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Pay-For-Visit Advertising
theodp writes "US patent office documents released Thursday show that a startup named Pelago is seeking a patent covering Pay-For-Visit Advertising, which uses GPS, Bluetooth, or RFID on your mobile devices to track your travels to see if you wander into a place of business that appeared in an ad shown earlier on your cellphone, PDA, or laptop. To maximize ad revenue, phone calls are also tracked to see if you dial a number associated with an ad, and financial transactions are examined to see if you make a purchase from an advertiser. The application goes on to note that the system may be of interest to government agencies. Pelago just raised $7.4M from the likes of KPCB and Jeff Bezos."
i've got to think that this will create a market for phones that wont allow this kind of thing to happen. i'd go without a cell phone before i'd let myself be tracked like that everywhere i go.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
I really dont want to carry all those gadgets around, especially at the beach. So if you could just inject that RFID tag into my neck right here...
From reading the synopsis it seems that it would require the participation/consent of the mobile phone user to allow tracking. From activating bluetooth visibility, or accepting a phone with an RFID feature. It'd be interesting to see if this has any similarity to the oft-rumoured GPhone.
But why would a consumer, given the relatively low prices of cell phones, tariffs and contracts, accept this? I'm speaking from the UK but I can't imagine that US cell contracts, etc, are so prohibitively expensive that this would be an attractive form of subsidy. Especially given the potential 'government interest.'
They are going to track who I call, where I go, and what I buy...while having all of this linked to personally identifying information. Who in their right mind would subscribe to such a service? The privacy implications are mind boggling...if the police can subpena this information or the government can "silently" access it, say goodbye to the American way of life...
most of the places I got to, I got to via personal recommendation.
Not to mention, that would require a corporate agency tracking my every move. I'll just put it this way:
If you don't trust the government, ostensibly supposed to be for the benefit of the people living in its juristiction, watching your every move, how the hell can you trust a corporation, ostensibly (and in practice) supposed to be for the financial and power gain of those in cahrge of the company, to keep track of you to that extent?
Companies are trying to evaulate to see if their marketing is working or not. How dare they, I want to be flooded with adds that I don't care about, vs. showing me products and or services that may help me in life, with sites offering better tracking services they could charge more per add, thus less adds per page. But that is not the slashdot way, we want NO adds but still we want our websites to run for free even though these people deticate their lives full time to this and have expenses too. Good targeting means less adds, more revenue to web sites, and less anoyances during the day. If Big Brother wants to know your spending habbits they just need a warent and pull your bank information. No need for this crazy loosy goosy stuff, that will mostly help make your life better.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I've never been one of the people that sports a tinfoil hat, and now I can't because they'll know when I go to the store, what I bought, how much I payed for it and what I was thinking when I bought it.
If nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through.
without my knowledge of who, what or where, just by going to work everyday.
1. Set up a surveillance society,
2. Watch everybody all the time,
3. ???
4. Profit
Steps 1 & 2 are already happening whether we want them to or not. Its a done deal.
But the greedy little prick wants to patent it too.
God I wish I had balls that big.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Here is the scary thing. I think most marketing professionals saw Minority Report and said, "That's the greatest idea ever!"
Well, I guess that question wouldn't matter for a less invasive advertising platform, but what this seems to be proposing is currently impossible without the customer's explicit agreement and cooperation. So I'm wondering what they plan on giving the customer to make this ever remotely appealing?
What allows them to access my cellphone remotely and access its GPS receiver? Why would my cellphone tell them the GPS location in the first place?
Are there really phones on the market which allow this? If so, what prevents evil terrorist(tm) to do the same as this company then? Are phonemakers terrorism supporters?!one!?eleven!
let me be the first to say "Good afternoon, Mr. Yakamoto,".
t -and-mini-cooper/
http://curtismorley.com/2007/02/06/minority-repor
Personalized advertising just jumped out of the cookie jar (no, get your mind off the choc chips lardy, I'm talking browsers here) and into the real world. Somehow the idea of large corporations tracking me makes me feel a great unease, we can trust them to value money over common decency and politeness.
FWIW, this tracking is enabled by default in virtually every phone that has the capabiliity of being commercially tracked. The phone user has to recognize that it is enabled and then go through the menus to turn it off. Not a hard thing to do, but like most things, something that is largely overlooked by the masses.
They said the same thing about the "mark of the beast". "That no man may buy or sell without..."
It is and has been a great idea for nearly 2000 years... if you can ignore the downside.
Has anyone else noticed the disturbing [to me, anyway] trend towards actions being illegal if performed by a private individual, but legally acceptable if performed by a corporation, for profit?
Fuck. You.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
Oh, yay. Yet another way for big business to keep track of places we go, the food we eat, the air we breathe.
It's only a matter of time before toilets start detecting our DNA in order to show us targeted ads on the the stall door while we take a shit.
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
Your spelling and grammar are so bad that I think it gave me cancer.
"Cell phones and PDA users may end up having to pay the data bill for ads that they may not even want, and how many people will want to waste their batteries on Bluetooth for this?