Use cases (was Re: V2 Discussion)

> As far as I can tell, of the use cases for geolocation given in the spec, 
> only the third ("Automatic form-filling") involves an address, and frankly 
> I'm not convinced that that is a realistic use case.

Actually, civic addresses make sense for several of the use cases. 
Let's take a look:

1. Find points of interest in the user's area

It certainly makes sense for me to use a civic address to find points of 
interest in my area.  If I'm looking for the major tourist attractions 
in Darmstadt, why not say I'm in Darmstadt.  This is especially 
important for things with explicit jurisdictions, like police 
departments (which is a point of interest in some cases!).  The IETF 
even has some protocols for this that you can do in AJAX:
<http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5222>
<http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-forte-ecrit-lost-extensions-00>

2. Annotating content with location information

I don't see why using civic here makes any less sense than geo.  After 
all, the major point of the flickr location look-up linked to earlier 
[1] was to translate a lat/long to a civic address.

3. Automatic form-filling

Already discussed this one.

4. Show the user's position on a map

This one comes the closest to being lat/long only, since that's 
ultimately how the map app is going to think.

5. Turn-by-turn route navigation

I haven't looked at code for these things, but as far as I can tell from 
my interactions with Google Maps etc, mapping/navigation apps think in 
terms of streets, which are definitely a civic concept (cf. CAtype RD).

6. Alerts when points of interest are in the user's vicinity

Depending on the granularity of the civic address, you can certainly do 
proximity checking (Same street, close number?  Neighboring street?). 
See also number 1.

7. Up-to-date local information

Civic addresses are in wide use here as well.  Every weather site I've 
been to has been indexed on instead place names or ZIP codes, not 
lat/long.  The US National Weather Service even prefers "City, State" to 
ZIP codes.  See also number 1.

8. Location-tagged status updates in social networking applications

Again, civic addresses work here, too.  "Where are you?"  "51st and 
Broadway".  Granularity control can even be easier with civic location 
(a topic that GEOPRIV has worked on, see [2] and [3]).

--Richard

[1] 
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-geolocation/2008Nov/0043.html>
[2] <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-geopriv-policy-17>
[3] <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-geopriv-policy-17#section-6.5.1>

Received on Friday, 14 November 2008 02:59:47 UTC