where are you, who who, who who...

The idea has been around around for quite a while.

Don't forget about Microsoft Location Finder:

It uses wi-fi access point locations. If that's not avaiable, it uses reverse DNS lookup.

Then, there's Loki for social networking:

and of course, Google Maps:

It would seem that Microsoft has forgotten it. That's quite the stale listing. A general search shows most articles from around 2006, the date of that link.

A search of Microsoft Knowledge Base turns up nothing.

It used to be a very obvious option in the maps.live.com site, but now it's gone. Virtual Earth doesn't offer it any more, and there are so many Microsoft mapping programs that I gave up looking for one that has it. It might still be part of MapPoint, but I always was confused whether that included Streets and Trips or not.

I thought it was clever technology, and pinpointed my location a few times, but I don't think I ever saw a way to enter information into their database, or how their database was derived.

I haven't installed it on my current laptop. Does it still work for you?

The name got changed to Microsoft Live Search Maps and is part of the MS Live Search collection:

Yep. Seems to be gone.

I don't have it installed on any of my machines. However, it was installed with MS Streets and Traps on a customers machine now in my office. The problem is that I can't uninstall it because it demands the CD, which has disappeared. I'll try it when I get to the office.

Note that there are various web sites that will guess your city by IP address:

Not as nice as by hotspot, but useful.

It doesn't work. I right click on the icon in the system tray, select "Locate Me" and it takes me to:

However, no location marker appears in the map display. Oh well...

For purposes of searching for a nearby business, or gaining routing knowledge to some other point, the IP address that you have is probably particularly unuseful. At best it will be the provider's local head end, not your connected WAP.

If you have a cell phone that will run Google Maps with "My Location", that can do better job of location, although it either doesn't work on my phone, or won't bother because it can't get enough information in my remote locale. maps.google.com/gmm My phone help-about shows myl:N/A. That might be correct, that I am in North America, but it probably means something else. ;-)