6 ms·

yeah I read that and thought "gosh how patronising would that be". also geolocation fails for my IP, says I'm 35 miles away from where I am, which in UK terms

by user24 15y ago

yeah I read that and thought "gosh how patronising would that be". also geolocation fails for my IP, says I'm 35 miles away from where I am, which in UK terms is quite far.

bigfudge 15y ago
That's pretty good in my book. I live in Cornwall, and there are lovely girls in Cheltenham just dying to speak to me...
scq 15y ago
In my case, it thinks I'm 470 miles away from where I am. It got the country right though (NZ).
illdave 15y ago
I think geolocation using an IP address is known to not be particularly reliable when you try to drill down to the city level - having said that, it was spot on with my city.
freehunter 15y ago
Plus geolocation almost always fails on a phone in my experience, the IPs generally come from the datacenter of the carrier (my old Alltel phone always said I was in Alabama, almost 1000 miles away).
- recursive 15y ago
  That probably just means they are doing geolocation by IP instead of trying the HTML5 browser-based geolocation service first.
  - glhaynes 15y ago
    If they used HTML5 geolocation instead, they'd burden the user with an annoying authorization popup (at least on the browsers I use). edit: (The lesson, then, is to not do web geolocation unless it strongly enriches the usefulness of the site (map-related sites, etc) or your hand is forced. People rightly don't want their location freely-shared and people are rightly annoyed by location-sharing-confirmation popups.)
RossM 15y ago
It's unusual for a geoloc service to find me (I'm in Plymouth, UK but my ISP is always listed as Newton Abbot) - but this one manages.
kingofspain 15y ago
I got London and I'm on the Dorset/Devon border. I find the "personalised" geolocation stuff mildly annoying in general - and not only because it's invariably miles off. It doesn't show me a site 'cares'. If anything, it looks lazy. If it's for showing prices in my currency rather than dollars then that's useful, but more often than not it's to show some stupid "What ho, old bean!" message. I'm a Northerner living in cider country - you may as well have said that in Spanish!
cdr 15y ago
I'm in a rural area of the US, and my home IP geolocates to the state capitol - more than 200 mi away.
- rhizome 15y ago
  Geolocators usually just do the equivalent of a `whois -a` and use the address of whoever owns the block of IP addresses, i.e. your ISP.
  - cdr 15y ago
    I don't think that's it - all geolocators, even those that employ advanced techniques, can only get as far as the capitol.
    - rhizome 15y ago
      What? No. My IP does not locate to my state's capitol.
      - cdr 15y ago
        I'm quite obviously speaking about myself.
        rhizome 15y ago
        all geolocators, even those that employ advanced techniques, can only get as far as the capitol. no, not obviously.
white_devil 15y ago
You're upset that a random website on the Internet doesn't know exactly where you are?
nilsbunger 15y ago
I win the ip-distance-error game! I'm in Stanford, California, but sites think I'm in Quebec, 4000 miles away. We have google fiber for internet, and apparently the ip block they use previously belonged to a Quebec ISP. Craigslist always comes up in French for me and shows me Quebec listings. And for a while we couldn't log into our bank of America web account because they don't allow foreign logins.

by user24 15y ago

yeah I read that and thought "gosh how patronising would that be". also geolocation fails for my IP, says I'm 35 miles away from where I am, which in UK terms is quite far.

bigfudge 15y ago

That's pretty good in my book. I live in Cornwall, and there are lovely girls in Cheltenham just dying to speak to me...

scq 15y ago

In my case, it thinks I'm 470 miles away from where I am. It got the country right though (NZ).

illdave 15y ago

I think geolocation using an IP address is known to not be particularly reliable when you try to drill down to the city level - having said that, it was spot on with my city.

freehunter 15y ago

Plus geolocation almost always fails on a phone in my experience, the IPs generally come from the datacenter of the carrier (my old Alltel phone always said I was in Alabama, almost 1000 miles away).

recursive 15y ago
That probably just means they are doing geolocation by IP instead of trying the HTML5 browser-based geolocation service first.
- glhaynes 15y ago
  If they used HTML5 geolocation instead, they'd burden the user with an annoying authorization popup (at least on the browsers I use). edit: (The lesson, then, is to not do web geolocation unless it strongly enriches the usefulness of the site (map-related sites, etc) or your hand is forced. People rightly don't want their location freely-shared and people are rightly annoyed by location-sharing-confirmation popups.)

RossM 15y ago

It's unusual for a geoloc service to find me (I'm in Plymouth, UK but my ISP is always listed as Newton Abbot) - but this one manages.

kingofspain 15y ago

I got London and I'm on the Dorset/Devon border. I find the "personalised" geolocation stuff mildly annoying in general - and not only because it's invariably miles off. It doesn't show me a site 'cares'. If anything, it looks lazy. If it's for showing prices in my currency rather than dollars then that's useful, but more often than not it's to show some stupid "What ho, old bean!" message. I'm a Northerner living in cider country - you may as well have said that in Spanish!

cdr 15y ago

I'm in a rural area of the US, and my home IP geolocates to the state capitol - more than 200 mi away.

rhizome 15y ago
Geolocators usually just do the equivalent of a `whois -a` and use the address of whoever owns the block of IP addresses, i.e. your ISP.
- cdr 15y ago
  I don't think that's it - all geolocators, even those that employ advanced techniques, can only get as far as the capitol.
  - rhizome 15y ago
    What? No. My IP does not locate to my state's capitol.
    - cdr 15y ago
      I'm quite obviously speaking about myself.
      - rhizome 15y ago
        all geolocators, even those that employ advanced techniques, can only get as far as the capitol. no, not obviously.

white_devil 15y ago

You're upset that a random website on the Internet doesn't know exactly where you are?

nilsbunger 15y ago

I win the ip-distance-error game! I'm in Stanford, California, but sites think I'm in Quebec, 4000 miles away. We have google fiber for internet, and apparently the ip block they use previously belonged to a Quebec ISP. Craigslist always comes up in French for me and shows me Quebec listings. And for a while we couldn't log into our bank of America web account because they don't allow foreign logins.