Citysense Uses GPS to Show Live Crowd Movement
by Will Safer, posted Jul 1st 2008 at 1:25PM
This activity aggregator from a Columbia University professor tracks users by the GPS capability of their mobile phones (in this case BlackBerrys, but an application for the iPhone is coming soon) and maps out where everyone is in a city.
The initial use, for business and marketing, is obvious. See where the people go and put your business there. The next use is the clever one, though. Let people see where the hot activity is, match it with their own patterns of movement and travel around the metropolis, and make suggestions of where they might want to go next -- all based on complex algorithms that compile data constantly being uploaded to the CitySense system.
The creator, Tony Jebara, an Associate Professor in Computer Science at Columbia, says CitySense can be used tailored to your own activity. Coming soon is the ability for the system to analyze where you've specifically been and then show you where like-minded people also are likely to tread.
All this movement and information is processed by the Sense Networks Macrosense platform. Jebara says that the information gathered is anonymous and you can delete your history at any time.
One other clever feature: If the CitySense system determines that there are more people than usual up and about in the morning, it can actually adjust its alarm clock to wake you a few minutes early, giving you additional time to navigate traffic or an overwhelmed mass transit system. (Just don't hit that snooze button.) [Source: Citysense via Textually.org.]
Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? Then maybe you need a little The initial use, for business and marketing, is obvious. See where the people go and put your business there. The next use is the clever one, though. Let people see where the hot activity is, match it with their own patterns of movement and travel around the metropolis, and make suggestions of where they might want to go next -- all based on complex algorithms that compile data constantly being uploaded to the CitySense system.
The creator, Tony Jebara, an Associate Professor in Computer Science at Columbia, says CitySense can be used tailored to your own activity. Coming soon is the ability for the system to analyze where you've specifically been and then show you where like-minded people also are likely to tread.
All this movement and information is processed by the Sense Networks Macrosense platform. Jebara says that the information gathered is anonymous and you can delete your history at any time.
One other clever feature: If the CitySense system determines that there are more people than usual up and about in the morning, it can actually adjust its alarm clock to wake you a few minutes early, giving you additional time to navigate traffic or an overwhelmed mass transit system. (Just don't hit that snooze button.) [Source: Citysense via Textually.org.]
Every high school student's worst nightmare is about to come true. 
