Talk:SnapTrack

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Initial notes[edit]

Having put a stub on top of a previously deleted article, I wanted to say that although the previous article was a bit spammy, I believe the topic to be notable. A Silicon Valley startup with a $1bn exit is notable in its own right, and now that its founder is in the CA governor's race the history here is getting more attention. From what I've read, there are at least two interesting stories to be told. One is the race to create and standardize the phone-based emergency GPS location technology. There's a tech piece to that that's pretty neat, but there's also a business/political side, where SnapTrack filed a bunch of key patents and influenced the FCC mandate in a way that made their technology more valuable. The other story is one about the actual invention of the technology. As the linked LA Times article suggests, some claim that SnapTrack improperly patented inventions that weren't theirs, or at least not fully theirs. The court filings there make interesting reading. William Pietri (talk) 20:50, 30 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification needed[edit]

According to this article and the Steve Poizner article, SnapTrack's technology supposedly embodies an enhanced GPS tracking system that can be used in cell phones. The question is: Is it actually used in any cell phones? Qualcomm makes radio frequency components used in many, but not all brands of cell phones. Did they incorporate any SnapTrack technology in their current products, or was it a typical corporate buy-out to remove a competitor and shelve their technology in order to keep their own in the forefront? I may be mistaken, but from what I read a number of years ago, the current method of locating cell phones doesn't rely on GPS signals at all, but instead is a form of radio triangulation, wherein the various cell repeaters use differences in signal strength and/or time-of-arrival to roughly locate a transceiver. If that's true, then SnapTrack's technology isn't generally in use in consumer cell phone equipment.—Quicksilver^{T @} 20:11, 3 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I will expand a bit. I know (and have references) that Microsoft used these technologies in their Microsoft Mobile Explorer (See draft at User:mabdul/Microsoft Mobile Explorer). mabdul 09:34, 7 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]