An iphone app that could change the way you get to work | Hacker News Reader

An iphone app that could change the way you get to work

sethgodin.typepad.com

12 pointsscrewperman22 comments

This won't work like Seth wants. The problem is the following:

- Few users have the iPhone hooked up to a car charger when in their cars.

- The GPS receiver sucks up power like mad when it's on. A constant connection will drain the battery very quickly.

- The iPhone is also incapable of passively uploading GPS data to a remote source, nor is it capable of running an app in the background. This is to say, your users must keep their iPhone unlocked (disabling auto-sleep) and your app open at all times. This is similarly a large drain on your battery.

The amount of work (buying a car charger, making sure to hook it up, unlock the phone, and open your app, and disable auto-lock) every time the user needs to use the service is just absurd. This has no chance of working as it is.

It's a cool idea, and if we all had devices in our pockets that can, without excessive hackery, sustain a continuous GPS feed to a 3rd-party source, this would actually work. Sadly, the iPhone is not it.

I want something passively uploading my GPS data. What should I get?

A Windows Mobile phone, such as Samsung BlackJack 2.

or an s60 phone such as the nokia e71

Just a reminder that it still won't solve your power problem. I don't actually know that many people who have a car charger for their phone.

Thanks! Something running s60 is interesting to me since it seems like it would be easier to program. My current phone is a treo 650 (palm), and I am disappointed at how high the barrier to programming it is.

I want to be writing blog entries like this one: http://blog.danielwinter.de/archives/13

I have spoken to a member of google maps mobile team (they program for all platforms) and asked him how blackberry compares in difficulty to android or windows. He said that blackaberry is pretty bad, but the most painful ever is Symbian. 2 cents here.

Interesting. My goals are to write home automation and GPS tracking apps, ideally in python. Stuff like that open-garage-door-when-phone-gets-home project. Any UI work would be web pages, so I guess I want a good web browser.

I'd suspect that problems with implementing gmaps wouldn't affect me. My issues are more like "can I code and deploy from linux?" and "do I get access to the camera, network, speaker, etc?"

Check out Mologogo: http://mologogo.wikispaces.com/

> sustain a continuous GPS feed to a 3rd-party source

Is that even a requirement? Can't you just sync every 5 minutes or so? Or sync more often when the battery is full, and sync less often when the battery is starting to deplete - given enough users that should take care of the power issue. Because it doesn't take a lot of energy to download the congestion information, so like with Bittorrent you only need a couple of seeders.

Bear in mind that you need only one data point to prove there is no congestion: a single car driving at 70 miles/hr rules out congestion at that road.

I expect it will work if all taxis are seeders, and all commuters are leeching. Considering taxis benefit a lot from such a service it's not unrealistic.

The auto-locking problem is another technical nuisance. A firmware update would fix that.

Also, I think the problem should be solved entirely without GPS. You don't want a machine to tell you that traffic is OK, what you really want is to receive a text message whenever there are traffic problems on your usual route on weekdays. "Traffic jam at intersection X" is all you need. When you get that message you just have to take a minute to figure out alternative route. The passive approach is much more appealing. After all, if traffic has been good all week you're not going to check your iPhone the next morning. Just not worth the trouble.

You could do every 5 minutes - but that would still be impossible on the iPhone, where your phone would have to remain unlocked (i.e. screen on) and your app open the entire time to do so. That is perhaps a bigger battery hog than the GPS receiver itself.

Also bear in mind that position acquisition is far from instantaneous, and has a high fixed cost. 5 minutes is probably ok, but keep in mind that your receiver is puttering away for a good minute before your scheduled check-in, just so your GPS can reacquire its position.

This would work if the software was integrated into a GPS unit, but not a cell phone. Taxi drivers in particular always have their GPS units chained to a car charger source, and this eliminates your power issue. Further, a GPS unit doesn't need to be hacked to support background applications :)

I think you misunderstand the intent of the idea - which is to use other people stuck in traffic jams to warn others who are approaching to divert. This absolutely requires a GPS unit of some sort. The data in this model is emergent, as opposed to human processed (e.g. a driver calling in an accident at an intersection).

This is called TrafficMaster in the UK ( http://www.trafficmaster.co.uk/home.php ). It uses detectors placed at regular intervals along all major and a lot of minor roads and you can receive basic traffic data over the cellphone network without a subscription.Been operational for ten years or so. It's not quite as described here as it does not require the active participation of it's users.

Hmmm.... I've tried looking but I can't find anything to back up the existence of 'RadaR'. I don't remember hearing about anything in this regard

I'm tempted to call BS, especially given the content of http://web.archive.org/web/20011130151150/http://radar.com/

Anyone else ever see or hear of this invention?

It was probably a concept. A lot of marketers say, "I developed this product", when really they should've said, "I thought it up on a Sunday afternoon, wrote it down, showed it to about 10 people on IM, and thought about working on it later this week."

... Yet another reason why I wonder by Seth Godin gets on HN so often. I think I've only ever read a single post by him that's been insightful in a significant way.

And it also goes to show that anybody can think of a good idea - it takes someone with real talent to execute it in a successful way.

I too have many good ideas. Wouldn't the world be better off if we could just, like, replicate our food? Starvation would become nonexistent! Quick! Somebody give me all the credit and post my blog everywhere!

(spoken like Jon Lovitz' Master Thespian): but he was only mmmmarketing!

I think the "bonus" idea that Seth gives, the automatic sending of recorded reminders, is a feature that is available from www.traqmonkey.com. It is called "callback reminder", and you have to know to make the reminder go to a "distribution group" instead of just yourself.

On his main idea, I have one comment: why don't people who live where the primary impediment to their getting around just move ? In theory, the internet and modern communications should allow a much more dispersed population and economy, without the costs that come from overcrowding. In practice, everyone in that traffic jam has an economic reason to be there. I think that any services or business ideas that allow a more "free range" type of economy instead of the "factory farm" overcrowded cities will have a strong demand.

I think you could get something almost as good by convincing Google to take traffic data into account when finding the least-cost route between two points. I know that in Chicago the freeways have speed sensors spaced pretty closely together, so it is possible to look at that data and immediately know how long you are going to spend on the freeway. If you use that data to determine your route, then you should avoid traffic jams.

Obviously conditions can change pretty quickly, but most of the time they don't. So this could be a good 90% solution without requiring people to broadcast their location to you.

Dash navigator?

Yes. To clarify for everyone else, he means this:

http://www.dash.net/

and it works exactly the way that Seth describes, even down to Dash users participating to provide real-time traffic updates.

It's an in-car device like a Garmin but internet-oriented. Personally, I'm not sure if it's a viable niche -- it's somewhere in between the Garmin and the iPhone. And the idea of Dash users providing real-time data is obviously a chicken and egg problem.

In any case, maybe Seth's idea was an improvement over radio reports in 2000 but is already behind what Dash, Google Maps or Yahoo maps does today.

Nokia and Berkeley are piloting software which monitors traffic via mobile devices that have GPS - they say they are working on an iphone version. http://www.traffic.berkeley.edu/

Some stand-alone GPS, if given traffic data, will take that into account when trip planning. http://www.gpsreview.net/traffic/

All he's saying to do is combine the two into a single application. Not that interesting IMO.

what about privacy? will the location data that is uploaded by the iPhone be stored on the server side? Can guarantees on privacy be provided? Clearly the govt can get access to this info with warrants (or may be even without depending on where you are)...

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