOSYS people get this right, and are able to prove a realistic ROI for restaurants, they’ll have a killer app on their hands.

If anyone in Chicago has video of this app in action please send it to me.  I’d love to 1) view it and 2) post it for others.

So when I got my new iPhone a few weeks ago I was eager to setup my Gmail account.  Just as I expected it was painless and easy.

Then I moved on to my calendar which I thought would be just as easy.  Unfortunately it wasn’t.  I was hoping that the iPhone would support a pull architecture for iCal synchronization — basically allowing me to tell the iPhone that it’s time to sync between the iPhone and my Google calendar.  A lot of calendar software packages support the iCal standard, and Google calendar allows you to export your calendar in this format.  Naturally I thought this would be supported on the iPhone, but it wasn’t.

I then searched online to find what I was looking for.  I found a syncing program that works with the iCal standard, but only with the iCalendar application in OSX.  Since I run XP on my machine this wasn’t any help.  I then found an application that said it could do what I needed, called NemuSync, but it required that I jailbreak my iPhone — something I wasn’t looking to do.

Just as I was about to give up I found the answer to all of my problems.  It was called NuevaSync and it has been the best thing I’ve ever setup for my iPhone.  NuevaSync is free, and allows you to setup an account with them that bridges information on your iPhone with Google’s calendar without ever having to install an app.  On a more technical level, they offer a Microsoft Exchange layer to push syncing between your iPhone and Google’s calendar.

Because Exchange is a push architecture you never have to worry about activating a sync request — it’s done automatically when you add a new event in your calendar either on your iPhone or on your Calendar webpage.  So let’s say you’re on the road and enter an event on your iPhone.  By the time you get home and log on to your Google calendar it will already be there.  NuevaSync is a real-time ongoing syncing of your iPhone calendar and Google calendar.

I was so happy when I found this out that I emailed their staff to thank them for the service.  They could easily charge $99 a year for this service and I would have paid.  It’s so seamless and translucent that I literally had to write a blog article singing its praises.

If you’re an iPhone person and use Google calendar you must setup an account today.