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Real-Time Collaborative Mapmaking
savetz writes "Throughout October and November, citizens of Amsterdam were invited to wear a GPS tracker as they went about their lives. Their whereabouts were forwarded to a server which created a map of the city in real-time, based on "the sheer movements of real people." The site includes aggregate maps, and those created by individuals, including a subway driver, cyclist, and marathon trainer."
you've come a long way baby. next stop....AMERICA!
They gave a GPS to a subway driver? What next? GPS maps of deep mineshafts? : )
You can't take the sky from me...
For one thing, the moon has 1/3 less gravity than your Earth. I don't know if you can understand that, but our vertical leap is beyond all measurement.
3 cheers for my country for thinking of such a cool project
this reminds me of a story of two guys who at intersections would carry the back wheels of the car over wheel sensors. thus the traffic department would have to account for 64.5 cars passing through the intersections.
I'd spell out "PWND" by walking in the correct pattern!
Execute? [Y/N] _
This is a great idea! If only my country could embed a chip inside of me and everyone in the U.S., then we can bring spam to a whole new level!!!
Okay, it may seem a funny jumping-off point, but stick with me for a second. Digital society hates spam, but not nearly enough for anything to actually be done about it. I think that's because it's basically limited to doing damage to your Inbox.
Yet when everybody's walking around with wristwatches connected to GPS and the 'net, and Joe's Pizza and Meg's Jewelry and Walmart and Target all want to spam your watch with their current specials as you walk within a hundred feet of their stores, people would (I hope) find that far too invasive and seek iron-clad control over the data they receive.
Unfortunately, I don't think this is the likely scenario. Probably most device manufacturers will provide a preference which permits you to turn off "unsolicited advertising" delivered via a certain protocol, but other delivery methods (http, pop3, etc.) will remain just as viable. Too bad.
Steve
Boy, what do you think the odds are of a U.S. sponsored project like this that will dump all of the data into our new government database?
It gives new meaning to "Where Do You Want To Go Today", and sounds like a marketing/GOP wet dream.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I was sitting around yesterday thinking about what else can be done with GPS besides geocaching, etc. This is pretty cool.
If you like this, you might like GPS drawing too.
,
faeryman
Give it to me after a night of drinking. I'll make you one hell of a map!
I've been using a Garmin GPS II+ that I originally bought for mapping backcountry nonmotorized trails, using a mountain bike. It was great for that, including its ability to upload its waypoints and track log to my PC, where I could integrate the data into mapmaking (GIS) software.
On the water, I found its articulated antenna and lack of waterproofing a liability. I used it in a housing (heavy-duty ziploc type), but found
it awkward. I just got a new Garmin eTrex, a 12-channel waterproof (1m for 30 min) unit that has the features I want. No internal maps, but I've never seen a handheld GPS that can compete with
the big-screen units in that department-- they're as good as an actual NOS chart.
If it were possible to do so, I would love to donate my map data to such a project - perhaps an open source map project? It could make for some exciting orienteering!
Stop corporate
...is "it's to make maps! I swear!"
Has anyone actually gotten onto the site?
Hey, what's that one that keeps wandering around that street corner...
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
Finally, a way to track the "real people" movements of residents of Amsterdam. Now I can find the marijuana cafes and red-light clubs frequented by Dutchmen who know what they're doing, as opposed to settling for the crappy spots they push on tourists.
oh, come on. you didn't even take the time to make a referrer link so that people wouldn't immediately realize it's a goatse link. how do you expect to troll properly if people KNOW you are trolling?!
The images are absolutely fantastic, and go to demonstrate just how small our lives are. Cumulatively, all their users contribute to a very revealing map of Amsterdam; however, individually, most stay in a very small subset of the area. It's easy to see how those east-side/west-side stereotypes can develop given that most people really only live on one side and never really go to "the other side."
The visualization technique that they use is really cool too -- it lets you see more vividly the areas that get traversed (cumulatively) more heavily.
This is what I want todo myself with my etrex, mapping motorcycle trails (as tracks), and having a website to share them ... Never thought of putting them on random people and telling them just to go wherever ;)
Government tracking with satellites == bad, remember?
I swear, when they finally start installing video cameras in everyone's houses, all they'll have to do is say they're BlueTooth enabled or XML-RPC enhanced and the geeks will eat it up.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Seriously. I've got a GPS, and a link cable for my PC. I want to make a map of my life travels :-)
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
It is great to see that every one of those people spent some time in the Red Light District. :)
Now they need a distributed cluster of web servers to fight the /. effect. Can anyone mirror some of the better images from the site (if you can get them) so others of us can see them?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The GPS server will only record a whole bunch of coordinates oscillating up and down, up and down...
There's a great scene in Cryptonomicon where he writes about attaching lights to people's heads, then tracking the lights from a side view as they walk on and off street curbs. Graphing over time would produce a square wave, with sidewalks showing up as high lines, and streets as low lines.
The point is that Waterhouse is one of the kinds of people who could stare at boatloads of those graphs, and then emerge with an extremely detailed street map of London.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
One use I can think of this would be a data source for traffic reports. If the sensor is moving quickly, it's safe to assume that whereever that sensor is, there's a highway operating perfectly fine. If a sensor comes to a stop or goes slower than normal speed on a highway (excluding tollbooths and rest stations, zones that I'm sure will be quickly identified) that indicates that something has gone wrong such as an accident or blockage. Whatever it is doesn't matter, so much as the fact cars aren't going at the proper speed. What would result from this data is a hot-cold map of the highways that indicates pixel by pixel where the road is at full speed, and where it's not. The only thing is, I'd much rather that sensor in my car be reporting to a private traffic-reporting company than the government....
They should have asked me to participate, they could be having a most excellent map of the red light district by now!
Oh, it wasn't funded? Never mind.
This is a great idea! If only my country could embed a chip inside of me and everyone in the U.S., then we can bring spam to a whole new level!!!
Let me get this straight. You want a subcutaneous chip that will turn yours and everybody else's brains into spiced pork and ham?
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
...cat. Just where the hell DOES he go when he vanishes for 3 days? Now If I can just tap into those orbiting "Star Wars" laser guns I could teach him to stay at home.
Bad KITTY!!! ***death ray come down from the sky***ZAP! Fried cat found 2 miles away.
Well maybe not...
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
So, this way everyone would know that I skipped work on Friday, and spent it at the stip bar!
We have a clear indication of you Jaywalking on the 23rd of September and again on the 2nd and 15th of October.
I'm afraid you'll have to come with us...
I wish I my city would use info like this for street planning. It would beat the heck out of those rubber lines counting axles by intersections.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Nantucket is the man from you.
... you'd get a most excellent map of where the public restrooms are. Always useful when traveling to a foreign city.
Design for Use, not Construction!
when I first got my GPS, I tried this for a week. I got bored when all it showed was route from the coffee pot to my cube to the bathroom and back.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This sort of thing has been achieved by ham radio operators for 10+ years now. In the ham radio community it is called APRS (Automatic Position Relay system). For more info check out http://web.usna.navy.mil/~bruninga/aprs.html
Over time this would develop better maps of surface streets and access. Some of the current maps of this scale would get you lost with non existent and mislocated streets. This could be used as a quality control for city maps. I would participate if given an opportunity
I have to admit, as interesting as a concept as this is, just how much detail does the tracker obtain? Is it only the geographic position? (yes I realize that that is what it is named after...) How will this play in regards to the "Big Brother" theory? Though it would be a great idea for use in the parole system, how long will it take for it to go beyond acceptable boundaries? Numerous people wish they could be the stars the see on TV, at the rate this technology could go, we could very well find our lives being that much closer to those some admire. Exposed, and never again to be completely and privately our own.
~~{~~@ LDP @~~}~~
Thus GPS isn't a big problem in a country which doesn't tolerate spam.
http://www.waag.org/realtime/images/kaarten/2-11-4 0d.jpg
those bright red blotches must be the smoke shops and red light district. high traffic!
There's no "I" in Linux.. err..
the amount of traffic in one section of town was mapped to a highway calculated to be 50 lanes wide, but upon further investigation turned out to be where the greatest number of brothels reside.
come on fhqwhgads
- Top ten list
- Mastercard joke
- ???
- Profit!
Thank you,The slashdot standard practices editors
It's a little known fact that the average moggy enjoys the intellectual pursuit of Cat Chess almost as much as sporadic violent confrontations with other random cats.
The rules (based upon observation) are pretty straight forward, and are as follow:
A point is scored by a cat that can simultaneously observe at least 2 other cats.
Any cat observed by 2 other cats simultaneously is out of the game.
That's it - so strategy plays a big part - on the one hand, a high vantage point lends itself to high scoring rounds, but has the increased danger of being spotted by other cats. These games can go on for days though, often ending only in a mass fight or when the competitors fancy some milk and maybe the chance to bat a small bird around for fun.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
but seriously folks. that city is old, circular and downright confusing to find your way around. and that's when you're sober, after a couple of good coffee shop visits, forget it. everything looks the same (the locals should attest to this), and the city is a big horse shoe. so if you take one wrong turn you wind up who knows where!
hell. one night i spent 2 hours freezin my butt off, during the summer, at 3 am until i could find a decent sign.
i for one am glad to see gps put to a fun use.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Paul
Every public wall and floor is a continuous video advertisement in Spielberg's 2002 movie "Minority Report". It is keyed into the biometrics of the passerby. No special chip needed.
One thing I have noticed about a lot of open source stuff is that they all use those horrific Tiger maps. Tiger maps suck. Big time. They are good for just looking at street names, but when you want to use them for anything more than that they are not good at all. For example, the street I live on shows up on the tiger maps as being about 50 feet south of where it really is, and the intersection closest to my house is more than 150 feet off.
But, because tiger maps are free, that is what is used. However, if you want to build your own talking GPS navigation system, using those maps is a bad thing - the routes would be all goofed up.
So, I have been considering doing something like these guys so there could be some way to get decent maps out there for free that will give better results.
However, I see a number of potential problems. First, you can't just turn on a GPS and start recording data. My Magellan 315 starts averaging when you sit still. Get under an obstruction and the data it records is all over the place. After only an hour of sitting you would have somewhere around 100 data points that don't exist. That would be a lot of work for someone to clean up.
The other problem I see is really related to participation. It's one thing if you are in a small town with 50 or so streets in it - you would probably be more apt to get your town fully mapped. However, living in the Big City, I only really travel a few streets during a typical month - mainly highways and interstates, with the occassional side street. Since the ways I travel always have a ton of traffic on them, that means most everyone else goes that way too - probably including a good number of people who might be participating in such a project as well.
A surprising result: 90% of the people seem to either stay in one place, make a trip to the convenience store, or take a bi-weekly trip to this one hippie looking guy's front porch. The map basically looks like this:
/ :)
\
\
-=-=-=-=-=*
Why stick up for big business?
Then, when you spot someone in a interesting place, you could get control of his camera for some time. Maybe there could be the option donate the guy $5 and ask him to move 100 feet left.... now that's a real big brother scenario :) Anyway, it could be fun too, to be "in the place" when something interesting happens...talking about Amsterdam...(red) lights, camera, action :)
Whenever I'm gettting to know a girl I'm intrested in this sort of image always comes to mind. I always wonder "could we have crossed paths before?"
Over time the lines might come close to crossing, but they never touch. Then one day it happens.
(Sorry: Former best friend).
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
The city of Amsterdam has extensive canals and waterways. If people wearing these transmitters use any canal boats for transportation it seems as though the maps generated would incorrectly identify roads that "don't exist" and would lead people into the water!
Home -> BART station -> (trip on BART..) -> Embarcadero (SF) BART Station -> Java City -> Caltrain -> Work.
Reverse to get home.
Toss in Home -> Fry's -> Home on the weekend.
Some people just shouldn't map out their lives. heh.
Funny, nobody told me that Amsterdam is a sovereign country! Or maybe they meant residents of Amsterdam?
This is one of the coolest, least depressing, stories I've read on Slashdot in a while.
If I'm not mistaken, would this not only create a thorough map, but a map with density? You'd be killing 2 birds with one stone by mapping location, and travel density.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
John Ashcroft invited all citizens of the United States to wear a GPS tracker. However, when anyone asked, "Why?" they were told that only terrorists ask questions.
I'll admit I can't view the site because of the /. effect, but Amsterdam has a subway? I sure missed seeing that while I was there. Doesn't seem like a likely thing for a city reclaimed from the ocean to have, and less likely for a GPS receiver to be able to track a subway driver.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
So how exactly does a subway driver get a GPS
signal on the job?
And how do Australians get GPS? They're 6000 miles
below our feet!
--- Eat my sig.
This is awesome. Reminds me of Everquest and Mapfiend. Great maps to navigate by.
IMarv
Trusting software vendors is no smarter than trus
I'm sure the MPAA would frown upon me paying $4 to 'ride along' with someone going to see "Solaris IV : attack of goatseman"!
I can see that this is a great way to get the actual paths and roads into a database to be used for mapping and so forth, but how do we complete this mapping solution with a way to label those paths and roads?
" Every inhabitant of Amsterdam has an invisble map of the city in his head. The way he moves about the city and the choices made in this process are determined by this mental map. Amsterdam RealTime attampts to visualize these mental maps through examining the mobile behaviour of the city's users."
This will of course be of benifit to sociologists.
I wonder if they have a breakdown of the results by gender, or age, or even economic. Do males wander farther afield? Are the younger generation more mobile? Is there a difference in mobility, as well as were, based on the amount of money you have? City planning could be more "humane", by looking at density of lines,combined with time measurements and correlating that with architecture. Which places are more conducive to social interaction? Which is "user" hostile, represented by places on the map that fewer people go to. How about looking at data for the span of a year? Enough time for the seasons, as well as other events to manifest themselves in the results.
"Let me get this straight. You want a subcutaneous chip that will turn yours and everybody else's brains into spiced pork and ham?"
We already have that. It's called advertisement.
You can see a sample of this type of map and learn a little bit about it at http://aprsworld.net/info/paper2002/giant-map-of-l a.php
-James Jefferson
KB0THN
Find me
What about people who aren't sheering?
or strange use anyway, take a look at story and then take a look at this book titled power of maps. this guy mapped EVERYTHING. makes this mapmaker in the story look kinda boring. ;)
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Then there's temporal distribution. At mealtimes, the non movement would be resturants. Right after mealtimes would be restrooms (when you're a tourist knowing where the restrooms are is valuable information). Evening, theatres and bars.
Someone took the time to walk around and let his/her (Chris?) data be recorded in a manner that the resulting image was a pigeon. I think that if I were to wear a tracking device, I'd be too tempted to spell out profanities.
m.mmm..myyy
Hrmm..
Now they know where to place the bombs to inflict maximum collateral damage.
That's one of the cans of worms I have been pondering deeply ever since I demo-ed a PostGIS based system that lets random users lodge spatial data.How on earth do you do meaningful QA on that quantity of data? Especially when many people are happy to use layers such as TIGER.
FWIW, I think that collecting raw GPS tracks is a low value activity. I think the most value will come from validated overlays put together in a Wiki fashion. Leave it to the Cave Clanners to maintain a Wiki style layer of drains and urban tunnels, leave it to the geeks to maintain a WiFi layer. Pull you favorite overlay sites together in your PDA and enjoy an augmented reality...
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Ham radio folks have been doing that for a while: http://www.ew.usna.edu/~bruninga/index.html
I think it's an excellent idea to create some sort of structured repository for geophysical data. To draw an analogy, I love Google, but it worries me that Google owns their (increasingly universal) dataset as a private for-profit corporation. Map data about the globe is just about the most 'open' sort of information that a human could need... getting from here to there, and information about here or there, being pretty fundamental to life. There are all sorts of applications -- travel, leisure, commerce, play, whatever.
The OSS community does a great job thinking about the pros and cons of open source *software* but doesn't do nearly so much work on the subject of open *data* with which to use the software. This issue is implicit in Slashdot favorites such as FOIA requests to reign in government, public domain vs. copyright issues, fair use, etc., but no one seems to formally frame the 'Open Data' issue in a way that motivates the same sort of response as does Open Source. We should start a new movement, parallel and complementary to OSS! Any takers? We need bandwidth and storage, just like everyone else... I see from Internic that mapdata.org is available. Someone want to hack out a good MySQL table structure to hold it all? Lemme know when we open the project on SourceForge... etc.
Be active!
am i the only person that thinks we could generate fps levels using this technique? yes? well okay then.
One of the neat things I haven't seen comments on was the fact they were using GPRS to transmit the GPS data in real-time - so the GPS data really was uploaded as it was generated. This is the sort of thing that GPRS is really good for - it's low bandwidth (so doesn't cost an arm and a leg) and constantly updated.
That bright spot, to the right of the center, that is the red light district. Hmm...
Yes, Amsterdam has a subway. It isn't very big (just one or two lines), but it is there nonetheless.
And the city wasn't reclaimed from the ocean. It was there a long time before the reclaiming started. Mind, it is very close to those areas...
I don't know for sure but looking at the maps it seems as if the 'cool vizualization' is automagically created by the resolution of the system. If roads are wider than the resolution of th system you will obviously see that the center of the road is most intensely travelled while the sides of the roads are less travelled. That way you get a line that varies in intensity in relation to it's width with the center being more intensely marked. The colorcoding enhances on that to show single resolutionpoints that get travelled on multiple times in a more intense color.
I suspect that there are in fact no exact resolution points but accumulation of overlapping points is used. This would fit nicely since a side of the road will be lapped less because there will be no traffic out of the boundries of the road. Example: take two lines and put three dots in between that each are 1/2 the width between the lines in diameter and that overlap. The center of the 'road' will more overlapped than the sides.
reading back it seems I can't clearly explain this in words. Oh well.
Karma? What's that again?
...how many people would actually go to the red light district wearing a GPS? I wonder how accurate these paths really are at showing 'real' day to day life ;-)
It quite obviously points out the hot spots and cold spots. It identifies the towns ring road quite easily. All in all I would think it made for an excellent utility when it came to town planning (Your own town and for reviewing mistakes of other towns).
That's the best part. LOOK AT THE MAP!. If you know Amsderdam, you'll see very light traffic at the redlight district that most tourists would go to. I have a hard time finding traffic at the the Bulldog, but I see most Dutch avoiding the redlight when moving downtown by using the main street opposite the district! I also, from a cursory look, see possibly the Milkweg, and Rembrandt Platz lit up. Cant's say for sure, though. Very interesting!
HAMs have had wireless networking for a long time too.
GPS doesn't have ${SMALL_INT} inch resolution.
Except for hiking trails.
It has a long way to go, but the first pass is up.
Check it out:
http://www.trailregistry.com
-Geoff
Check out TrailRegistry.com, my hiking site, Maps, altitude pr
I have been using a Garmin GPS IV device for about 4 months now. It contains basic mapping in the US which is pretty good, but I am currently located in Mexico and the maps are more or less non-existent.
However, the device has automatic route-tracking. I have left the device on my dashboard for most trips here over the past 2-3 months, and have begun to make a pretty good map of the city. Effectively major routes become thicker lines just because they are re-traced often enough. This in combination with the odd waypoint for frequented locations is enough to gauge where you are pretty well.
I would imagine that having more people participate only speeds up the process. Parallel computing at its best!
"We don't do a new version to fix bugs." - Bill Gates
"The new version - it's not there to fix bugs." - Bill Gates
-- Retranslated from Focus 43/1995, pp. 206-212
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