Reporting your position

There are different ways to report your position

To read the command documentation for this issue click on the level you want to learn about

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At Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Phnom Penh, Cambodia*Hello everyone

You can also use the L: or l: microformat

L:Phnom Penh, Cambodia

You can embed location using a backslash. For multi-word location names you need to open and close the location in slashes

Just arrived to the office in /Chicago

The weather in /Phnom Penh/ got very bad just as we arrived

Location names as well as street addresses can be used with GeoChat.

GeoChat will first check if you have a personal custom location in your Settings (for example you could specify names like 'home' or 'the office'), then check for custom location names in the group receiving the message (for example, you could say 'at headquarters' or 'at building 5') and finally use Google and Yahoo services for discovering if the place name you sent can be translated into a lat/long.

By default positions are assumed to be WGS84

Using decimal latitude and longitudes:

You can send lat*long*message

12.4343*121.3333*Hello everyone

You can specify hemispheres with N/S E/W or using minus signs:

12.4343S*121.3333W*Hello everyone

-12.4343*-121.3333*Hello everyone

The format is resilient to spaces

12. 4343 * 121 . 3333

And commas versus periods

12,4343*121,3333

Using Degrees minutes seconds:

You can use commas, periods or degree symbols as separators

dd.mm.ss.ddd

12.33.44.999
34° 30' 30'' S
S 34° 30' 30''
-34° 30' 30''

Just degrees and minutes with decimal

-34° 30.5'
-34° 30.5

Or degrees with decimal

-34.508°
-34.508

Military Grid Reference System and United States National Grid are similar reference systems, with a few differences regarding precision and input format. Supported format is the MGRS/USNG string, optionally followed by a message and optionally preceded by the word 'at'. For example:

Sending a location update: 18S UJ 234 064

Location update with message: 18S UJ 234 064 Hello world

Using optional 'at' prefix: at 18S UJ 234 064

The location string is composed by four components: gridzone, square, easting and northing. They may be separated by spaces or specified toghether. Easting and northing may not be included (in which case are assumed to be zero); if specified, they must have the same number of digits, as they must both have the same precision. For example:

Three digits easting and northing, separating components: 18S UJ 234 064

Five digits easting and northing, with gridzone and square toghether: 18SUJ 23421 06442

Whole string without spaces: 18SUJ2342106442

No easting and northing: 18SUJ

Failed geolocation parsing

  153.234 * 323.3534
  15.234 N * 232.3534 W * message * tags

Should the user enter invalid values for lat/long coordinates, a warning will be sent back to him/her. The message is not sent to the group.

Failed locations lookup

  at nowhere * hello there * tag1 tag2
  nowhere * hello there * tag1 tag2
  at nowhere

For any of the Location cases, if the address lookup fails, a warning is sent to the sender, his/her location remains the same and the full message is delivered to all recipients unchanged.

Thuraya SMS format

A SMS sent from a Thuraya satellite phone automatically updates your position in geochat. To use this, go to 'location', ' Get Fix' 'Send To..' 'SMS' entr your geochat number and then press send. Thuraya will automatically create a text messge with a propietary format reproting your latitude longitude, altitude, etc. Geochat will update your coordinates based on this information.