November 13th, 2003:

There are plenty of LOAF implementations out there. However, in my opinion, they are all poorly coded. Most of them aren’t even in the least bit object oriented. The Java version is, of course. Because of the coding style used, most of them don’t promote use as a library in other greater projects. Additionally, none of them are for PHP.

So, after much work, I am proud to present to you, LOAF.php version 0.2.4. Written purely in PHP and entirely object oriented, this version is fully LOAFful and conforms to all the existing specifications.

If you find this software useful, and would like to give something back to the author, please feel free to donate to my camera fundraiser.

As mobile location technology continues to penetrate the market, more and more people are worried about the ability for third parties to determine where they are in the world. Most cell phone companies are stating that they wont disclose that information to anyone without your permission, aside from 911 service centers. While, in a Big Brother, 1984, "you actually know what I do on my lunch break?" sort of way, it worries me a bit. But, at least at this point, what I’m more concerned with is this. If you know where I am, why don’t I?

If my phone has all this amazing capacity to locate me to within 900ft, why don’t I have that information? Surely there should be an easy, simple programmatic way to gather such data about myself. But, I would assume, if there were, someone would have already written a program for the Nokia 3650 to do so. And there isn’t one. Not that I can find anyway.

So what’s the problem? I’m paying, indirectly or directly, for this service/feature… why can’t I use it for something other than a 911 call? Having it for a 911 call is great and all but… why stop there? Why not give me that data and let ME (the programmer) decide what to do with it?