The Memory Leak

Reading about Peter Batty playing with his IPhone makes me wonder about business models for calibration of geolocation technologies.

It seems to me that if I make a call from a phone equiped with GPS in an area covered by cell towers or WiFi, that my GPS location could be collected and used for calibration. When subsequent calls are made from that area with phones (such as IPhones) that lack GPS, a correctional offset could be applied. Since my GPS location has value, seems like I should be offered some way to sell it. Or trade it for minutes?

Is Google’s My Location already doing this? If so, then since Google owns the locational bit of info, calling it “My Location” seems a bit misleading.

Last month a spatial app, Live Traffic, won 2nd place ($5000) in the Nokia Open C challenge:

Live Traffic is a traffic assistance software that provides real-time traffic volumes, developed by a project team of four developers, led by by Pu Zhihua of Shanghai, China. Live Traffic adopts FCD (Floating Car Data) technology to acquire road traffic information anywhere anytime, and publish mapped traffic information to Nokia phone users via GPRS or EDGE connections. The developers ported 2,500 lines of code via Open C.

First place winner got $10,000 for … oh, don’t ask, suffice to say it is yet another video app.

Nokia is not a member of the Open Handset Alliance, which is promoting the Android API designed by Google, so I guess they are competing for market. With the top award for Google’s Android Developer Challenge set at $275,000, I bet Android beats out Open C.

I’m not certain, but it looks like an entry to the Android challenge could leverage the MapView. So maybe the grand prize winner will be something useful instead of yet another way to watch TV.

The Revolution will not be on Streaming Video
Like the folks at the One Laptop Per Child program, it seems like the US geospatial community is too focused on laptops/desktops as a hardware platform. At Large points out a good article about mobile phones in Africa (”Can Cell phones Save the World?”). I like the system described here by Manobi, but it seems like it needs spatial enablement.

What we need are some slick mobile geospatial apps for 3rd world development.

In a country like Bangladesh, for example, almost every everyone has a mobile phone while few have (or need?) laptops.

I suggest developing a mobile app that connects farmers, truckers, and packers. Imagine an eBay like system on mobile phones that connect these three groups of users. Location would be important since transport costs are such a large factor. Farmers (who rarely own trucks) would contract to sell produce to packers and have it delivered by truckers. The packer they choose would be based on trucking cost subtracted from the price offered by packer. Truckers would offer prices based on routing costs, (including deadhead), coordinating between multiple pickup locations.

With three people involved in a transaction (farmers, truckers, and packers), would it be possible for an eBay-like rating system?

If so, then the payoff could be substantial.

Here’s an interesting video where Google describes how they use MapReduce to build connectivity in their street data. In ESRI terminology, this how they clean and build topology using parallel processing. They also briefly mention using it to render map tiles.

They don’t go into detail, but apparently those of us outside Google could do this sort of thing using Hadoop on Amazon EC2.

A challenge with tile caches is keeping them up to date with the vectors they depict. Here is how ESRI does it. I think ESRI needs to allow us to scale tile generation across a large number of cpus the way Google does. The licensing model needs to allow this. It seems like opensource Geo software on a paid AMI could be coupled with Hadoop on EC2 to do this.

Once that happens, an agency like a state data center could rebuild tile caches on EC2/S3 nightly from, for example, a statewide vector layer of parcel maps.

I’ve heard rebuilding a geodatabase topology for the nationwide census takes over 24 hours. I bet a MapReduce approach would be much faster for this too.

In the latest indication that Neogeography is becoming a disruptive technology, All Points quotes MapInfo CEO saying that NeoGeography is not GIS.

This is interesting considering MapInfo’s history of avoiding of the term (GIS) when describing themselves. Take a look at their brochure - lots of flashy eye candy, but no mention of “GIS”. (It’s not searchable, so I can’t say that for sure.)

The lament reminds me of Matt Dillon’s performance in Drugstore Cowboy when describing TV Babies.

Speaking of TV Babies, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised how popular Justin.tv is with voters in the Amazon Web Services challenge. If you haven’t voted yet, please do so.

War is too important to be left to the generals.
-Clemenceau

Maybe geography is too important to be left to geographers? NSGIC Blog points out a new paper by Michael Goodchild, Citizens as Sensors: The World of Volunteered Geography. It’s worth reading. My only disappointment is, while the abstract says he will discuss threats to privacy, I can’t find much discussion on that in the paper.

Nobody goes there anymore - it’s too crowded. - Yogi Berra

Note that Goodchild is not calling it Crowdsourcing, as those following Googles’ activities like to call it. Goodchild’s paper was published before My Location was released, a move which has raised even more privacy issues. CIO Today explains some of the privacy issues. I’d be interested in hearing what Goodchild might say about this.

The launch of Google Maps with My Location yesterday has stirred up discussion of spatial privacy in the NY Times.

Privacy issues have long been discussed in other sectors, but only relatively recently in GeoData arena. Bob Blakley has been studying this for quite a while, and has promoted the concept of an “Identity Oracle”. While it has nothing to do with Oracle Corporation, private industry does play a key role.

The idea is that I should own and control my private information. Presumably this would include my location. I want to decide who does and does not have access to my location (and my children’s location).

Bob explains it this way:

The Identity Oracle is not a technology. It’s a business. Its business plan says “We allow people to enjoy the benefits of their identities while protecting them against the risks of misuse of their identities”. It charges money for its services.

While privacy issues have been discussed in context of Location Based Services (LBS), I haven’t seen any discussion of how Identity Oracle concepts might fit into the mix.

An Identity Oracle would not allow others to know where I am, but only enough information to provide the service I want from them.

Tell us, Identity Oracle, is Kirk near a gas station?

For example, maybe I want to allow Google to sell my information to advertisers, but I don’t want them to reveal my location. I want gas stations to only know that I’m near them - but not my precise coordinates.

This is not a simple concept, but one worth exploring. Google will soon likely be under greater scrutiny with respect to spatial privacy, perhaps we in the geospatial community should consider how an Identity Oracle might fit into LBS business plans.

Looks like a viable geospatial platform to me.

For example …

News that the Google phone will run Google Earth is intriguing. VectorOne doubts the usefulness of mobile phone progammability for the typical consumer, but recognizes an interest to download maps.

This could get complicated. Take for example first responders who need to quickly download building models to their phone. DirectionsMag has a good article about CityGML. Would LOD4 be sufficient for shortest path finding through a building’s interior? How much of a building model should be transmitted to the phone?

How much detail would be lost going from CityGML to KML?

With so many earmarks for homeland security coming out of congress, seems like someone in the community could leverage the culture of fear to answer some of these questions.

This would also be relevant to Google’s business model. Say I’m a pedestrian in a shopping district and want to get directions to some item on sale in some other building. I’d like to get a path along with 3D building models guiding me to my destination downloaded to my phone.

I used my season pass this weekend to visit SeaWorld. Before entering, I had my fingerprint scanned and matched against the scan already on file for my card. While some people have a problem with this, I didn’t mind. I’m willing to cede personal info to a corporation. Now if the Highway department scanned my license plate as I drove congested freeways on my way to SeaWorld though, I’d likely protest …

You are being asked to participate in these efforts because the license plate of a vehicle registered in (your) name was randomly recorded.

-Survey sent to Texas Drivers by Alliance Group

I’m sure when I go to a shopping mall cameras track my movements. I don’t have a problem with that either. In fact, I feel safer, at least in the parking garage. Once RFID catches on I suppose scanners will read what I’ve got in my bag and pop up ads for complementing items at other stores on nearby LCD displays. Not only will they know where I am, but where I’ve been and what I’ve bought. Maybe my Google RFID credit card will also transmit my googleID, so google ads will also appear on monitors as I walk around.

But don’t let the government issue national identity cards. People have every right to freely enter this country and remain anonymous. If they want to go to SeaWorld though, they’ll have to buy a ticket and surrender their identity. After all, we gotta draw the line somewhere.

When free society gets too chaotic I’ll just retreat to my SeaWorld where they know me so well, and where they make me leave my car behind and actually walk (yes, walk!) to get around.

Inside SeaWorld, I never worry about things getting ugly, like they did at MacArthur Park.

Remember The Prisoner?

I wonder how long it will be before Busch/Disney/SixFlags repackages theme parks as pedestrian oriented neighborhoods where people not only play but also live and work. I often hear the phrase “exclusive neighborhood” without really thinking about who is being excluded. I’m sure tightened security would be a selling point for such neighborhoods. I’m also betting they’ll see the light and invite Starbucks, perhaps even installing “no matter where you go, there you are” window dressing to keep the graying hippies from getting suspicious.

AMD has released a new quad-core processor, dubbed Barcelona, but as with Intels offering, there seems to be a consensus that until software starts leveraging multicore, demand will not take off as hoped.

Seems like geoprocessing would be a natural fit for running on multiple cores. From what I’ve seen though, writing software for multicore is hard. Google bought Peakstream a couple of months ago, a company that makes software tools for multicore development. Here’s a good description. Unlike their acquisition of Sketchup, though, Peakstream has been pulled out of the public eye. To me this means Google thinks Peakstream gives them a competitive advantage. That’s too bad, I really wish there was some sort of free download of PeakStream that would allow me to start playing with multicore, writing tools that extend GE.

Maybe Google could even enhance KML with tags indicating how multiprocessors should be exploited. Think of a dynamic 3D weather model described in KML so that load is spread across multiple cores as it runs.

Firing up Google Earth Beta on my dual core doesn’t very evenly tax each core, but I wonder if this will change once Peakstream gets digested. Once that happens, could Google Earth spur demand for multicore?

In looking at AGX, it seems like the custom task framework could be extended to recognize & exploit multicore. ESRI has done a nice job at hiding the threading complexities, seems like the custom tasks framework could be extended so that I can tell a custom task how to handle and choose between multiple cores.

Lots about cameras in the news lately …

Google Earth Blog writes about Pict Earth, with images from a camera mounted on an RC plane.

The images don’t register too well in the kml file though. Seems like kml 2.2 would work better for this, using the Camera element.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is working hard on Photosynth and has a a video showing the shuttle. Would be nice to see more on how photosynth handles time dimension.

slashgeo also points out news.com article mentioning 20,000 security cameras in China.

Hopefully a balance of power between government cameras and crowd cameras will emerge.

Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.

Back in Silicon Valley, All Points points out how parents are wanting to track their kids. Could an electronic nanny service be outsourced to China?