Indoor positioning is one step closer

We have been recently making some references to the WiFi-based indoor positioning system currently under development by the SCYP team. Over the past few weeks, we have been wrestling with the system's design and tackling some of the initial barriers to the implementation of our very first prototype. But thanks to Renaud, a committed open source advocate, we have just solved a simple but necessary step for the success of this project.

See, a few years ago, Renaud wrote a program that converts CAD files in DWG or DXF format into more standard SVG images. We used Renaud's program and other open source tools to convert all campus blueprints into standard image files so that they are easily accessible. These image files can in turn be used to build a database of associations between campus locations and WiFi scans (i.e. fingerprints). The principle is simple: with blueprint in hand, we can go to every building on campus collecting WiFi fingerprints as we walk around. For each fingerprint collected, there will be a corresponding location in the blueprint. Then, when sufficient associations have been made, and with the help of a very fast and smart algorithm, we should be able to tell the position of a mobile device just by looking at the WiFi fingerprint, and thus, enable indoor positioning just as with GPS!

Now, besides the fact that Renaud's program worked like a charm even a few years after he wrote it, he was also happy to make some minor changes that allowed us to easily extract the dimensions of the original blueprints, which is necessary to define real coordinates from our converted images. So, hats off to you Renaud!

Linessider 0.9 Released!

Linessider, the first application developed by the SCYP team, is now available for download. Linessider is a console utility that can be used to scan and display WiFi access points in range on Windows systems. This tool will be most useful to developers looking for easy access to information about the wireless environment in a particular location. In fact, the SCYP team will be using Linessider to create a backend for location-based services on campus. We will be posting more related news soon!

Nokia opens the door to inclusive design in the mobile space

There is no doubt that personal computing is experiencing a tremendous transformation. In today's context, where mobile devices oversell PCs by a factor of 5, manufactures and software developers evolve quickly and compete fiercely for a place in our pockets.

A few months ago, Google announced its yet-to-be-deployed Android platform, an open-source operating system (OS) for mobile devices that threatened to challenge a market dominated primarily by proprietary code. The hype around the announcement has been since dismissed by companies like Microsoft and Apple who monitor the initiative with little more than cautious skepticism, specially since Android is not yet available commercially.

This context, however, has just been turned completely on its head, following the announcement that Symbian, the OS running on 60% of the smart phones available today, is about to go open source. This is part of an aggressive strategy by Nokia, which invested $410 million in the acquisition of all remaining shares of Symbian, to maintain its leadership in the mobile devices market through an open source development model.

Unlike Google Android, Nokia's Symbian has already millions of users around the world, and, best of all, it has a long history of support for 3rd-party applications, custom development and inclusive technologies. Thus, with this new open source approach, the Symbian platform is about to become a lot more attractive to custom application developers, specially the SCYP team, since there is no doubt that open source software development models effectively accelerate the research, development and deployment of inclusive technologies.