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Telcos Waking Up To the Value of Your Location
holy_calamity writes "Cell phone networks represent probably the most effective data collectors of all time: almost everyone's movements and communications are logged in some way by these firms thanks to the ubiquity of cell phones. Now they're beginning to wake up to the value of that data, as researchers mine call records to study travel and social patterns at previously unimaginable scales. Not surprisingly, some are thinking about how to monetize that data, too."
I just wished the iPhone and Android let me have a background easy scripting language like python.
It's what I missed when I finally had to switch away from the Nokia platform. Being able to write a small script that sent a position update to MY SERVER every 5 minutes.
It was cool to see the lights come on and the garage door open when I pulled in the driveway and got off the bike. It was typically a 2.5 minute delay from when I pulled in the driveway and when the system detected I was home from the gps reporting to activate everything. Perfect timing as I then had my helmet off, took off the jacket and unstrapped the backpack from the seat.
Come on Google and Apple, let us do cool stuff with our phones!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
They can sell information on everyone you called, use speech recognition to monetize the content of your calls. And since you voluntarily brought a phone into your life, why turn off the microphone just because you aren't making a call? Just continuously record everything in the vicinity - there must be a wealth of data there that someone would pay for.
If data-mining of everything that touches the service works for facebook, why not telcos?
It's too late.
I have a police/fire scanner, and I regularly hear them talking about "pinging" cell phones, and "Unit XYZ, welfare concern, stage 2 cell phone hang up in the area of blah blah blah...", etc.