Creating Location Services for the Wireless Web [Paperback]

Johan Hjelm (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0471402613 | ISBN-13: 978-0471402619

The first guide to developing user location applications
You are walking down a street and suddenly, your cell phone display flashes the news that you are 70 feet from a Starbuck's and that you are entitled to a dollar off your next purchase. You have just witnessed an example of user location services, one of the exciting new generations of cell phone and handheld services. This book describes the architecture and operation of this technology. It also familiarizes readers with the new location services development standard, shows how to programming with GIS, provides GUI design guidelines, and uses real-world examples to teach valuable lessons on how to successfully develop and deploy user location applications for the wireless Web.
CD-ROM contains a host of tools for developing positioning and location services.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Creating Location Services for the Wireless Web
Professional Developer's Guide

Location services are emerging as one of the most important and anticipated tools of the new wireless Web. For instance, these services enable you to instantly get a map of where you are using your handheld device. Or, by pressing one key, you can retrieve the yellow pages for your location. But there is an entire system behind the convenience that delivers a user's location to the Web server.

In this book, noted author Johan Hjelm covers the all-important standards that will enable location application development, and describes the architecture and operation of those services. Concentrating on the convergence between GPS (Global Positioning Systems) and positioning in the mobile network, the book also talks about the GIS (Geographical Information Services) standards and how to build a Web site that uses them.

Introducing wireless developers to these new standards and tools, this reader-friendly book delivers:
* A content and software developer's guide
* Case studies from research projects
* User interface design guidelines
* A look at how location standards can help locate people who dial 911
* Appendices that discuss XML, WAP 2.0, and CC/PP
* Examples from existing systems

The CD-ROM contains trial versions for several useful tools for developing location-dependent applications services, as well as specifications for the GIS standards from the Open GIS Consortium.

Professional Developer's Guides

The Professional Developer's Guide series provides the first in-depth look at recent or emerging programming technologies. Experienced programmers and developers will find comprehensive coverage of new programming standards as well as code, sample programs, developer's tools, and applications that will make programming for a new technology much easier.

Wiley Computer Publishing
Timely. Practical. Reliable.

Visit our Web site at www.wiley.com/compbooks/
Visit the author's Web site at www.wireless-information.net

About the Author

JOHAN HJELM is a senior specialist and project manager in wireless Web projects for Ericsson. He is an internationally recognized scientist, a regular contributor to standards development, and a frequent speaker at conferences. Johan is the author of eleven books on the wireless and metadata space.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (February 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471402613
• ISBN-13: 978-0471402619
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,297,846 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars RFCs are more enjoyable., February 1, 2005

By 

G. Mutlu "deephalo" (Amsterdam) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Creating Location Services for the Wireless Web (Paperback)

Everything is fine with its content. I just don't like its style. RFCs are more enjoyable to read than this book. The writer says that this chapter will give you something but you have to find it, no bullets, no balds, no italics, just a plain text. To sum up, I don't find it readable.

Again I don't say anything about its content. This book gives you idea (nothing more) about Location Services for Wireless Web, but you should be ready to read 400 page plain text. Some may like this kind of books. If you want to enjoy while reading please think twice before buying.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive, covering everything, April 12, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Creating Location Services for the Wireless Web (Paperback)

This is the first book I have found that ties together positioning, geocoding, and the user interface. The author has done a tremendous job of being comprehensive, covering everything I could think about. The field varies from the arcane to the mundane, and there are a lot of threads to be tied together - and he manages to do so very well. He does say it is not a programmers cookbook, and I did not expect one. But he has done a guidebook to an industry that seems very fragmented - with this book, you get a good grip about what is fragmented and what is already standardized. The author really penetrates deep into the concepts, drilling down into position-service APIs, geocoding languages, and privacy aspects. Sometimes, he even manages to make the stuff funny, and it is readable all the time. There are a lot of tricky things here, and as a developer, you had better have a clue about which traps there are to avoid. So far, cost seems to be the biggest problem for deployment - GPS is too [costly], mobile phone networks do not offer this as a service (which they could, and this is very well covered in the book).
It is a five-star in my view.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, very wide area, March 27, 2002

By 

Johan Hjelm (La Jolla, California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Creating Location Services for the Wireless Web (Paperback)

This guy really took on a big area - and you get the impression it is still very much an area being worked on. There seems to be a lot of hot air and very proprietary solutions in the field, but not in the book. He concentrates on standards, since he like me realizes that the proprietary standards will not go anywhere. None of them can become big enough.

He talks about positioning systems, APIs, how to add geocodes using the Geographic Markup Language - really useful. The only things I missed were some more examples from real services. But he does say that since many use text messages phones, and almost all interfaces are proprietary, it is hard to talk about without being extremely specific. There could be more about how to use GPS on PDAs, though, but I guess there are not actually that many services out there.

The book really digs down into the subject (there is even a chapter on privacy), and I found it extremely useful. Lots of stuff there I did not know before. There could be more software on the CD, although there are pointers to lots of it. So I got it anyway. Good buy.