NEW YORK-The average person does not use latitude and longitude to determine or describe where he or she is and neither, for that matter, do pilots of private aircraft.
Lee Hancock, an attorney by profession and pilot by avocation, is founder and president of Go2 Systems Inc. The Irvine, Calif., company received a patent a year ago for its World Geographic Reference System, designed with wireless telecommunications in mind.
“People think geographically with reference to anchor points. I’m on the fourth floor. I’m 20 miles south of Denver,” he said.
“Pilots use a series of way points, like airports with identifiers-LAX for Los Angeles Airport.”
Latitude and longitude have another disadvantage besides being complicated and cumbersome. The same coordinates can stand for places in different parts of the world. This certainly would be a problem for people in need of emergency help or those who simply want to find the nearest fast-food restaurant.
Whether the device or the network involves paging, cellular, personal communications services, personal digital assistants, satellite communications or a personal computer, the WGRS global addressing system will help them to find their ways or to be found.
It was designed with the help of scientists from the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis and the American Association of Geographers. The system incorporates shorthand identifiers for the end user, his or her location and the location of places he or she would like to be.
“We are not a hardware solution that determines where you are. Our focus is on the geography piece, a universal alternative to latitude and longitude,” Hancock said.
Go2 is a Web-based geo-referencing system that localizes the Internet based on the location of the end user and ranks information about desired destinations in order of their proximity to that person.
“As we clean up the geography piece to make sure it’s accurate, we will become an adjunct to the Yellow Pages (with a) naming convention, similar to domain names on the Internet, for real-world location,” Hancock said.
The company plans to target for listing in its database, which it intends to update continually, retail locations owned by the 500 largest chains and the 10 million to 12 million small businesses advertising in the Yellow Pages.
For minimal or low cost, it also plans to identify and list the estimated 2 million to 5 million small businesses and 20 million neighborhoods that do not advertise in the Yellow Pages. This part of the program originated with Hancock’s frustrating efforts to find for his daughter a piano teacher within walking distance of home, he said.
Go2 technology also can be used with voice-recognition systems that are or will be part of wireless networks.
Go2 Systems, a privately held company, sees an enormous opportunity in location-based services, which it projects will exceed $10 billion by 2006.
Advertising on the World Wide Web is expected to increase to $3.5 billion in 2002, up from $254 million in 1997. Access to the Internet, now the primary domain of the personal computer, will move toward mobile devices, which are expected to comprise more than half of all Web-enabled device shipments by 2002, the company said.
Hancock said Go2 Systems has demonstrated its system to public-safety officials in California because it offers 10-meter precision for enhanced emergency location services from wireless devices, as the Federal Communications Commission eventually will require.
The company’s biggest concern is that the FCC will require the use of latitude and longitude to the exclusion of other options, like the Go2 Systems WGRS.
“We filed comments with the FCC and attended a roundtable (on enhanced 911) about three months ago. The FCC is (considering) saying just use lat-long,” Hancock said.
However, in Europe, where there is no FCC mandate to provide E911, the commercial applications of mobile location services are growing in popularity, he said. Go2 Systems is in discussions with “some very big companies in Europe about licensing,” Hancock added.
The company has demonstrated its technology to Phone.com, a U.S.-based provider of Web browsers for wireless devices, he said.
“Universal Go2 Addresses provide an easy way to refer to any location without an address, such as a remote highway or a specific part of a large mall parking lot,” a company release said.
“It provides several advantages over traditional latitude and longitude coordinates, including brevity, simplicity, increased standardization and a city or regional reference.”
Ultimately, Go2 Systems hopes portable communications device manufacturers will incorporate into their devices a hard or soft key for Go2, he added.
Domestic wireless carriers also are high on its list of pending contacts.
