By Glenn Fleishman

Skyhook Wireless launches Wi-Fi-based positioning system: The company has a new name, but CEO Ted Morgan said in an interview last week that Skyhook’s intent in the same: using the location of Wi-Fi access points to pinpoint urban and suburban locations just as a GPS (global positioning satellite) receiver would. (You may remember Skyhook as Quarterscope back when they won a cellular industry award in spring 2004.)

The APs they rely on aren’t per se public: they’re the Wi-Fi gateways operated in homes and businesses that spew their unique identifiers and signal characteristics far beyond a home or an office building. Skyhook tethers itself to the high number of fixed-location gateways to deliver urban GPS-like reliability with lesser certainty as one reaches into less-dense suburbs.

Morgan said that in most cities, there are “8 to 15 APs at any given point to use.” The baseline scan they performed is dynamically updated based on client software, too. If a number of APs can be detected at a certain location, new APs or ones that don’t conform to the data can be added and updated. This happens constantly. “The user environment itself is maintaining and updating” the location database, Morgan said. This means that shifts over time won’t affect overall accuracy and new information will supplement existing baselines. The company also has contracts with delivery firms they haven’t revealed to perform ongoing scans.

Skyhook’s first announced partner is CyberAngel Security Solutions, which operates a laptop recovery system. The CyberAngel software already uses Internet protocol address tracing and other tools once a laptop is powered up. Add in GPS-like location awareness, and CyberAngel may be able to call the police with a street address to find a missing device.