Geolocation moves online from the mobile internet, with Opera and Skyhook

Opera and Skyhook Wireless today announced a deal to use geolocation for online web services. The opt-in service lets Opera users choose to share their location with Web sites, and use their computers net connection to access the same LBS services a mobile device can.

The Skyhook Wi-Fi Positioning System (WPS) can allow any computer or handheld with a wireless adapter to access location services. The services Opera has so far discussed are local search, social networking, geotagging, local advertising and discovery.

Thanks to a new W3C API for Geolocation, Opera can make its new location platform available to any Web developer with just a few lines of JavaScript.

From the release:

“Location is always relevant when someone is browsing the Web,” said Tatsuki Tomita, SVP of consumer products at Opera Software. “By embedding Skyhook’s technology into Opera and making it available through the W3C Geolocation API, we ensure that every Opera user gets the same, high-quality, location-based experience out of the gate.”

From the development blog: “This Opera build will prompt the user to make sure they agree to send their location, every time a site requests it. The UI in this build is experimental and we thought we should provide one possible way of protecting the user’s privacy.”

“Making accurate and reliable geolocation available over JavaScript to any Web developer means Skyhook’s market leading platform will be in the hands of a whole new world of developers and we expect to see the explosion of location-based services on the Web,” said Ryan Sarver, director of consumer products at Skyhook Wireless.

What we think?

I’m sure there are lots of good uses that geolocation can be put to on a computer. Especially if it’s a laptop, for example, with a wireless modem or a 3G key. But part of the main driving force behind LBS and geolocation is that it’s a powerful tool for turning your mobile device into a tool for interacting with the real world. Taking that tool and putting it somewhere it can’t move is removing a vast part of it’s usefulness.

So, while this is will be moderately useful in a normal computer, it’s nothing to write home about.