Posts Tagged ‘geolocation’
Customer Satisfaction – Instant Feedback #geolocation
Last year I was so happy to see this instant feedback for the toilets at Schiphol I thought about the ways in which I give instant feedback for a job done. I send the occasional Thank You card, and on occasion hand deliver them to the person in question. This is not instant. How can I give somebody instant feedback?
In a food service establishment, such as a café or restaurant it is customary to leave a tip, for shops this is not as customary and it still only allows the employee to see the appreciation for the service performed. Location based recommendations with a geolocation service, such as foursquare, is ideal although this is unlike a tip that it only promotes the establishment and there is no feedback loop within the establishment. Service cards or books, a mainstay of hotels and small catering services also don’t entirely cover it. And naturally this example has price as the prohibiting factor.
How would you get instant on- and offline?
Image source: me
FourSquare Tips containing Adverts #gps #geolocation #jobs
I recently started noticing that certain locations that I check into had tips which were usually for companies close to that location. An example it the ING Bank advertising their career site when you are in the discount electronics shop across the road or in the mall. Or Heineken informing you that you can link your FourSquare profile to your Heineken profile.
Image source: me
6 Months of Security Links #2011
I’m a regular curator of daily links, and like to give overviews of my collection of curated links and posts. This is partly as there are some good sources and articles in here and as I am working on a research project which I started based on a number of books I read.
I’m sure you’ll find something interesting in the items below – there are some gems in the list – and I dare to hazard the guess you might learn something you wanted to know. 
Playing with DataSift #curation
Some weeks ago I got my beta access to DataSift, I was happy to get access and didn’t see time to use it. Yesterday evening I played with it for the first time, it was quite interesting to discover something which I suspected which was that they had their own query/modeling language called FSDL. It contains the ability to do queries over the data, including data over a map geo coordinates, which means I can do some complex queries to get the needed data. Once I submitted the query I was given an option to buy access to a stream of the data.
I believe less is more, so I’m happy to see that they released their service with support for quite a number of services – Twitter, Tweetmeme, Buzz, Digg, RSS feeds – and makes it possible to do matches on different fields within the data set. And they have made the possibility to add your own datasources, which can be modeled in the same way as the existing datasources.
Above you can see an example FSDL that I wrote for the keyword Snypher.
A great tool, with many uses.
GeoLocation and Data Leakage Prevention #foursquare #gowalla #dlp #security
To make it clear I’m not speaking of the information being broadcast by employees to social media, I’ve been musing on the risks of Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) of third party employees such as consultants using geolocation services such as foursquare, brightkite or Gowalla. Many companies – very usual with consulting companies – have requirements that their employees do not release the names of customers or customer data to the media, this includes releasing data pertaining to services which are offered, these policies have yet to be fully enforced when it comes to geolocation services.
For a consulting company, such as mine, which has a reasonably diverse offering of security software to customers, yet for a company who is known as a RSA, Oracle or Novell integrator it can create risk vectors when it is known that their in house software leans towards a specific platform. In this way it could become public knowledge that a company uses a specific product, and based on the date of the visits information pertaining to versions can be inferred.
Naturally posting the geolocation to a service such as foursquare doesn’t necessarily open security holes, and it may not violate the standard of “Due Care” in that it is not necessarily negligent to release this information. Although it might not be in the best interest of the customer to make this public knowledge.
On the other had there is also an advantage to be had, in any cases of disputes a travel log like an entry log can be produced as corroborating evidence, although without direct evidence this merely proves where the physical access control device was and not the location of the disputed individual. And only circumstantially where the owner was located.
Your thoughts?
Image source: me
FindMe #geolocation #facebook #crackberry
I discovered findme (links to FaceBook) by way of FireEagle. A different application to update my location to FaceBook.
First you need to register it to FaceBook before you can use it. It registers the cell location, rather than the GPS location, and allows you to tag the Cell with a location tag. It runs in the background. According to FireEagle:
Automatic operation is currently available for BlackBerry …
Click here for FindMe OTA Download.
Technorati Tags: geolocation, facebook, fireeagle, crackberry, blackberry, yahoo!
Google Maps Trip Resolver
I love mashups and saw this one that I would like to share with you: Google Maps Fastest Roundtrip Solver. It not just populates the map, but produces an instruction for getting there with distance data. Now if only it produced the most eco-friendly trip.
technorati tags: maps, google, mashup, resolve, geolocation, ai, algorithm, geocoding, geography,
GPS Wiretapping Lawsuit
On BetaNews I just saw that:
“The American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation are suing the Justice Dept. for “documents, memos, and guides” about procedures used to track individuals through cell phones.
“The [ACLU] and the [EFF] aren’t looking for money … Instead, the two civil liberty advocacy groups want information about whether and how the government might be using the location capabilities in cell phones to find out where people are.”1
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had already upheld the ruling that the FBI was not allow to spy on in-car computers, which was made possible by the OnStar system, “… a 2003 lawsuit revealed that systems such as OnStar can be used for eavesdropping on passenger conversations”
- US Justice Dept. sued for info on cellular tracking practices
- Court to FBI: No spying on in-car computers
- FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool
technorati tags: wiretapping, fbi, lawsuit, eff, aclu, freedom, onstar, geolocation, gps, mobile
I want a GPS Video Camera and a little Laptop
On Linux Devices I just saw this little camera:
Linux video camera geo-tags, writes to SATA drives
Read the rest of this entry »
Shortest or Fastest Route for saving the World
I saw 8 Geeky Ways to Save Gas and at the section “Use GPS or mapping tools” I read this:
“It may sound obvious, but think of how much gas you waste driving around when you’re lost or trying to find a parking garage. Map out your route in advance to devise the shortest route (rather than the fastest one), which can also put you on secondary roads where you’ll drive more slowly—another gas-saving benefit. Some GPS units also let you program them to pick routes that avoid toll roads, where you can burn gas idling in line.”(emphasis mine)
It doesn’t sound that obvious that taking the shortest route is more efficient than the fastest route. Apparently somebody else thinks the same with their patent “Method and system for calculating least-cost routes based on historical fuel efficiency, street mapping and location based services“:
“The system will determine the best of all calculated routes based on the vehicles estimated MPG, historical data and efficiency in traversing various terrains. In one example, a vehicle towing a heavy trailer would consume fewer MPG if it took a longer but more flat route while the same vehicle without the extra weight would achieve better MPG by going a shorter route over more hilly terrain. This method would produce the best MPG rating for a given trip. With this new system in place, the driver will be able to query a mapping software program product that is based on optimal gas mileage rather than on speed or distance alone.”
In fact even the article Sat-nav finds greenest routes in the Grauniad that “… taking more eco-friendly routes cut[s] motorists’ average fuel usage by 8.2%.“
“The most efficient roads are often those where you can drive at a fairly slow, constant speed, without having to stop or suddenly accelerate or decelerate,” Dr Ericsson told New Scientist magazine.
technorati tags: fuel, efficiency, gps, geolocation, science, environment, green
