Slashdot Log In
Cell Phones Tracking Nightlife Activity
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Jun 29, 2008 03:20 PM
from the ignores-all-cb-radio-based-night-life dept.
from the ignores-all-cb-radio-based-night-life dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "A Columbia University computer science professor has co-founded a New York-based company named Sense Networks to sell tracking software to other companies. It is also distributing a free version of this software, named Citysense, which shows on your cell phone where the wild things are happening in your own town. Citysense 'uses advanced machine learning techniques to number crunch vast amounts of data emanating from thousands of cell-phones, GPS-equipped cabs and other data devices to paint live pictures of where people are gathering.' Citysense is available today in San Francisco, before being soon deployed in Chicago and five other U.S. cities."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Those wild and crazy Japanese... (Score:5, Interesting)
...have been selling devices for years that match up males and females. You program your device for male/single/gay or whatever and when a compatible person is nearby in notifies you. Don't know how they notify- maybe a smoke detector alarm.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't crash their party (Score:5, Insightful)
More seriously, it appears that this technology is GPS-only and not all folks have GPS-equipped phones. I don't understand GPS all that well and I'm wondering how this tracking software can locate them, do they have to consent to being tracked, etc. This also has some scary big-brother implications if it were to move past GPS and into standard triangulation of ALL cell phones -- with or without the user's consent(well, kinda -- what percent of average Joe users actually read their EULA/cell contract/etc.), to be used for marketing purposes(or worse).
Re:Don't crash their party (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
it appears that in order to use this system, you also have to feed it your own information.
Why do have this "wild and crazy" vision of a CueCat?
Re:Don't crash their party (Score:5, Funny)
If a cellphone company ever tracks the cellphones of slashdotters they'll think we're dead.
"Hey Jim, that guy has been sitting in the basement for the last 48 hours!"
"Nah, he's still alive. Starcraft II came out three days ago."
Parent
Re:Don't crash their party (Score:4, Funny)
What's funny is the moment I read this I immediately went to starcraft2.com to see if you were telling the truth.
But alas, it was only a joke.
Parent
Re:Don't crash their party (Score:5, Informative)
More seriously, it appears that this technology is GPS-only and not all folks have GPS-equipped phones. I don't understand GPS all that well and I'm wondering how this tracking software can locate them, do they have to consent to being tracked, etc.
Actually, GPS isn't required to locate you with a cell phones. The technology exists to poll which cell phone towers your phone is polling and make a guesstimate of where you are based on that.
With cell technology, you're not simply talking to one tower at a time because if you were traveling, then as soon as you were out of range of the tower, you would have the call drop. So the cell phones are actively polling the towers as you move to hand you off between the closest (or best signal in some case).
This is how they locate you if you call 911.
The downside is that if you are in a rural area, and have only 1 or even two towers (it takes three to triangulate), then they can't really tell where you are other than somewhere in a radius of the tower. So this technique only works within areas with high cell tower density.
On a side note, you could always lend your cell phone to a girl when she goes to a Chip and Dale club and let the hilarity ensue when your friends show up there.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I assume you mean Chippendales [google.com] not Chip and Dale [google.com].
There's a difference?!?! Oh God! Must cancel my son's birthday party ASAP.
Re: (Score:2)
cool... (Score:5, Funny)
what could possibly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Or terrorists, for that matter.
That said, I can't see the utility of something like this being all that high. Sure, it'll appeal to the posers who want to be seen in the right places; but the truly cool people don't need a device to tell them where the parties are, and the truly nerdy don't care.
Come to think of it, the terrorists would be doing us a favor if they bombed the places frequented by those types. Let's turn it on and watch the species evolve ever higher!
Re:what could possibly... (Score:5, Insightful)
"it'll appeal to the posers who want to be seen in the right places"
Except it won't even do that - by definition, anywhere where there's thousands of people isn't 'the right place'. Believe me, no hipster would be seen dead in pacbell park during a game or in some mega-nightclub. Posers want to boast about how they were in some tiny artspace with only 100 of the cogniceti(sp?) last night, now how they were in some giant venue that every moron from the burbs had managed to find.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. Turn clubbing into Disneyland. Check your phone to figure out where the biggest lines are. Meanwhile people who have some sanity are sitting in a hole in the wall club enjoying a drink talking to others of like mind until that place too becomes the latest ride in the clubbing Disneyland.
Nightlife magazines will soon be reporting how to find clubs and trendy spots that are OFF the information grid. Personally, I can't wait for that one.
Improves? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not everyone's idea of fun is hanging out at a club. Some people would nearly die of boredom at a nightclub. Just because someone else's idea of fun isn't your idea of fun, doesn't mean they aren't having a good time. I'm sure the folks who like hanging out at clubs would get bored at a frantic LAN FPS game (what without people to hit on/get hit on by, the pointless braindead social banter, and the lack of certain mind-altering substances), or would be scared shitless driving around a track at high speed (b
Re: (Score:2)
I usually left early, as my allergy to "plastic people" started to act up.
Two words... (Score:4, Interesting)
"Flash crowd."
Larry Niven, 1973. Sure, we don't have the instant travel, but this sounds like it would give much more immediate information than waiting for Jerryberry Jansen to randomly turn up at the incident with a portable TV camera.
Las Vegas (Score:2, Informative)
That's not how fun evenings work... (Score:2, Insightful)
Outside of areas with small populations, who in the demographic looking for nightlife would look for large groups of people to help determine where to go for fun? That's perhaps even dumber than determining the best movie to see based solely on the box office receipts from the weekend before.
Re:That's not how fun evenings work... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd probably use it to find where people aren't.
Parent
My thoughts exactly (Score:3, Funny)
I'm always struggling to find unpopulated, desolate areas for many of my hobbies. Being able to find an area with no people around would be very useful. The problem is that you run into the conundrum of whether to go to the non-obvious or obvious empty areas. Which one would someone looking for an empty area go to, in order to avoid others seeking the same thing?
Not helping at all (Score:5, Insightful)
I can already picture sketchy bar owners buying up a ton of these things, to make their spot appear "hot" even though it's dead. After all, the idiotic vodka-redbull sipping bar-hoppers instinctively gravitate to the busiest shitholes, and this "technology" exists solely to capitalize even further on their collective ignorance.
Spontaenous gatherings (Score:2)
If lots of people paid attention to where other people are and gravitated towards them, spontaneous gatherings of people could occur much like a planet would form in a young solar system.
Right?
Good idea, but not very practical (Score:3, Informative)
This is an interesting idea, but it won't catch on for a few more years. The problem is that only a tiny fraction of cell phones (I would estimate less than 1%) are capable of GPS tracking now. Of those people who have a compatible phone, most won't bother to install the app and remember to start it whenever they go out. Typical battery life when GPS is turned on is about 8 hours. So this is not an app that can run in the background 24/7.
In the end, you will have something like 10 people in San Francisco who send data to their system. It is enough data to make sense of what's happening in the city? Not hardly.
Give it another 5-10 years, and perhaps most phones will have GPSs in them. Perhaps battery life will improve enough to make continuous GPS tracking possible. Until then, this service, and other similar services, will have little value.