Anorak: poorman's GPS for your mobile phone

To-do list:

Upload locations to a website

The aim here is to know where your train is before leaving home.

With enough people running anorak you might be lucky enough that someone on the trains you normally catch is running it.

If they used GPRS to upload their current location to a suitable website then you would know where your train was (and how late!) before leaving home.

The basic idea would be to have Anorak check with the website for trains on your route. Once on board a train you have it upload where the train is, so its location is available for others.

Of course, this would be good for any regular journey, not just trains.

The only obstacle to gettting this working are prohibitive charges (1c per 100k) for GPRS data. Just debugging the thing could get expensive ;)

Store cell information in a database instead of csv files

Anorak currently stores cell tower information in simple csv files. Nokia have been kind enough to provide a database API, so it would be good to use it.

Cell database should include country codes for international travellers

If you travel to enough countries you will start hitting dupes in the LAC numbers.

The code needs fixing up to make sure it uses country code information to avoid clashes.

Find better algorithms for improving time estimates

The itinerary code still needs some work. In particular, it will need to be made smarter if the upload to website idea is to work. For example, it needs to be able to distinguish between standing on the platform waiting for the train to arrive and sitting on the train in the station, waiting for it to leave.