Like thousands of other people, I got an iPod Touch for Christmas this year. The first few days was a flurry of finding and loading apps that I’ve come across while writing articles here. One application that I’ve always wanted to use more frequently is Brightkite. After doing the location-based microblogging article I realized how awesome Brightkite is. Much to my dismay, it doesn’t always work too well on the iPod Touch.

The service itself works just fine except for one critical problem, the location guessing for unregistered WAPs (Wireless Access Points) can be pretty terrible. I tried multiple access points at the university library, at home, and in public places to no avail. That was the breaking point for me, so I emailed Brightkite support to ask what the problem was.

The response I received made sense:

It’s possible that the nearby WiFi hotspots the app is using to locate you are registered in the wrong place. You can try registering the hotspots you use most here: http://www.skyhookwireless.com/howitworks/submit_ap.php

Once those get updated it should help in locating you more accurately.

This is where I finally started making headway. Once I hit the page I was sent to, I just had to find my location on a Google Map, give it the MAC address of the WAP I was connected to, and my email address.

Getting the MAC

This is the trickiest part of the whole operation, especially if you don’t have admin access to the WAP you want to submit. Luckily, there are some good free utilities out there to help you find the WAP’s MAC address.

• For Windows, there’s NetStumbler
• For Mac users, there’s iStumbler
• For Linux users, try Kismet (even though I never have)
• If you want to try this on your iPod – which I don’t recommend – grab WiFiChecker from the App Store

After I submitted those details, I just had to wait a week or so and the Brightkite app started picking up my location.

End Result

I can’t remember exactly how long it took to start working, but the next time I came back to it, it worked. Somewhere along the line I must have screwed up the mapping because now my home MAC also resolves to my work location. When I was at work, my location was never found until I submitted the WAP I was on (as seen below).