Meeting with Mozilla

[Jorge Silva]

just to complement Justin's very comprehensive summary, particular 
action items involved:

1. Reviewing the W3C geolocation standard draft (V2) to make sure WIPS 
is as supported/compatible as possible
2. Adding a TCP request option to WIPS so Firefox can talk to it
3. Adding SSL support for Firefox requests (since they send the data 
encrypted)

A Firefox/Fennec extension was proposed as an early alternative for 
indoor positioning support while we wait for the W3C to agree on V2.

If mapping folks can review 
http://trac.tools.ietf.org/wg/geopriv/trac/wiki/LocationFormats and send 
your comments, that would be great. Doug and Nino are looking for other 
use cases (e.g. Engage) that can inform the type of fields, formats that 
should be included in the W3C standard (think WiFi, RFID, Object 
Recognition and different positioning scales like floor, room, hallway, 
?, ?).

cheers!
Jorge

Justin wrote:
> Yesterday Doug and Nino from Mozilla dropped by the ATRC, and a few of us had a 
> chance to sit in and talk with them.
> 
> The conversation centered around Geolocation with a focus on WIPS and how it 
> could be supported by Firefox.
> 
> Support for Geolocation:
> 
>     * Firefox 3.5
>     * Safari (should be in next version)
>     * IE 8 (likely in the next point release)
>     * Opera (has a plugin from skyhook to support this)
> 
> 
> V2
> 
>     * V2 (the second version of the spec) will begin to include Human Readable
>       information, and take into account addressing. 
>           o The current version, V1, returns information such as longitude,
>             latitude, altitude, and accuracy.
>           o  For addressing there are 30+ possible fields, which they are
>             looking to pare down closer to 9.
>     * A draft version should be available within the next 6 months
>           o no date for when it will be implemented, 
>           o will be in a 3.5x release of Firefox
> 
> 
> How it works (see diagram attachment):
> 
>     * The user agent (browser) acts as a middle man between the web and the
>       positioning  service
>           o The web will make a call for the position
>           o The user agent will request positioning information from a
>             positioning service
>           o The user agent will return the information as a W3C object that is
>             sent back to the DOM
>     * Currently there are only two supported location services
>           o GLS (Google Location Service)
>                 + http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2009/04/google-location-services-now-in-mozilla.html
>           o User specified
>     * Currently only one location server allowed, you can hack it to change the
>       pointer from GLS to some other service
>           o 3.51 should include support for multiple providers
>                 + This will allow the WIPS location to be running at the same
>                   time (see Diagram)
> 
> 
> 
> Fennec
> 
>     * Currently supports Maemo, a linux based OS
>     * Plans to support Windows Mobile and Symbian
>     * Apple's development restrictions prevent any standalone
>       or embedded version of Firefox on the iPhone OS.
>     * No plans for an Android version
> 
> 
> It was mentioned that webkit is standards compliant, so anything that makes it 
> into the spec should also be available there. 
> 
> It appears that the goal would be to make WIPS easily integratabtle with 
> Firefox, and to have, as part of the V2 spec, the necessary information for 
> indoor positioning part of the W3C object that is returned to the DOM.
> 
> Privacy is a key concern that we will have to be focused on. How we store, use, 
> and manage the position information is important. Also, we'll have to take into 
> consideration how a user will consent to this. For example, this could be part 
> of the agreement upon installation, a setting they have to turn on, or something 
> else.
> 
> That was the quick run down of my notes, please feel free to ask any questions. 
> For those who were also part of the meeting, please feel free to submit your 
> notes as well and mention any errors and/or omissions that I have made.
> 
> Thanks
> Justin
>