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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..."
Sounds like a very good reason for me to remain cell-phone-free.
While some adulterous adults may not want to have their whereabouts known, it is important for kids to be tracked.
Child abduction is a major problem that affects thousands of families every year. This kind of cell phone tracking would go far to help find missing kids before they end up dead and in a ditch.
I have been pwned because my
How long until we walk into stores that have electronic greetings personalized with our names?
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.
It would be interesting if there were some software switch that could be triggered by the provider if they were forced to do so by eg FBI or some other form of law enforcment. If you have committed a crime flick of a swtich your position is lit up like a christmas tree. I would prefer telling people where I am rather than having the phone tell them my exact location. Some of the newer technology is interesting and good, But some will bring in a new era of Big Brother. Just my thought..
Only in an emergency need you tell the outsiders where you are. You don't even want to always tell trusted people where you are. That's like being lojacked. Given the ability, how can you say to your wife, "Honey, I don't want you to see my location every minute of every day?"
Unless she's a good, understanding privacy advocate.
For an example of a nice location aware app that doesn't have to tell the network where you are, check out this blog entry about The Big Yellow Button
Another thought, what about cell phone companies using the phone location service to send bill collectors?
Fight Spammers!
enabling users to specify what location information is shared, when, with whom, how and under what circumstances
They told us that navigation system is for navigation. And then, its tracking the cars, speeding tickets.
They told us cookies is just to make the stateless HTTP protocol have some states. And then, its Double Click and all the tracking.
They told us at the grocery store that the card will be used to get discounts. And then, you start getting those annoying mail related to products you bought.
Hello marketing fellas out there, PLEASE stop. Consumer is getting upset.
Free XBox, PS2
If I get spammed by someone identifiable because I happen to be in their vicinity, I'll be demanding to see the manager and collect my dime refund, just to be a PITA. If enough people do it, that will be end of that kind of spam in the US.
That's the kind of excuse Bush and Ashcroft want to use to pull the woll over your eyes. You really think this would stop any kidnappers?
Step 1: Kidnap Kid
Step 2: Throw any phone they have in the dumpster
Really, why the hell do you think any kidnappers are going to let a kid keep his PHONE on him? You think they're THAT stupid?
Since most of us are not presentable enough to enter restuarants which can afford this type of advertising.
There really isn't much for most to worry about.
In the past, the only way to tell where a person was located while talking on the phone was to detect which cell tower they were connected to. Considering that coverage was several square miles, it wasn't a very good way of tracking someone. However, this method of location has been used by police to solve murders where a person said they were somewhere when they called home after they murdered their spouse.
by paying me to reveal my location and accept a certain number of ads and I might consider it. How about $50/month, for, say, Visa, who has a pretty good idea where I am from my charges anyway?
In group behavior: 'because they're evil/morons/sheep/crazy' is not 'insightful' it's 'oversimplified'
From the article.
"However, given the real-time requirements of transmitting information over a telephone network, it can be difficult to program a wide-range of options for individuals to personalize preferences such as when, where and with whom to share location information. One solution is to hard-code a network database with an "on-off" switch that activates or deactivates a service, for instance, during a window of time with set hours such as peak and off-peak."
So, dial 9-1-1 and your phone should broadcast its location.
Otherwise, just make it an option for the numbers you have stored on your phone and a simple check box for the rest (I want to receive tons of phone spam Y/N).
#1. If I dial 9-1-1, my location is broadcast.
#2. If I turn off the broadcast function, my location is not broadcast (unless #1).
#3. For every phone number I have stored, I have the option to broadcast (or not) my location to that number, provided I have broadcast turned on (#2).
#4. For everyone else, I can choose to receive massive amounts of phone spam (unless #2). Why anyone would choose this option is beyond me.
Any problems with that? It seems simple to me. And it should be easily implemented in software. Of course, it will NOT provide the captive audience for phone spam that seems to be the focus of that article. But so what?
The day I have to take my phone out of pocket to discover that i've been "invited" into a nearby business establishment will be the day I chuck said phone thru the front window of said business establishment. Really, how often do you get the chance to kill two birds with one phone?
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...
For for just $4.99 per month you can keep these popups from showing up on my cellphone.
They make money one way or another.
TruePunk | Games
There have been times when I've been wondering where the nearest {insert favorite exotic food} restaurant is.
- Grab Mobile
- set "restaurants only"=true
- turn on location announcing thingy
- wait 5
- turn off location announcing thingy
- read ads from local restaurants
Wire them up with an electronic compass and it should even be able to give you (updated in realtime, even) directions from where you are.Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
This is exactly why open source is important. We need to be able to program our own phones to prevent these sorts of things from being a bother.
Well, childeren's groups, and some parents, are
in favor of the idea, as it will undoubtedly
improve children's safety. It also has many, rather
mundane applications, and there are already
subcription services offering this.
However, privacy advocates rightly point out that
there is much potential for abuse. However, the
ability of the operator to locate users is built
in to the network. All this story about, is making
that info availiable to end users.
However, as an aside, your question implies
a false dichotomy - no thing is entirely good,
or entirely whack. Every thing is part good,
part whack, young padwun learner.
No? Good.
I'm laughing at clouds.
In particular, I don't want the restaurants (or other stores) to even know I'm nearby until I ask the phone to poll for that information.
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..."
;)
Could be interesting when you pass that 'massage parlour' you never knew was there
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.
Many have pointed out how ineffective lojacking kids would be if the kidnappers (who 99% of the time are relatives, the press just makes a big deal when there is a stranger kidnapping) are aware of the technology.
It can be worse, it can be used to mislead. Of course they can just turn the phone off (you going to trigger an alert on every dead battery or out of range cell phone?) but they can also plant it at the home or the home of some red herring.
But here's the real question. Kids have rights. At what age will parents finally let their kids be free of the surveillance anklet we're calling a cell phone?
I can tell you it will be later than it should be for almost all parents, that is their nature, and it's understandable.
But I think if we are going to have readily available child-lojack, there may need to be a law to protect the children from their parents, and forbid doing it after the age of 12. The kids can still have a phone, can still call 911 and transmit their location, but no parent query.
Otherwise we destroy the freedom of all kids to catch one stupid criminal out of 100,000 who doesn't know to turn off the phone. All the other times it will be used to say, "I told you not to associate with that Jimmy kid."
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!
its illegal to call a telemarketer to call a cell phone, so couldnt it be argued that this is illegal too?
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
Most likely, the ads will be initially used to provide ultra-cheap service ($5 - $10 / month). Eventually, they'll become "standard" and you'll have to pay extra to not be annoyed.
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If a mobile phone user elects to receive 'pop-ups', they could be compensated with credit to their phone bill or even receive a store discount by showing the SMS they received. It's a good tool for stores to entice customers into the shop. The system would also know if it has sent out an SMS to a particular number and would not send again until some predefined preiod.
"...as it will undoubtedly
improve children's safety."
how so? Are you saying the kidnapper won't through the cell phone out the window?
How about this, the kidnapper tosses the childs phone into a different vehical going in another direction?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Just as cookies have useful applications, so will location-based messaging. Location-based traffic reports immediately come to mind.
:-)
I'd love to get an SMS when I-684/I-95 are jammed, and I'd love it even more if the service was free, paid for by an ad for the local Dunkin Donuts.
Beware: I believe all are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It sucks that stuff like this could be so cool but that we can't trust that the providers won't take advantage of the huge marketing potential. Add to that the fact that most Americans think that the Constitution applies only to them personally and observance of any particular article is completely optional as long as it fits within their narrow mindset and its easy to see the potential for government abuse of the wealth of information that could be available.
That said, if I could be guaranteed that the locator service information was only good for the time of the query and wasn't logged in any way and that I could, from my phone, turn the feature on and off at will, I think I would try it.
Billboards, flyers, guys dressed in a chicken suit to advertise the opening of a KFC - it's all unwanted and all in your face everyday. I don't see how cell phone ads are any different . . . except for the fact that you pay for the cell phone to work so that the advertisers HAVE a new way to bombard you. The least that could be done is for the carrier to offer phone bill discounts to people who allow themselves to be ad targets (and restaurant coupons too).
Seems the easiest thing to do would be to turn the phone off - which I do anyway. It is an option we don't have with other forms of advertisements.
They will probably remove the off button though.
I hope they plan on giving me a nickel if i walk in and show them the pop-up. I sure as hell don't want to get charged for something like this.
Don't waste time... procrastinate now!
sure, i think a variation of this based on GPS would actually be useful. in that scenario your device tells *you* where you are and you can pull up directories/services/info/whatever relevant to that area.
the scenario they describe though has *others* know where you are, and advertise at you against your will.
i don't use it much - maybe it's time to throw out the cell phone too...
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
A professor whom I TA for actually is involved in a venture business to do just this, and he bounced the idea off of us (his TA staff) about a year ago.
But it wasn't location based advertising, per se. It was location based coupons, eg, you walk into a Foot Locker, and get a message that will give you 10% off any Reebok for the next 20 minutes. Another use was instead of having to wait in line at the DMV (or taking a number and waiting to be called), go in, register your phone, and recieve a text message when you near the beginning of the queue.
There are some positive sides to this technology, although I do hope that there is some option to turn it off.
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...
Some ways in which this could be hijacked for malicious purposes:
1) Angry spouse getting back at partner (ie, escaping violent environment holed up at an undisclosed location)
2) Law officers having their cell numbers given out, then called, hang up, when called back, their locations revealed. Endanger their families.
3) Same for judges, crummy construction contractors, bad auto repair shop owners... anybody who might make someone else mad for one reason or another.
Need I go on?
What if one of our national leaders is located (while in an undisclosed location) via his cell phone by an extremist who is bent on revenge? What about his family?
Abortion providers (who I'm not happy about in areas of convenient terminations of pregnancy) could also come under fire.
How about hackers who slip into a phone company's system and finds where someone works/frequents and blackmails others, or even just lets it slide that they frequent X rated establishments?
How long before someone is able to latently track cell phones (via some hack/intrusion) of say... the president of the united states while on a trip? Okay, maybe not the president... how about an aide who's always with him? How often are the updates made? Often enough to track with targeting on a weapon?
Where do we draw the line on capabilities to track people?
How about people found speeding because the distance per time exceeds any possible speed limit between those tested points?
How about going after phone company execs?
Yeah, I thought so... they don't want their phones to broadcast at all.
Is there any hope of an open source hardware board that can be used as a phone with an appropriate ID card/pre-paid card purchased to get on networks without relying on someone else's tracking?
A Cell Phone advertisement may increase the amount of deadly car wrecks, especially in larger cities.
Cell phone users are already dangerous enough on the road when they are speaking to their step mother's sisters's daughter's best friend about what colour they should get their nail polish.
Example:
A person is in their car driving happily along, paying attention to the road and making a slight effort at being a safe and defensive driver. They drive right past their favourite McDonalds restaurant and their cell phone begins to beep off the hook. They rush through their stuff (females through their purse, even scarier!) and take their eyes off the road. Someone in front of them slams on their brake and their nice ride ends in a catastrophic crash over an ad about a $.99 value meal.
There are some good points to it... but I honestly hope that I have the option to disable the GPS or whatever system they use in the phones they give us. The benefits do not outweigh the risks.
.. using handset independent cell method in Australia using national Carrier.
Our applications gave total control to user with global on/off and selective sharing of generated PIN with friends on list.
Even now in 2004 network based positioning systems not precise enough to beep door-by-door for that available single right next to you so can stop worrying about that.
Also here in Australia there must be a different assumption as to marketing and ads fears expressed - everyone from telco to providers to businesses here realise big time spamming will kill such services cold.
We did 80 categories of content too and they were really popular to pull up relevant locations at any time, near you or somewhere else.
Our latest generation services allows for free text searches as well so users are again in total control in roaming through our content with or without positioning.
Alex.
www.findmap.com.au
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?
And it ain't "us".
Repeat after me.
"We are not the consumers. We are the product. Advertisers are the consumers."
One of the original reasons I became completely wireless in the first place was to get rid of telemarketers entirely. Although I do believe there are some fairly good used for this technology, there are far too many ways to abuse it. Anybody can say, this is good for parents whos children have cell phones, but that is ridiculous. Billy is supposed to be at Jimmy's house but instead he is at the mall. (Billy is going to leave he cell at Jimmy's) I think there should be no problem with setting up a massive set of rules per user. Cell phones now are becoming more like small computers anyhow, we should be able to set up privacy rules about who, where, when, and how the messages are received. I can do this with my email, including spam, why not with a cell phone? I can use a proxy server with my regular internet connection, can I do this with a cell phone to thwart potential spam? Obviously there is much more work, time, and consideration that has to be done in order for this to even remotely be good for the majority of users, if Ms Brittney Spears wanna be high school girls loves the fact that gap can send her a discount before she walks in the door great, but leave me the hell alone!
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
...but then again, this could be really useful if my cell phone ever gets lost or stolen. I just don't like the idea of my daily wanderings being sold to other companies. I'm sure they'll promise not to do it, but later on will start giving the data up.
I always have my mobile phone with me, but I only turn it on for about an hour each day at the most, to check for messages. If I need to make a call, I've got it, and it's got all the phone numbers I should be remembering.
Of course, my phone is a PDA, so it does a lot more than that, too. That just makes it easier to remember to take it with me.
Politas
Here is my take:
I don't have a home phone; I only keep the cell phone. Why? Because I can't see the point of having a land line that is only going to subject me to a constant torrent of tele-marketing. With the cell-phone if someone needs or wants to reach me, they can no matter where I happen to be. My typical response is to not reply, and then later when accused of ignoring whoever it was that was trying to reach me i can blame it on poor cell service. Land lines almost never go down and people will only buy the whole "my machine has been dodgy lately" shtick so many times. So see the Cell phone helps me keep the world at arms length through the illusion of fallibility.
This militant "I don't have a cell phone" thing perplexes me. Banal conversation is the crux of modern civilization! I won't even bother bringing up the irony of complaining about superfluous communication by posting on a message board.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Exactly. And say goodbye to friendly fire accidents. Smart bullets would just read your tag and steer around you.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Regular popups wouldn't work either if the advertiser was close enough to visit to "register disapproval".
bits and peace
Nicholas Daley
(At least I didn't say 3...profit)
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.
There have been some attempts to create text message based services, but apart from little kids downloading ringtones they haven't been very popular. However now the cell phone can do something at least I am very bad at doing: describing my location accurately. For example meeting someone in a new city, it would be very useful to be able to give your location to that person rather than try to explain. Personally I get this rather uncomfortable feeling when the other person asks, when I am in a completely unknown place "hey where are you now?".
"umm I can see a big flower shop near me and umm..." Describing your location by landmarks is easy if you happen to stand next to the big ben or eiffel tower, but mostly there is nothing much to describe and it's unlikely that street names would help much either, unless you're talking to a taxi driver. I welcome wholeheartedly the opportunity to simply beam my location to the other person than try to explain. Yes, it will cost. But how much does it cost when you spend a long time trying to explain your location?
Location-based services will be one of those things that will seem like an obvious feature of mobile phones in the future. Not only that, but there might come other location based services which are useful. I don't think we will get personalized advertisements from shops, unless receiving advertisements would have some benefit for the consumer as well, possibly as reduced phone bill.
No, rather I would predict a service that would allow me to actively seek information than be fed information. Example? Alright, you are at a bar and it's closing but you still feel like continuing your round. So you take out your trusty mobile and check the list of currently open bars sorted by their distance to you. Or perhaps you aren't feeling so good, so you want to know if there are any pharmacies near you.
Yes, it will require that a list of companies and their opening hours is available. This is not a problem. Such lists exist even now on the web, it is simply a problem of adapting it for comfortable cell phone use. Oh yeah, if I turn out to be wrong and none of these services ever appear, I guarantee you it will be because of poor implementation rather than there not existing a need for such a service.