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Bell Labs Demos Cell Phone Location Software
mateub writes "AP via Yahoo reports that Bell Labs will soon announce cell phone software to reveal the owner's location to interested parties. To alleviate privacy concerns they say the software will 'let cell users be as picky as they choose about disclosing their whereabouts' but the article goes on to mention 'the ability for restaurants and other businesses to send a solicitation by text message to a cell phone when its owner wanders within range of those merchants.' Oh, wonderful, cellular popups..."
Where will it end? It just gets uglier. Location spam, how fun!
I'm not a big fan of this, however it could be nice for people if it is like GPS. And I could see people at local bars using the features to locate other 'singles.' Lots of possibilities.
Have not read the article, but we had an LBS (location Based Service) scavenger hunt when we launched the service at work. We had to find the closet resturant, directions, etc. Was quite fun. The deal was to get everyone thinking about all the uses, and not just think of it as "Spying on someone"
:)
The phone beeps the person if you look them up, they know you did a lookup on thier location. And you can turn it off. The privacy is still there.
I read the other day, Disney is using LBS to move people quickly through the park, offering discounts, telling them which rides have the short lines, etc. Kinda like on-star on steriods. Lots of companies use LBS on trucks, nice to see it used for normal consumers.
So, really, LBS is pretty damn nice, it can be abused, but if your provider is a schmuck and does that crap, move. Number portability
Anyone else notice lots of the posts are about cellphones, telcos, and releated technology. I tell you Wireless Telco's are going to be the large ISP's of the future...
All the integrators in my company have this on our Nextels. When we run the Telenav Java app in the background, the phone reports our location every so often. Our traffic manager back at the office can call up a web page with a map showing all of our locations on it and dispatch the closest integrator if a client calls in with an emergency.
Until January it only did GPS and was a major battery drain. Now it's been updated, and if it can't see the GPS sats it just triangulates its position from the cell towers.
It also does driving directions, but at highway speeds it's not great. It usually says "turn right!" just after you passed the intersection where you were supposed to turn.
When I was in Singapore about 18 months ago, they were starting to introduce location based services. They were tossing around ideas like an SMS 'discount voucher' being sent to you as you wandered near a store, but they also had practical stuff like I could call a particular number, and it would SMS me back with the location of ATMs for my bank nearest to my location. That was pretty handy.
You are right though. The system will be abused.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
There have been times when I've been wondering where the nearest {insert favorite exotic food} restaurant is.
We're already moving in that direction in NZ, though perhaps not to as sophisticated a degree as to give directions.
Those using Vodafone mobiles have this option (see the Sim2 link) which will let you find restaurants, ATMs etc in the immediate area. It's been available for at least a year that I can remember, and probably longer than that.
The good thing about this option is that it's pull rather than push - the phone user requests the information, it isn't thrown at them indiscriminately.
It was only a matter of time, and there is enormous potential for such things - for both good and evil.
Criminal uses cell phone to call in kidnapping ransom. Police trace phone, find criminal + kid. Summer 2003
Kidnap victim memorizes rapists cellphone. Police check registry, find perp. Jun 2003
Kidnapped woman had cellphone hidden on person. Cops trace it to car, catch perp in parking lot. Nov 2003
And many more...
Here in Brazil, one of the biggest cell phone carriers has this technology ready for, at least, 1 year. I saw it working. A friend of mine work there, he showed me that they can plot your location, anytime, on a map.
:)
He told me that they were thinking on how to sell this stuff. Until now, nothing happened.
All I want to say is: If this is ready (for one year already) here in Brazil, U.S. and Europe must have this working for ages already.
Tinfoil hat anyone?
The current positioning technologies are GSM network-based positioning and GPS positioning. GSM positioning uses cell IDs that use the GSM networks and GPS positioning, satellite positioning. GPS-based positioning can position the target up to an accuracy of metres and is based on measuring the distance between the receiver and the satellite. Satellites send radio signals to the receiver and the receiver calculates how long it took the signal to reach it. GPS positioning does not usually work indoors.
You can read more at: Soneras website
Life is a sexually transmitted fatal disease.
Swisscom, Switzerland's former telco monopolist, had a service like this several years ago. The idea was for companies to track employees, cars and whatnot while private people would be able to simply find their friends. It all worked via a website, there was no standalone software.
The technology was quite accurate enough at the time, but the service was never successful due to privacy concerns and was removed.
Since the technology already worked, Swisscom has instead been offering Swisscom friendZone since 2001. With friendZone, you can see who else is near you (in the same cell? I have no idea how it works). I believe it's anonymized at first, so you can talk to people as if on IRC or in some other reasonably anonymous meeting place. Once you add people to your friends list, you can also use the service to locate them geographically. The idea is to generate a lot of revenue for the telco through SMS chatting. Yes, some people here are actually happy to pay EUR 0.10 for every "ok" and "lol" they send.
So the technology, at least in this implementation, is old. As so often in the mobile market, Europe lags behind Japan and the USA lag behind Europe.