Re: geographical info vs. network topology

Are there good reasons to want the longitude and latitude of
a WWW client? In commerce, there are LOTS of reasons one might
want to know geographical information about a client site, even 
if only approximate and not available part of the time. 
Some examples:

 - A distributor of furniture has an agreement with a manufacturer
   limiting his region to east of the Mississippi river. They want
   to put up a web site but they are not permitted to distribute 
   their catalog outside their region.

 - A large breakfast cereal company puts up a promitional web site, 
   but it has many products that each have limited geographical
   distribution.

 - A company is test-marketing a product in a certain region...

 - You want to list an "800" phone number in your document, and you
   will save money if you list the one that is closest to the
   client.

 - A site for a politician wants to present different messages to 
   different regions of the country. :-)

I guarantee you that it won't be long before commercial sites
get really good at determining the geographical location, and a
lot more, about most hits at a site. They will be getting the info
through PSI, Netcom, AOL, Microsoft etc.

Mark Dionne
md@ileaf.com

Received on Tuesday, 26 December 1995 12:06:05 UTC