Get "in with the crowd" with the Citysense mobile application

You know there are plenty of cool things going on, attracting large crowds, not so far away from you, but you're home alone and fed up.

Enter Citysense, a tracking software service developed by a Columbia University computer science professor, which will show you where people are gathering.

There are plenty of mobile services available which will let you know where your friends are, or even other individuals using the same mobile software as you, but this is the first application I've seen that looks at a whole crowd of people.

Citysense takes the data from GPS-enabled cell phones, vehicles, and other devices, to create live maps of people movements. Not only does it show you where the activity is, but also whether particular locations are busier or quieter than usual.

To use the service, currently live in San Francisco, and coming to six more US cities including Chicago, users have to agree to broadcast their own location, though the service is completely anonymous.

The software is a spinoff from Sense Network's Macrosense system which can analyse and predict crowd movement. Citysense could be used to find out which pubs and clubs are popular (and which aren't), where the traffic jams are, why there are a lot of people gathering in the local park (pop concert, giant water fight), or where the best place to start a riot is (perhaps).

Currently available for the BlackBerry, with an iPhone version coming soon, of course.

Citysense

Related posts: Nokia buys Plazes | Navizon pseudo-GPS for iPhone

del.icio.us this | Stumble It! | Share Comments (0)