Speaking primarily from ignorance, it seems Google is using the
infrastructure available for 911 calls today. A cell phone call to 911
currently identifies only the quadrant of the call. The next
generation 911 will use the phone's GPS coordinates but it is in
rollout today. All of which makes me wonder whether the Google
announcement isn't more marketing than substance for the moment--
although Google may be able to access the GPS info sooner than the 911
centers since it has more resources. Based on the video in your link,
I'm inclined to believe they're using the quadrant info and some
guessing software. In a city, the guesses would be more accurate as
there are more towers. In NM, they're not likely ti ID you w/i 1000
feet as the Flash flic says.
-d-
On Dec 3, 2007, at 1:10 AM, Tom Johnson wrote:
Colleagues:
In recent days, Google announced the beta of some software for a GPS-
equipped mobile phones. See http://tinyurl.com/yrvfo3
The way it works is by picking up a signal from cell towers, it
indicates the phone's location with a blue dot on Google's Mobil
Maps. (For what it's worth, I have Google Mobile Maps on my Treo
650, but I have yet to get this version to work.)
Here's my question:
Would it be possible for the Google mothership to do the equivalent
of "pinging" my phone number, not to make a call but to see if (a)
the phone is on and if so (b) where is that phone? The phone
wouldn't ring, so the user would have no idea he/she is being geo-
located. I assume that if Google could do that, those phone numbers
and geocodes could easily become a data base appropriate for some
interesting data mining, both as a static bit of insight and if
done, say, every hour, whew. What a rich pile of insight for all
sorts of people, businesses and survey agencies. Putting aside
issues of a person's privacy, just the collective data about where
that particular phone is going -- forget who owns it -- would be
rather amazing and useful to some.
So, back to the questions:
1) Would those pings of a phone be possible?
2) Would the results reflect location and movement of that phone
down to what degree of distance today? Are we talking meters or
kilometers or ????
3) And if Google wasn't doing the pinging, could anyone who had my
phone number track my location and/or distance from any originating
dialing point/server?
Thanks,
Tom Johnson
--
==========================================
J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism -- Santa Fe, NM USA
www.analyticjournalism.com
505.577.6482(c) 505.473.9646(h)
http://www.jtjohnson.com [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete."
-- Buckminster
Fuller
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