[youtube]http://youtu.be/OGdvjvla1Tc[/youtube]
WIFISLAM it is a small company that Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), decided to purchase it for the sum of 20 million dollars, the reason for the purchase being the technology that allows smartphone owners to locate themselves inside buildings. Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), confirmed the purchase WIFISLAM for the Wall Street Journal, he did not specify what he intends to do with it, but it is clear that Apple Maps will allow users to locate themselves inside the buildings, but for now we don't know when. Those from WIFISLAM use only the signals Wi-Fi ambient to locate inside buildings, its developers claiming that it locates with an accuracy of up to 2.5 meters.
Apple has acquired indoor-GPS company WifiSLAM, a sign that the war over indoor mobile location services is heating up. Apple paid around $20 million for the Silicon Valley-based company, according to a person familiar with the matter who said the deal closed recently. An Apple spokesperson confirmed the deal saying the company "buys smaller technology companies from time to time" and generally doesn't discuss its plans. He declined to comment further. WifiSLAM could not immediately be reached for comment.
The acquisition of this company and the implementation of the technology in Apple Maps is as logical as possible, especially since Google Maps has been offering the same thing for several months. Apple will probably speed up the implementation of the system in Apple Maps and in the next year it is possible to launch in several countries the possibility of geolocation inside buildings. Even if the news is extremely good for the USA, Great Britain, France, etc., unfortunately for a country like Romania we cannot ask for too much, considering that not even Google has brought its service here.
Allow your smartphone to pinpoint its location (and the location of your friends) in real-time to 2.5m accuracy using only ambient WiFi signals that are already present in buildings. We are building the next generation of location-based mobile apps that, for the first time, engage with users at the scale that personal interaction actually takes place. Applications range from step-by-step indoor navigation, to product-level retail customer engagement, to proximity-based social networking. Company co-founder Anand Atreya explained how the technology works: users collect the data passively by walking around the building — that means the phone needs to be left on with Wi-Fi enabled, which can affect battery life. Another possible pitfall would be changes in Wi-Fi hotspot locations, although the company notes that most businesses leave their routers in place for a long time after setting them up, and new fingerprints are always being gathered, making updates pretty simple.
