Comments on: Using Mobile Phones for Time & Motion Studies

By: mobile insurance

mobile insurance — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 22:23:25 +0000

i think they already have that data to a point they just need to collect it by adding some new recivers were they test it, as you can already track mobiles, some companys do to keep eye on there workforce, and can locate them to within 100 yards or so, for whatever reason they have,

By: The Law of Mobility » Blog Archive » Capturing the Power: Week of 1/20/08

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:02:17 +0000

[...] Using mobile phones for time & motion studies [...]

By: Don Jones

Don Jones — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 23:54:26 +0000

The question is how to pay for it. Cities and other governmental entities are already cash-strapped no matter how great a sales pitch. And the sales cycle is measured in months - many months.

Would need a way to pay for it, to get the venture capital world interested.

By: Wayne

Wayne — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:18:25 +0000

I was thinking of this last month. My thought was that it would be the equivalent of pagerank but for locations. Is it more likely that you would like to visit highly frequented locations versus less frequented location? Privacy issues notwithstanding it would be a cool service.

By: Sean

Sean — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:57:33 +0000

This is really cool technology and people need to be a little realistic. There is so much personal data out in the world today, we’re being “tracked” anyway. We might as well get something useful out of it. Honestly, the idea of “tracking” isn’t quite accurate. There is no hunter who is a mile behind you following your trail with a bloodhound. There is no brooding Orwellian villain behind a switchboard. This technology merely monitors and analyzes cell phone signals that are already floating around in order to make travel patterns more efficient…

(link)

By: Markus

Markus — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:41:47 +0000

Here one more example that is exactly what you are describing except it is used in shopping malls: (link)

By: Lincoln

Lincoln — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:06:07 +0000

The traffic item you mention has been done for a while in the US by a company called AirSage (www.airsage.com), who receives anonymized data from at least one national carrier.

By: Gaurav Agarwal

Gaurav Agarwal — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:53:21 +0000

check out Reality mining project at MIT. (http://reality.media.mit.edu/). They are doing something very similar and perhaps bigger collection of data for variety of analysis..

By: Jeroen Fransen

Jeroen Fransen — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:18:16 +0000

TomTom is doing exactly what you propose for traffic (http://www.tomtom.com/hdtraffic). They’re now (commercially) offering trafic information that is based on information from mobile phones in the Netherlands, UK and Germany. I haven’t tried it yet, but this should become the norm for navigation as our roads become more and more congested.

By: Asaf Wexler

Asaf Wexler — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:54:55 +0000

At least for traffic data, there’s a company that does exactly that and is operating in Israel: (link)
I’m not affiliated, just using their service through my cellular provider.

By: Raindeer

Raindeer — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:50:38 +0000

Vodafone and TomTom already have this system operational in The Netherlands, Germany and some other European Countries. (link)

You can find alot more information in this paper: (link)

Ofcourse you could use it for much more uses as you pointed out.

By: Ekechukwu Mbaachu

Ekechukwu Mbaachu — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 08:35:33 +0000

Very interesting article; I wonder how granular information gathered this way can be, considering the size of mobile phone cells in cities.