Where am i…Phone?

  If I ever get kidnapped, bundled into an unmarked van and am forced to wear a bag over my head as I’m driven to an unknown location, I wont need to be James Bond to figure out where I am when I’m finally released. You see, I have an iPhone with the latest firmware installed and it can find my location anywhere in the world by triangulating my co-ordinates (A-la Sayid from Lost) using mobile towers. The wildly over-the-top situation I just envisaged is about the only use for this feature I can think of right now. Sitting in our Bournemouth office I can hit the “Find Me” button in the iPhone maps application and am told I’m somewhere between the promenade about a mile from this building and the Isle of Wight, several miles away out at sea. I’m not.  So, all I can glean from my iPhone is the rough location, nearest city and country I’m currently in (if that country has cell phone masts). All geographical facts that I’m pretty sure I could figure out for myself save being blindfolded/unconscious and waking up in foreign climes.   US iPhone users have the added benefit of wi-fi hot spots to help narrow down a location (we’re hoping to have the same technology in Europe this year) and, if you’re in a particularly built-up, mast-heavy location, you can obtain slightly more accurate results from your pocket slice of Apple goodness but that’s as good as it gets.  Steve Jobs loves to pioneer. I bet he’s already in talks with NASA to use satellites to pinpoint an iPhone user anywhere in the world.