I read the news before this post.
However, as usual, Philipp make it much more intersting. The Machiavelli part is short but great!
Thanks, Blogoscoped rocks.

Indeed it is a tad "approximate". I live in Seoul, Korea, but your app placed me in :
Country: USA
Country code: US
Region: KY
City: Wellington

Shouldn't it at least be able to get the country right based on the IP address?

Sylvain, in comparison where does blogoscoped.com/where/ put you? That page is using another service, http ://api.hostip.info/get_html.php?ip=[ip_address]

The demo page doesn't work at all for me – say loading... and that's it.
FF3 and IE6.
The other one (/where/) says Unknown country.

Robert, I changed something just now, can you try again and see if you get the "Country not found" message? blogoscoped.com/files/where.ht ...

Philipp,
The demo doesn't work for me either, it always says "loading...".

The "blogoscoped.com/where/" pages correctly locates the headquarters of my company here in the US (which I presume is where our internet gateway is).

Quasihellfish, if you use Firefox what does the Firefox error page say, if anything? (Tools -> Error Console, pls clear old warnings before loading the Where app...)

The Same Problem here with FF2 and Opera 9.51

The FF-Error Console has the following error:
Fehler: google.loader.ClientLocation has no properties
Quelldatei: blogoscoped.com/files/where.ht ...
Zeile: 15

Question though for who of you does it work?

google.loader.ClientLocation is null for me.

If you check this file which you're including:

google.com/jsapi?key=ABQIAAAAp ...

For me, the only occurrence of "ClientLocation" is line 11:

google.loader.ClientLocation = null;

And it's not in any of the other includes JS files either.

> If you check this file which you're including:
>
> google.com/jsapi?key=ABQIAAAAp ...

For me that line in the file reads:

google.loader.ClientLocation = {"latitude":48.8,"longitude":9.25,"address":{"city":"Stuttgart","region":"Baden-Wu00fcrttemberg","country":"Germany","country_code":"DE"}};

I wonder if that means they can't geolocate me then.

I don't get a Firefox error but your "Hmm cannot initiate the Google API correctly..."

I entered the coordinates given by files/where.html in Google Maps, and it centered in on the building across the street from mine. That's pretty accurate...

To your point about why Google would offer stuff like geolocation or Gears, I think if the web gets better, then more people use it, and more people using the net means more people using Google. So it's in our best interests to work so that more people use the internet.

Matt, true, I believe that's another reason (but not the only one I think). What's important to consider as well is that different organizations and people have different ideas of what's a "better web", and in the end what makes it in Google Gears and what doesn't is still a shot called by Google (not say the World Wide Web Consortium)... and that's control. Microsoft would probably argue Silverlight makes the web more powerful, too... but who would they contact from the Gears team to ask for inclusion of Silverlight in Gears? (If say the two systems were half-way compatible etc., please don't take this too literal...)

blogoscoped.com/files/where.ht ... works for me, it located my city of Yekaterinburg, Russia. blogoscoped.com/where/ USA + Mexico map ;-) IE7+Avant here.

blogoscoped.com/files/where.html Showed me about 20 miles from where I really am so that's not too bad.

FF3 on Mac.

Philipp, this other app blogoscoped.com/where/ shows me a frozen (yellow hued) map of the US with a few place markers (i can't interact with the map). On the left is a likewise frozen panel with scrollbar containing (unclickable) Google search results, all about Korea.

It works well for me (France, near Paris; FF3)

I get "Hmm cannot initiate the Google API correctly.." error.
It's not related to the browser, because it worked yesterday.
The only difference between yesterday and today is my location, so my IP.

"Hmm cannot initiate the Google API correctly..." error is coming since 7 hours :)
It was working pretty well some 20 hours back before I went to sleep ..

TOMHTML, My IP hasn't changed. But I am getting the message .....

Ah, so it might be an issue from Google. Their bad.

BTW, did anyone noticed Gears team has also released a "BLOB API"? It's for handling binary data. It sounds great... :)