Cell phones making sense - as sensors


Who's listening?


When you go shopping in a mall, you create an invisible path as you head from one store to another. For the manager of a mall, it would be useful to see the paths made by you and hundreds of other shoppers over time. Now, there’s a tool for detecting those paths: the cell phone…

Handsets frequently send tiny communications — basically saying “here I am” — to cell towers and other receivers, regardless of whether you’re using them.

With triangulation, it’s possible to determine the handset’s (and thus your) approximate location. Over a period of time, your path through a mall or other space can be tracked…

The potential applications are powerful, says Roger Dennis, an associate with innovation consultancy Innovaro, because cell phones “become de-facto tracking devices when applied to populations.”

“Essentially what you are doing is watching rivers of people,” he says.

These dudes just want to map your waterworks. Sell the info.

No questions of privacy here. Right?

Posted: Wed - April 30, 2008 at 03:34 PM          

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