New Firefox Brings Location to the Browser
Location awareness is one of the killer features in the new iPhone. Especially in real estate apps, like Zillow’s app, which recently broke ½ million downloads.
We all know the old axiom with property, right? Location, location, location.
Now that can be translated to your desktop, in addition to your phone. The new version of Firefox (3.5) has added location awareness as one of the new features in this release. From their website:
Now Firefox can tell websites where you’re located so you can find info that’s more relevant and more useful (for example, getting directions or finding restaurants near you). It’s all optional – Firefox doesn’t share your location without your permission – and is done with the utmost respect for your privacy.
The is potentially huge for online real estate sites, which in the near future could query their visitors, ask for their location and return the most relevant results quickly and seamlessly to their desktop.
Granted if you are searching from home, you (hopefully) already know where you are. But if you were house hunting in a city in an unfamiliar State or pulling out a 3G-enabled netbook in a coffee shop on a Sunday morning open house tour, this could be a killer feature.
So the race is on – which will be the first site to implement this feature? Any bets?
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6 Comment(s)
2 Trackback(s)
- From Google Maps Wins! | Jul 9, 2009
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Bill Skrypnyk | Jul 1, 2009 | Reply
Geolocation in FF 3.5 is great: it’s one of the most prominent features of HTML5 advocated by Google at their last Google I/O 2009 conference. However, geolocation in the browser can also be obtained via google gears and by simply using google’s ajax based geolocation service. Granted, that without a GPS device the geolocation, one way or another, is just a guess, with varying degrees of accuracy.
For kicks, try:
http://vandemo.myrealpage.com/m
This is a demo account for MyRealPage in Greater Vancouver, BC Canada. It is supposed to find listings around your location, so if you are not in Greater Vancouver, it will find nothing, but it should try to locate you at least approximately. Try it on different browsers, not just FF 3.5: Chrome works particularly well (because it has gears pre-installed), but so do FF 3, IE (haven’t tried Opera).
My company (MyRealPage) is using geolocation to bring listing searches to iPhone and Android based phones.
-Bill Skrypnyk
MyRealPage.com
Ray Giesbrecht | Jul 3, 2009 | Reply
We just a launched something similar here in Vancouver, BC. An MLS i-Phone app that displays all lower mainland listings.
P.S. Joel I tried sending this via the Press link above but it wouldn’t send. Please delete this PS when you get this and Happy 4th of July to you.
Cheers,
California GRI | Jul 7, 2009 | Reply
Wow. Huge potential for this service. However, since FF still has a fairly small % of users in the overall browser market, companies will probably not invest heavily in this.
Overland Park Real Estate | Jul 9, 2009 | Reply
I love FireFox, I just wish Microsoft would make it easier for FireFox to play with Web Outlook.
Matthew Kettlewell | Jul 29, 2009 | Reply
In reply to California GRI above, FF has a larger market share that all the versions of IE combined
According to the W3 consortium
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
This HTML5, Gears and Geo Location is very intriguing and should provide some excellent extended services not only to real estate, but many other venues as well.
Round Rock Realtors - Jacci | Dec 17, 2009 | Reply
Thats right, ff has a larger share than many people think. I check monthly stats on some of my sites and many of my visitors are using ff. Now the geolocation in ff is a cool set up.