Gears

…ok, so you want a killer web app that will locate the position of the current visitor? No problem. Here are the tools of the trade. (Your requirements may vary, for me, i want Lat/Long information, with regards to the KISS principle)

1. IP to location databases
Typical providers include ip2location, ipligence, maxmind. They are usually expensive, static, and just too big. The concept is that you have a big database downloaded and monthly updated, and you can open that database to get the location info from whatever platform you want. Since IP addresses change dynamically i just don’t see this method viable. You might consider them, if you need the information in an offline environment. Note that some of these providers offer a webservice also, to query results online. More about this later.

…so you still remember the times when Internet was loud of desktop applications going online, huh? Email was one of the earliest obvious implementations, slowly followed by the more difficult applications: online document, spreadsheet, presentation editing, agenda, todo list, contact management, image editing, imagemap editing ;), etc. And you started to use one or more of these online wonders, and you were happy. Obviously sooner or later you realized you are pretty much stuck when you are offline. Application developers also had this in mind, and now in 2008 we have a few handsome tools to transform some of these applications to work in offline mode.