Location Services

Apple iPods offer a Location Service to programmers for use in applications; imagine being able to get a free yourOrg app from the Apple AppStore that, once logged-in, allowed you to get driving/parking/walking directions to your next class or meeting. The timetabling info. is already available from yourOrg apps.

Location Services uses (SkyHook's) amalgam of GPS (iPhone only), WiFi and cellphone tower triangulation (iPhone only). WiFi has the advantage of being about as accurate as GPS, it works well indoors and it works on both iTouch (~$200) and iPhone (~$500 or $150 +$65/m x 36).

Here is a (manual) webapp that allows you to upload your WiFi's MAC address, latitude & longitude to SyHook's databases.

Just add some programming and we're good to go!

Delirious

..my mind goes racing around and around and around it chases it's tail and starts all over again, endlessly. That's what the fever & delerium of this latest flu is like for me.

Now, that its passed, I draw your attention to yet another way we could, as a group of web-application developers, handle authentication & authorization for all those web applications we're sure to build before the next millenium.

This one differs from the one I concocted a few weeks ago, it's based on OpenSSO:

• A&A is handled completely outside your app, you lockdown URLs by User, Role & Permission
  • It depends upon your using RESTful URLs, you get these out-of-the-box w/Grails
• A&A is handled by Sun's OpenSSO product
• Like the name says single-signon for all your web apps
• You don't even have to write a login page
• There is, of course, a Grails plugin

Here's some links to a bit of OpenSSO usage:

• 4 ways to integrate with OpenSSO e.g. w/RubyOnRails
• w/JavaFX
• w/Grails
• 4-hour lab from Sun on config'ing OpenSSO

Fever time!