OStatic

Mozilla Labs recently offered a sneak peak and download of Geode. Geode is one of the first applications to use the new W3C geolocation specification API. It is currently available as a plug-in for Firefox 3 (and seems to only support Windows and Mac systems at this time). Mozilla Labs indicates it will likely be a new feature integrated in an upcoming browser release.

Geode uses web-based tracking, which tends to be faster than the traditional GPS geolocation methods. This would enable Firefox to sense the user's location and give information, for example, on local businesses, or quick access to local news.

With all the competition there is surrounding mobile operating systems, many of them Linux-based, and increasing convergence between open source and emerging software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, it's not surprising to see standards getting short shrift. Heck, if you look back at many of the classic platform wars in the history of computing and communications, the key competitors didn't even want common standards a lot of the time; instead, they wanted to control their own standards. That's why it's good to see the World Wide Web Consortium releasing its very first standards for mobile web site design.