Bing recently announced an update to Bing Maps that will allow users to explore the interior layout of over 900 locations with the simple click of a mouse.  While using the service, users can access the indoor maps of an available venue by mousing over their location and clicking it.

This is a powerful improvement that increases the usability and usefulness of Maps for Bing, especially when compared to their competitors.

Here is what Google Maps shows you when you search for the San Diego International Airport:

If you can see it, the mouse pointer is hovered over the San Diego International Airport.

Here is what Bing Maps now does under the same circumstances:

Notice how the outline pops out? Users can click on the foot print of the airport and see a map of the interior of the airport.  Here is a close up of terminal 1:

The mouse is now hovering over the Southwest terminal.  It is pretty nice to know, before you even get to the airport, where you will need to be to check your bags or get your boarding pass – especially if you have never  been to the airport before.  Time can be save.  Stress can be avoided. Serenity can be found.

Like to eat?  Bing Maps will have you covered by displaying all the shops and restaurants inside, even those that lie past the security gate.  Just check out this screenshot from Concourse A1:

Kudos to the team behind Bing Maps for getting this right.

Source: All Point Blog, Bing Maps Blog

The Boston Marathon kicked off this morning in Boston, MA and Waze is promising Boston drivers routing information that will help them navigate road closures for the event. They made the announcement in this blog post. This is good news for drivers who are looking to avoid delays and make their way around the city without undue delay.

However, when I scanned the Waze Live Map (with the race starting point) I was unable to see any road closures or traffic warnings as of 9:44 AM on 4/16.

If you are looking for a complete map of the Boston Marathon route this map proved useful: Boston Marathon Interactive Map

Waze users will have to step it up and make the necessary edits to the mapping data for this crowd sourced data to really make a different today.

It appears that other crowdsourced traffic data appears to be in the same situation as Waze. Google Maps traffic doesn’t appear to offer any data on road closures either.

Interest in buying a watch that could last you the rest of your life – without ever changing the battery or having to change the time? Epson has just announced that such a watch will soon be in stores and its name will be Seiko Astron.

The watch will be solar powered and gather time information from the GPS satellites that orbit overhead, giving it an atomic clock-like accuracy at almost any location in the world.

While the watch falls short of identifying the location of the watch to the owner or providing any kind of real time tracking, it does promise to keep a user informed of the time of day anywhere they might be in the world.

Users will also know what day it is since the Astron has a perpetual calendar that goes all the way to February 2100.

Here is a promo video for the watch:

Seiko is recommending a retail price of JPY 152,250 – 210,000 ($1880 – $2600 USD) for the watch, which is certainly geared more to the globe trotting businessman than the average dude off the street. Yet this leap forward in technology – both in terms of power management and GPS use – will certainly have ramifications down the line for GPS tech in general and GPS tracking technology specifically. It just may take several more years for it to happen.

Source: Epson News Release

The British Columbia Ferries have made a useful and bold move to include GPS data for their ferries to the public. The data is available both on their desktop and mobile website.

The mobile version of the site, here seen on an Android phone, allows users to track the ferry by clicking on the section encircled with red

While the information is still short of real-time GPS tracking, updates to the data occur about every two minutes, this is still a good move for users of the service.

The data will help users make informed decisions about when to leave work or home for the ferry and decrease the overall amount of user unhappiness when ferries are late due to weather or mechanical issues.

Users have access to ferry name, destination, heading, and speed from the tracking interface. When using the desktop version of the site users must simply hover their mouse over the ship icon (represent as an arrow pointing in the direction of the ships heading). In our tests of the mobile interface we were unable to produce any of this pop-up information.

User must also go to another part of the site in order to access estimated times of arrival (ETA).

You can view vessel positions in real time here: BCFerries Vessel Positions

Source: GISuser

Reports out of Canada have an Ontario man founding a GPS tracking device while performing a routine inspection of his truck. The device was secured to the wheel well of Ben Ferrill’s truck with a magnetic case.

According to the victim, the tracking device was lit up like a Christmas tree when he found it. This suggests that the tracker was on and sending position information when found by Mr. Ferrill.

The device appears to be a PT-X5 Pro from US Fleet Tracking. The real-time GPS tracking device is priced at $650 and boasts a battery life of about 80 hours. This would suggest that the tracker was a fresh addition to Mr. Ferrill’s vehicle. He was lucky he found it.

When asked why a tracker could have been found on his vehicle Mr. Ferrill mentioned that he was currently in a dispute with a former employer over wrongful termination. Mr. Ferrill claims that he was fired after suffering an injury while on the job, a claim that is currently under investigation.

It would not be unheard off for his former employer (or an agent hired by his former employer) to have installed a tracking device on his car in order to help them build evidence over the nature of Mr. Ferrill’s injuries and ability to work. The police, however, have been unable to determine the owner of the device even though that information is held by US Fleet Tracking.

US Fleet Tracking has the following privacy policy:

US Fleet Tracking will not under any circumstance make your information or any data specific to your vehicle tracking account available to any third party – including local, state, or federal law enforcement authorities – without a court order signed by a judge specifically requiring us to release this information. Otherwise, we promise we will not release your personal, private data to any individual who does not have your userid and password (so please keep them secure). The ONLY exception to this policy is if YOU – our customer – specifically request our assistance in the prosecution of criminal activity as it relates to your account. This would include auto theft, or the prosecution of any other crime which was committed in one of your vehicles tracked by the US Fleet Tracking system. In such cases, we are happy to assist in any way possible, but we must ask that any expenses incurred in the process of assisting you – including serving as an expert witness in any legal investigation or court proceeding – be fully reimbursed. At US Fleet Tracking, we have an acute understanding of how important our customer truly is, and we are tirelessly dedicated to keeping those customers happy – whatever it takes.

The following text has also been reported as being located on the US Fleet Tracking website (but we were unable to find it, indicating that it has been removed since news of this story broke):

Even if presented with a court order, we promise to fight the courts to keep this information private and respect the privacy of our paying customers

It would certainly be frustrating to know that you could find out who was tracking you illegally but are unable to because the company that holds that information won’t give it out to you.

Source: CBC via autoblog Canada

Dr. Michael Milford, a researcher from Queensland University of Technology, will be presenting a paper later this year that describes the theory behind his work in visual based navigation. Visual based navigation could potentially replace expensive GPS technology in certain applications, providing better and quicker location and navigation services.

Dr. Milford, who cut his academic teeth studying the navigational habits of small, nearly blind rodents, has taken this expertise into the world of navigation and position finding. His paper is titled SeqSLAM: Visual Route-Based Navigation for Sunny Summer Days and Stormy Winter Nights and will be presented St. Paul, Minnesota at the 2012 International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

The work that the paper will present grew out of a grant Dr. Milford secured in Nov 2011. The grant is meant to fund research that will:

… develop novel visual navigation algorithms that can recognize places along a route, whether travelled [sic] on a bright sunny summer day or in the middle of a dark and stormy winter night. Visual recognition under any environmental conditions is a holy grail for robotics and computer vision, and is a task far beyond current state of the art algorithms. Consequently robot and personal navigation systems use GPS or laser range finders, missing out on visual sensor advantages such as cheap cost and small size. This project will set a new benchmark in visual route recognition, and in doing so enable the extensive use of low cost visual sensors in robot and personal navigation systems under wide ranging environmental conditions.

The basic idea behind the research is that a person’s position could be determined by the world around them. What makes Dr. Milford’s work special is that he attempts to create an algorithm that will provide reliable position information without relying on prominent features from high resolution images to do this. Night or day, rain or shine – the idea is that a low-cost solution could provide position information reliably and accurately based upon changes in images captured over time.

Here is paper recently presented by Dr. Milford on the topic: Feature-based visual odometry and featureless place recognition for SLAM in 2.5D environments

Sources: psfk, Michael Milford QUT Wiki

Cell phone tracking was a key element in a late night Farmington, Missouri shootout straight out of a TV crime drama.

The shootout ended in the wounding on Deputy and the death of the suspect who was pronounced dead on the scene.

The entire ordeal started at 12:07 AM when bail bonding agents contacted the police. The suspect, who was unnamed, was barricaded inside an apartment building and was armed with a firearm.

As a result of the call, three policemen were dispatched to the scene. Upon arriving they saw the suspect fleeing with the bail bondsmen in pursuit. The suspect fired a single shot at this time, but did no injure anyone.

The suspect was lost in the pursuit. It was at this time that one of the officers on the scene reached out to AT&T to get what Farmington Police Chief Rick Baker described as a “ping” of the suspects cell phone.

From the reports we found it was unclear what information police had to supply in order to track down the suspect. Did the police just give them a phone number and ask them to find it? Did they have to reveal the suspects name and ask for a position from AT&T that way? Was a judge asked to issue a court order for AT&T to divulge the information? Or was the information given willingly?

By 1:30 AM the police had heard back from AT&T that the phone was very close to a USA Drug store about a mile north of where the suspect was last seen fleeing from police. According to the Chief Baker, the position information provided by the cell phone carrier was a “pretty good coordinate.”

Police took this information and converged on the suspect in force. Upon finding the suspect police ordered him to drop his weapon. It was at this time that the suspect raised his weapon at a police officer. Gun fire erupted as police and suspect engaged in a short shootout that ended with the death of the suspect.

Here is the video of the police chief discussing the events:

What is most interesting about this case is how similar it sounds in structure to stories we see all the time in our crime dramas. They look something like third:

• Police discover a suspect
• Police track the suspect’s cell phone
• Police find and confront suspect

Crime dramas universally represent cell phone tracking as extremely easy for police to do. This real life example goes to show the oversimplification of these artistic representations, but does demonstrate that police have the power to quickly track down a suspects cell phone.

Source: KSDK

Researchers from the University of Minnesota presented a paper earlier this month detailing how a person in the know could use cheap hardware and open source software to determine what cell phone tower a GSM based cell phone is using. This could conceivably give criminals, governments, and businesses access to rough position without having to ask cell networks for permission.

The researchers suspect that approximately 80% of the 5 billion cell phones in the world suffer from this vulnerability, leaving around 1 billion devices that are not subject to being tracked in this way. It is also important to note that the position data is extremely coarse and at best can locate a phone within a square km area. This is not GPS tracking.

The paper, Location Leaks on the GSM Air Interface (.pdf), was presented at the 19th Annual Network & Distributed System Security Symposium and was the work of Denis Foo Kune, John Koelndorfer, Nicholas Hopper, and Yongdae Kim.

Here is what some of the typical news media coverage on this topic looks like, whether it is in print or broadcast news:

The news casters are obviously trying to make people watch the program and make it memorable, but in so doing they put the emPHAsis on the wrong syllABLE.

For starters, not all people can be tracked using the method outlined in this paper. The number of people susceptible to this security flaw is somewhere in the neighborhood of 136 million in the US, which represents the number of cell phone users subtracted by the number of smartphone users. There are about 234 million cell phone users age 13 and up in the US, according to reports from comscore. About 98 million are smartphone users. There are some smartphones at risk, especially those on the T-Mobile and AT&T network according to the paper.

Another important thing to understand is that this only affects phones that use the GSM network technology (i.e. old phones). GSM, or 2G technology, is older networking infrastructure that is on its way out in the US but is still used extensively by the vast majority of the world. The importance of the researchers findings are certainly more important for the rest of world than it is for those in the US.

Also, phones on certain cell phone carriers, like AT&T, are susceptible – smartphone or not. AT&T, which allows users to talk and surf the internet at the same time, has to use two different technologies to accomplish this. One of these technologies is GSM. This makes pretty much all their phones susceptible to being tracked using the method outlined in this paper.

Hackers also must have your cell phone number, a working map of the cell phone towers in your area, sophisticated computer skills, and a land line in order to pull off this hack. Chances are that there are very few people with all those components who are also willing to track you down.

The paper does end by suggesting some methods carriers could implement to secure GSM networks from this security flaw.

Sources: Ars Technica, Gizmag, University of Minnesota, Fox 9 Twin Cities, TechCrunch

Researchers and engineers from the University of South Florida have been awarded a patent that could see the public better informed about crime and disasters than ever before.  The patent (US8045954) covers a system that would enable governments to crowdsource crime fighting as well as laser target disaster announcements to mobile phones using a GPS aware app.

The patent summary does a good job of, well, summarizing the patent:

A method of providing emergency related information to and from a centralized location over a wireless network. The method utilizes cellular phones in emergency communications and entails two embodiments that employ location-aware technologies, in portable form, in security applications. One embodiment serves as a modern high-tech “neighborhood watch,” enabling law enforcement access to the many “eyes and ears” of the public simultaneously via available cell phones. Cell phones with embedded digital cameras allow the instant capture and remote submission of suspicious circumstances to law enforcement through pictures or video.

The idea of crowdsourcing crime fighting data certainly isn’t new. Sites like HarrassMap (which seems very popular) and apps like Fight Back (which seems to have gotten no traction at all) have been around for a while now, but it still is a great idea – especially when combined with information delivered through photos or videos can be added to the equation.

A world where average citizens could aid police in finding an abducted child, or a suspected murderer, or a bank robber is certainly a safer one.

The app would also have incredible power to contact cell phone users with laser targeted data in case of an emergency. Hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, wildfires – all pose a very real threat to human life. An app like this could be instrumental in discovering those who are trapped or injured. It could even be useful in directing individuals and families to the closest shelter, communicating important shelter rules like whether pets are allowed or if people with special needs can be accommodated comfortably.

The group we have to thank for this are:

• Sean Barbeau, CUTR research associate and Computer Science and Engineering doctoral candidate
• Philip Winters, Director of Transportation Demand Management Program at CUTR
• Rafael Perez, computer science and engineering professor
• Miguel Labrador, associate professor of computer science and engineering
• Nevine Georggi,CUTR Senior Research Associate

The patent was filed all the way back in August of 2006 but was not granted until October 2011. There appears to have no known current deployment of the technology patented.

Sources: Tampa Bay Online, USF News, US Patent 8,045,954

The interwebs are up in arms about what many bloggers are calling the “avoid the ghetto” feature described in a recent Microsoft GPS patent.

Reaction has almost universally been negative, but does seem to vary in degrees based upon how much of the actual patent writers and commentators have actually read.

For example, Ross Kenneth Urken of Aol Autos thinks the patent is about helping motorists stay out of the ghetto while driving. He writes,

Microsoft’s newly-patented “avoid ghetto” app for GPS devices aims to help motorists steer clear of unsafe neighborhoods, but the concept’s controversial nature has garnered ire from critics.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Microsoft patent which deals with pedestrian travel – not car traffic.

Just read the patent summary for yourself (I’ve highlighted key sentences for easy skimming)

The following discloses a simplified summary of the specification in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the specification. This summary is not an extensive overview of the specification … Its sole purpose is to disclose some concepts of the specification in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description that is disclosed later.

Conventional route generation systems obtain data from various sources and generate a direction set to be used by a person operating an automobile. A user commonly inputs a starting location and an intended destination in addition to travel constraints (e.g., to avoid highways, minimum travel time, minimal travel distance, or minimal gas consumption); based upon inputted information, a travel route is generated. However, there are numerous difficulties in translating vehicle (e.g., automotive) route generation to pedestrian travel. For instance, a pedestrian can commonly traverse terrain that is more rugged then many vehicles (e.g., climbing steep and rocky hills); conversely, a pedestrian can become more susceptible to environmental influence, such as from cold temperatures.

The disclosed innovation produces routes that are intended to be taken by a pedestrian. A gather component obtains information related to intended pedestrian travel and a generation component produces a route based upon at least part of the obtained information. Commonly, the pedestrian route is produced based off security information, weather information, terrain information, or a combination thereof. Various features can integrate with route presentment, such as integrating an advertisement targeted to a pedestrian with a direction set.

A large amount of focus in route generation has focused upon vehicle route generation and little attention has been paid to pedestrian route production. Since a large number of individuals travel by vehicle, application to pedestrian travel has been ignored. However, there has been a long felt need for route generation towards individuals that do not commonly travel by vehicle–for instance, many economically challenged areas are populated with individuals that do not own motorized vehicles and generally travel by walking. In addition, unexpected results can take place through practice of the disclosed innovation. As an illustration, a pedestrian could arrive at a location faster than if she traveled in a vehicle by taking more direct paths, yet a vehicle commonly travels much faster. Due to detailed route planning, a direction set can be created that allows a user to take more diverse paths that can compensate for a general lack of speed.

In case you just skipped the quote, the patent is essentially about how to navigate on foot while taking into account factors that might be particularly important to pedestrians, like weather or mugging statistics or changes in elevation. This is not a patent about driving a car.

Most people are fine with the idea of using weather and topographical data to help make their walking experiences better. What most people object to is the use of “security information” to determine the flow of pedestrian traffic.

Katie Rogers, reporting at the Washington Post, isn’t convinced that a GPS feature that might use crime statistics to determine routing is helpful, especially to the communities that it steers foot traffic away from. She writes, “A phone feature that encourages users to avoid problem areas of a city — potentially hurting those areas’ reputations and economies in the process — may soon draw more controversy than it does accolades.”

Chris Matyszczyk of CNET is concerned about what type of crime stats Microsoft plans on using to determine secure and unsecure areas. While he concedes that data concerning muggings, assaults, and gunfire would be helpful he is concerned that the people at Microsoft will lump all crime data together – placing burglary right alongside more personal, violent crimes.

Similarly, Sarah E. Chinn, author of Technology and the Logic of American Racism and Associate Professor in the Department of English at Hunter College is reported by AOL Autos as hating the idea of this app, which she described as a “appalling.”  Again, the issue is what Microsoft is going to do with the “security information.”  Chinn is quoted as saying, “Of course, an application like this defines crime pretty narrowly, since all crimes happen in all kinds of neighborhoods. I can’t imagine that there aren’t perpetrators of domestic violence, petty and insignificant drug possession, fraud, theft, and rape in every area.”

What seems so interesting about these comments is that they don’t seem to take into account Microsoft having employees who employ common sense. Why would anyone with even a small amount of sense think that incidents of insider trading ought to be included right along with rapes and muggings when determining a safe or unsafe walking route?

They also appear to not now about or reject crime mapping, a disciple that seeks to understand crime by mapping and analyzing crime incident reports.  A street that has a long history of muggings at certain times during the day should probably not be on your route during that time of day.  That just makes common sense.

In the end, the uproar about the patent is overblown and probably a stunt to get an audience but has little basis in what probably is going to happen.  I just hope Microsoft doesn’t get scared by the brouhaha and actually develops the patent into a really good working product.

Sources: Technolog, US Patent, Aol Autos, Washington Post, CNET