Keith N Hampton

A busy week for local location technologies. Carlo Ratti, a colleague from my former department at MIT is doing some interesting work on real-time mapping of WiFi users on the MIT campus: CNN article. You can see a real-time image of users of 802.11 hotspots on campus here. In addition to aggregate data, MIT WiFi users can choose to make their individual identity visible on a map. Carlo has also been doing work on real-time visualizations of cell phone network users in Austria: Press release. The images are stunning – both visually and socially: Graz in real time. Exciting example of how location aware services can be used and visualized. Hopefully no one figures out how to hide a Wi-Fi device on someone and stalk them across campus.

In related news, Google has announced the release of Google Local for Mobile. A nice little Java application for your cell phone that streams Google map info. At the moment it does not use the location information (GPS or other service) available in almost any newer mobile phone to identify your current location. However, last year my students and I developed a similar Java application that pulled location from Java enabled cell phones – so we know it is coming soon!!! Much easier to hide a cell phone on somone and stalk them than with a WiFi device.