Starting with Windows 7, Microsoft introduced the Windows Sensor and Location platform to enable programs to adapt to a computers environment. This includes anything from tracking your location with the help of a hardware devices like GPS, Wi-Fi, WWAN radios and the kind. Using this technology, your applications and gadgets can identify your current location and hence, provide more locally relevant content and functionality. For example, Ambient light sensors help your computer to automatically adjust screen brightness based on lighting conditions.
Geosense is a Windows 7 Location Sensor, which provides accurate positioning information of your computer without the need of any additional hardware device such as a GPS. Once installed, you can enable location sensors from the Control Panel by going to Control Panel –> Location and Other Sensors.
Once the sensors are enabled, you can use any appropriate program that supports geo location sensors, to find your current location. This can be useful e.g. during traveling, when you might require locating your current position or a nearby place (e.g. a hotel) . For demonstration purposes, the developer has provided an application with Google Maps integration. You can download this software separately and test out the sensors.
You can also enable Auto Refresh option (from the demo application) to refresh your location every five seconds to keep track of your existing location.
This software shows your current address and helps you locate other places (via Google Maps).
The benefit that you can derive from GeoSense mainly depends on the quality and capability of the application that is used to utilize the installed sensors. Personally, I was quite impressed by GeoSense due to its ability to provide a smartphone like sensor to a computer without the need of any additional hardware device. Moreover, the simplicity of installation itself is quite remarkable, as GeoSense can be installed from a simple setup file and requires no complex configurations.
GeoSense works only on Windows 7, including both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.
