Mozilla Location Service/Mozilla Stumbler

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The Timmy
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Mozilla Location Service/Mozilla Stumbler

Post by The Timmy »

Is MLS/Mozilla Stumbler not really fully released or something yet? I've seen very little in the way of promotion of it. Even searching for articles brings up relatively little. And I'm sure I'm not the only one not seeing much information about it, as when I look up areas around me on the map, there is shockingly sparse data. Even a decently large city near me has almost nothing on residential streets, just the main ones. And smaller towns are often completely unmapped. I would think you would not only want every street covered, but you'd want fresh data fairly often to find new/changed WiFi networks. I use it myself when I go out, but I don't travel around much.

Also the Stumbler app on the Google Play store is at a quite low "10 thousand" downloads only.

Is there ever going to be a big push to get more people to help map? (I mean, people could even post on their local reddit subs or something to try getting more people to contribute in their area)
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patrickjdempsey
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Re: Mozilla Location Service/Mozilla Stumbler

Post by patrickjdempsey »

Was this their weird attempt to do GeoLocation stuff? Frankly if Google couldn't get that tech to work right by invading the privacy of everyone in the world with a WiFi antenna within range of a Street View car, then I seriously doubt anyone else has any chance of making it work. Especially not Mozilla.
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The Timmy
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Re: Mozilla Location Service/Mozilla Stumbler

Post by The Timmy »

I like the idea of them doing it. I hate turning on location on my android. The horror I felt when I first seen my Google Dashboard and how it had a map of all my movements for months. It would be nice being able to use a location service that doesn't track you in the process. And if a decent number of people would contribute it would have plenty enough data to at least give you a rough guess of your location. Also both Mozilla and Google respect _nomap in SSIDs for those who don't want their WiFi networks mapped.
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patrickjdempsey
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Re: Mozilla Location Service/Mozilla Stumbler

Post by patrickjdempsey »

Mobile phones don't typically use the GeoLocation service anyway... unless you do not have cellular service. Location service through a mobile device usually uses "GPS" which is not really GPS either, it's actually just the device pinging the closest cellular towers in order to triangulate it's position.
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James
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Re: Mozilla Location Service/Mozilla Stumbler

Post by James »

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mls-stumbler/

If you mean this Extension then it is a made by a third-party author like the majority of extensions hosted at addons.mozilla.org are.
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patrickjdempsey
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Re: Mozilla Location Service/Mozilla Stumbler

Post by patrickjdempsey »

I'm not sure what the thing on AMO is as it's over a year old, but the official "Stumbler" is on Github and is currently maintained:
https://location.services.mozilla.com/apps

Either way, I think the true purpose of the project is to provide location services for Firefox OS phones... although testing may be possible on other Android devices.
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The Timmy
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Re: Mozilla Location Service/Mozilla Stumbler

Post by The Timmy »

James wrote:https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mls-stumbler/

If you mean this Extension then it is a made by a third-party author like the majority of extensions hosted at addons.mozilla.org are.


Here is the specific Android app I meant https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... bler&hl=en Also apparently Firefox Mobile has an option in it's settings to do it. Haven't actually looked at that though.

patrickjdempsey wrote:Mobile phones don't typically use the GeoLocation service anyway... unless you do not have cellular service. Location service through a mobile device usually uses "GPS" which is not really GPS either, it's actually just the device pinging the closest cellular towers in order to triangulate it's position.

When it's set to power saving mode the location thing says "Uses Wi-Fi and mobile networks to estimate your location". And I know some people who have smart phones without a cell plan :p
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