Chapter 13

Working with Location Information

What's in This Chapter?

• Understanding location-based services
• Choosing a location provider
• Finding a device's location
• Using geocoding to convert an address into a latitude and longitude
• Using reverse geocoding to convert a latitude and longitude into an address
• Configuring proximity alerts
• Using Google Maps

The display of location-specific information such as maps, addresses, and points of interest is a natural feature for mobile devices such as Android. Outside of some niche markets, location-specific information has never had great success on the desktop, primarily because a desktop PC is stuck in a single location. Mobile devices, on the other hand, are carried wherever the user goes. Therefore, as GPS technology has become smaller and cheaper, it has found its way into the cell phone market.