WapReview

As promised in May at Google I/O, Google has added a geolocation API to Gears. It supports IE, Firefox and Mobile Internet Explorer. When the latest Gears is installed on a compatible phone, the API provides JavaScript methods to retrieve the device's current location using Cell IDs and/or GPS. Gears provides a standards compliant way to share your location with mobile websites, opening up all sorts of possibilities for location based mobile web services.

The announcement is on the official Google Mobile Blog. It includes an interesting YouTube video of Google's Charles Wells demonstrating a new mobile restaurant finder service from LastMinute.com called fonefood (m.lastminute.com/fonefood/en) which uses the Gears Geolocation API to locate restaurants near you. fonefood works without Gears too, you just have to enter a location.

With or without the location feature, fonefood is an interesting service in its own right. It's similar to OpenTable (review) but focused on Europe. FoneFone lets you search for restaurants by location and cuisine in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Holland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. Search results include a detailed description, approximate price range, "click to call" phone number and a Google mobile map. You can check availability and make reservations too. No credit card is needed to make a reservation, just your name, email and phone number.

fonefood has an attractive design and usability is quite good on the devices it works on, but there are some problems with the current Beta version; outside the U.K., listings seem limited, nothing at all in Antwerp and no seafood restaurants in the Montparnasse district of Paris.  The Submit button on the search form also requires JavaScript to work making fonefood unusable with the majority of current mobile browsers.