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... already [engadget.com] has it, the UK and Germany to follow.

Wish those other countries could also follow up with Coffee Shops.

CC.

While well intentioned, I hope these testers remember that measuring a system changes the system.

Another idea I had years ago [calum.org]. My idea though was to pay people to run the software on their phones (just as Google pay people to have ads on their sites - paying per hour of data uploaded, or something similar), and then lease the aggregated data to interested parties. Companies interested in building/buying toll roads, government agencies to see if new roads need to be built, etc etc.
However, with SatNav getting more and more sophisticated, it was only going to be a matter of time before TomTom (or whoever) built a model where it uploaded your position back to them, enabling them to build up a realtime picture of traffic speeds, which they could then use to update drivers to avoid jams, etc.

skeptical -1

Will it not be misused by finding the routine information of people?

Will this gps information be warrantless?

On Fberuary 3, 2008, about 100.000 Slashdot readers will participate in the clickvertising experiment, using website increase to Ronad Piquepailles site. ...

"So Dad, what did you do while you were in college?"

"Well son, I helped testing this monitoring system that allows the government and some big companies to track your every move nowadays. But in my time, they only used it to do a traffic thingy."

I never understood why GPS is considered such a good feature in a cell phone. On the contrary, it is possibly a bad thing, given the number of cases of wire tapping, cell phone eavesdropping (even when turned off [zdnet.com]). We already have enough privacy concerns given that triangulation can already tell a close-enough location of a cell phone user.

The more I see stories like this, the more I feel that a full-on Big Brother world could be oncoming. Sure, it could provide all kinds of data on the technicalities of GPS tracking via mobile phone triangulation or whatnot, but how much danger is there that these kinds of 'experiments' could be field tests for a greater invasion of privacy? RealID or even RFID, combined with this sort of GPS tracking could provide all the pieces needed to make our highway system a channelized control mechanism.

I should be more 'forward thinking' for my age I suppose. Does anyone else think that our privacy outweighs the convenience that realtime navigation and itinerary interactivity could potentially provide?

Last year TomTom announced their HD Traffic system http://www.tomtom.com/news/category.php?ID=4&NID=389&Language=4 [tomtom.com] that is using GSM handset location information from Vodafone to determine traffic conditions on dutch highways. Every 3 minute TomTom gets raw, anonymous handset location data from Vodafone. This data is then processed to determine where on the high ways large concentrations of mobile phones are moving slow. This might mean that there is a traffic jam at that location.

Each TomTom with HD traffic will also be equiped with a GSM sim and this enhanced traffic information is send via GPRS to these devices.

Some people are questioning the validity of their claims that this give better traffic details that current methodes. What is a car has broken down? will it trigger a traffic jam notification? How about paralell roads that are jammed? Or taxi's waiting at the trainstation for a pick up?

Turn off the phone when you're driving.

..I would suggest bringing their battery charger along. 10miles with the GPS enabled is a little on the excessive side for the N95.

Is it just me.... or.... did I read the same article on /. a few months back?

The only difference between this and what is done regularly by transportation research groups is the fact that instead of using normal gps devices, they just happen to be cell phones as well this time... I personally covered a few drive shifts when some of the interns where I work couldn't make it.

I have a system like that already installed on my car. It's called gBook MX ( http://g-book.com/pc/default.asp [g-book.com] ) In Japan, we already have a system called VICS ( http://www.vics.or.jp/english/index.html [vics.or.jp] ) which monitors traffic on highways and some big/medium sized roads, using sensors placed over the road to track the speed of car flow, and then this information is gathered, processed and broadcasted to cars' navigation systems (by an FM radio signal, afaik) in a form of level of traffic on roads (which then used by navigation system to lay out the most optimal route) However, I think about a year ago, Toyota have created another system called gBook MX (there also was gBook alpha variation, but honestly I don't know much about it). gBook MX (in addition to allowing you to wirelessly access information which is not on a navi's hard drive), also supports centralized traffic monitoring system similar to the one in TFA. Basically, your navigation system is connected to the W-CDMA network (provided by Japanese mobile operator AU), and sends position of the car while it's on the move, to the data center, every 5 or 10 seconds. This information is processed and broadcasted you back in the similar way as VICS above. Navigation systems which support gBook MX come in two flavors - ones with built-in transmission module (so you basically have a mobile phone-like transmitter built into your car), and the ones which allow you to pair your mobile with the navigation using Bluetooth (that's the type I have). So I just basically enter my car, start the engine, the navigation system automatically connects to my phone, and I become a GPS broadcaster of a sort (my coordinates are broadcasted to data center every 10 seconds - and it would be every 5 seconds if I had a buillt-in broadcasting module). The traffic for this broadcast is pretty low so I don't really care if my monthly bill goes up by 100-200 yen/month (after all, it's so cool to be a part of this new system ;) What's good about gBook MX is that it allows traffic monitoring for smaller roads, where there are no VICS sensors installed. Toyota said that it needs at least 100,000 cars equipped with gBook MX-compatible modules in order to get adequate coverage of the country. I don't know how many cars have this system on-board yet, though. But once the system is in place (it's already in place, but I think the number of "compatible" cars is still lacking somehow), this will be another way to escape traffic jams..

Slow from 6-9:30 and 4:30-7:00, mostly northbound in the morning, mostly southbound in the evening. When do I get my grant money?

Bad idea! Constant Surveillance and privacy invasion.

Somebody will come up with a "friendly" name, such as Living Vigilance .

1. Cell Phone transmits location, receives location-based advertisements.

2. Smile & Wave at Security Camera.

3. REAL ID\driver's license (still in pocket) scanned at shop entrance.

4. Smile & Wave at Security Camera.

5. Credit card scanned at purchase. Purchases registered and recorded.

6. Smile & Wave at Security Camera.

It doesn't make sense to use phones or triangulation to track cars. Keep in mind that driving is a highly regulated privilege, not a right. Within a few years you can be pretty sure that a GPS will be required in every motor vehicle (looking at you, sport bike riders). Have fun getting out of those speeding tickets, claiming you stopped at the stop sign, weren't weaving all over the road, weren't at the bank when it was robbed, etc. It's going to happen.

I am constantly forgetting my cell phone at home or at work. Will I then get to a red light and be stuck because the GPS says I'm not there?

It'd be interesting to provide a facility in phones to help make this less prone to privacy issues & semi-legal use by law enforcement. For example, allowing stations to poll passing phones for position and "instantaneous" speed (calculated internally by the phone using, say, the last 3 GPS position checks). Something like that would permit phone responses to omit any unique identifier since there would not be as much of a need to connect multiple responses from a single unit.

An alternative would be to generate a short-lived random ID on the first request by a base station and have it expire after, say, 2 minutes, with no record of it being retained in the phone.

Personally, I'd actually like it if things like phone and vehicle GPS could be used to enforce road safety rules... if I could trust the police to use it only for what they're legally allowed to use it for, rather than for random fishing expeditions and illegal surveillance. Since that'll NEVER happen, I guess the only option is strong anonymity for this sort of data collection.

This isn't new by any stretch of the imagination.

In 1994 (that's pushing two decades ago) I worked on a pilot project with Bell Atlantic Mobile (now Verizon), FHWA, Virginia DOT and the Maryland DOT that tracked mobile phones along the Washington, DC Beltway. The phones didn't have to cooperate, and it was also discovered that call rates went through the roof just as backups started to form. A bunch of the technology we developed ended up in some of the early E911 systems.

Anyone who has lived in an earthquake zone knows that even a ten second warning of an impending earthquake could save many lives. Dive under a desk, stand in a door frame, get out of an elevator, stop your car, etc.

I wonder if cell phones equipped with GPS and an accelerometer could provide such a warning? Even if only twenty per cent of the accelerometers registered abnormal acceleration, a real time analysis of the data would show the distinctive expanding wave front that could only be caused by a major earthquake. People could then be alerted by cell phone or radio.

Just another reason why not having a mobile telephone is better.

How is it a story that a bunch of students are going to try to do this, when there are already commercial services providing the same information? Heck, /. even covered this back in 2005!

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/19/143247 [slashdot.org]

And that was something like the 4th time the story had been posted.

there's also:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/30723/113/ [tgdaily.com]

and these guys have been around for ages.

http://www.zipdash.com/ [zipdash.com]

You know what? If they were running a free service that everyone could register with, and it integrated with google maps, then it would be a story.

Oh wait, ZipDash was bought by Google back in 2004...

The news here? That they're paying US$250 for the days work.

And how will this system tell if there road is blocked stopping traffic, or if the road is empty and everyone with cellphones are sitting at the cafe or pub?

The link leads to the GNAA final measure. Don't click, it even ruins Firefox on ubuntu.

No country i know has got mass transit that allows you to ditch the car.

I live in Switzerland, and some people argue that it has one of the best mass transit systems in the world - if that is true, other country must REALLY be in a heap of shit, because it sucks bad here.

Mass Transit just isn't flexible enough to help most people. There are cases where it might be better than sitting on congested streets, but that doesn't make it good. If i expect congestion, i'll just take the motorcycle instead of the car - this has downsides of it's own, but it's still better than taking the train or bus.