Personal cities

And to follow on from that, a great concept post from my favourite guys at PSFK:

Intelligent Cities: The Personal City

May 10, 2010

The development of systems that allow city wide exchange of data and the reaction to that data is important to study. The impact of what is sometimes called the sentient city is not just at a city level but it also impacts communities, neighborhoods and families.

Intelligent Cities can create personal, helpful, efficient and communal cities. In four articles on PSFK, I’m going to describe each of these four aspects and the manifestations occurring today that point to a better urban future.

We are broadcasting information about us more than ever before and we can interpret this data to help us understand our quantified selves.

Devices collecting personal data about our lives give individuals deep levels of insight on their habits and behaviors. These systems are often passive, gathering data in the background from day-to-day activities. Over time, this information gives people the tools and motivation for people to improve their lives.

Manifestations Of The Personal City

Check In & Share

The popular Foursquare service provides a simple example of how people appear to be more willing to provide their personal information. Foursquare is a combination city guide and social game that encourages people to explore their cities while broadcasting information about their location. Users are motivated to share this personal data as part of a competition with their social circle, receiving points each time they check in at locations such as restaurants and bars.

Passive mobile apps monitor sleep habits over time

Mobile applications like Owl and Sleep cycle track a user’s sleep habits passively during each night. By monitoring a user’s movements, snoring levels, and other ambient data from the environment, these services collect a comprehensive database of information that helps to better understand one’s behavior.

Shared Traffic Info

Waze is a free mobile application that enables drivers to build and use real-time road maps, alerts on traffic and accidents, and data. Drivers can actively report and update other users with what’s happening on the road including accident alerts, police traps, weather hazards, cheap gas offers and more.

Connected body scale wirelessly sends weight data to the web

The Withings Connected Body Scale measures a user’s weight, fat mass, and lean mass, and sends that data wirelessly to a personal profile online. The device syncs with Google Health to build a long-term picture of the user’s health information.

Future Developments

How could the Personal City enhance our lives? Here is some of the suggestions we received at a recent presentation with Asian/Pacific region bloggers:

1. A weight monitoring system tells you what to eat

2. In-depth data allows for better matchmaking service

3. Find likeminded people to sit together when you travel

4. Monitor energy consumption

5. Understand the relationship between food types and your weight gain

There are plenty of other ways the Personal City can evolve. Leave your suggestions in the comments box.

Next Steps

PSFK has prepared a unique presentation on Intelligent Cities. If you would like to invite our staff to present it to your team and discuss possible opportunities for your company to explore, contact PSFK’s Jeff Weiner – jeff.weiner@psfk.com

Web Trends: What's New in 2009, Part 2

Thanks again ReadWriteWeb for this post on what's new in digi in 2009


Last week we discussed some of the new trends we're seeing on the Web in 2009: open data, structured data, apps that filter content effectively, real-time, personalization, mobile (especially location-based), and Internet of Things (the Web in real-world objects). We asked for your thoughts on these trends, along with your suggestions on what we should add. Also we were interested to know what products you've seen this year that are doing something new and 'beyond Web 2.0'. In this post we look at some of your responses, to try to define further what defines this current era of the Web.

So What Else is New?

Other than the trends we've already listed, what else did our readers identify as new this year?

Babak Samii pointed out that in 2009 there has been an increase in "real, defined business models that can actually generate revenue." MacStories agreed, noting that we'll see many innovations in revenue models as a result.

Aaron Fulkerson of Mindtouch commented that "Web Oriented Architectures are redefining ROI and TCO for enterprises." I had to google the second acronym (shows how long I've been out of the corporate world - it means "Total Cost of Ownership"). Aaron is right that enterprises are taking the Web seriously now for business apps - the slow rise in popularity of Google Apps in enterprises is evidence of this.

Willi commented that there is a "new lightweight" about the current Web. "There is a new granularity, atomicity and a kind of chemistry," he remarked. He noted the way that people can "jump in Twitter from persons to hashtags to new interesting persons and their social bubble in real-time." As examples, he pointed to products like Evernote (a note-taking app - our most recent review) and Mir:ror (we reviewed Mir:ror earlier today - it's an Internet-enabled device which enables you to create actions on your computer via everyday objects such as coffee mugs and books). Willi noted that while they may appear to be relatively trivial products, "new use patterns and user benefits emerge" out of them.

Open Data... Except Export

Not everyone in our previous post agreed with the initial set of trends. RWW commenter William claimed that 'open data' is a misnomer, because users mostly cannot export their data from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Friendfeed, Google, et al. We wouldn't go as far as William and label this "web 1.9.8.4.", however it's fair to say that - as far as users go - the promise of open data far outweighs the reality.

Having said that, the other meaning of 'open data' is that it's open for developers to build on top of. The plethora of Twitter apps built on top of Twitter's API is evidence enough of this. While Jason Barone called this "a one-way stream back to their closed system, in the form of an API," it's better than what we had before - which was fewer APIs and not many Linked Data sets (see the Linked Data graph from just 2 years ago, in this recent post). So overall we're encouraged that API data - or even better, Linked Data sets - will enable more and better connected web apps. This makes for a richer ecosystem of Web apps and social connections, which is a very good thing.

But point taken William and Jason, today for users the idea of 'open data' is half-realized at best. It won't be truly open until we have data portability - when you own your identity and content on the Web.

Real-time in the Real World

So far much of the focus on real-time as a new(ish) trend on the Web has focused on trendy apps such as Twitter and FriendFeed. However, Andria Krewson pointed out in the comments to our last post that real-time will spread much further than the early adopters:

"Real-time is huge. Many companies are built on timed data dumps, with the timing affecting workflow and cash flow, but the always-on generation will soon pressure businesses to provide real-time online information. Banks that don't post real balances in a timely way, or insurance companies that take weeks or months to process paperwork, or government agencies that don't provide timely transparent data will face pressures from millennials demanding faster, more accurate information."

On this note, a commenter called Joe remarked that we may be mis-using the term 'real-time.' "For the record," said Joe, "none of those sites you mentioned are doing REAL real-time, they are simply doing interval-based polling for new data on the server." Joe advised us to check out http://obama.collecta.com to see a good example of pushing to the browser using long-polling, not interval polling. We did indeed check that out, and wrote up our findings. While we were impressed that the search results were all less than a minute old, we're not convinced that just more speed means a better form of real-time than Twitter or FriendFeed. Time will tell.

Note: for a very mathematical explanation of why Twitter isn't really real-time, read this comment by Falafulu Fisi (made on a recent RWW post).

Conclusion

Well, there is no conclusion because the Web is an evolving beast. We're excited to see open data becoming more prevalant, even if it hasn't fully opened up yet. We're excited to see real-time making such an impact this year. We're excited about mobile and Internet of Things. There is a lot of innovation happening this year, which is pleasing to see.

Once again we invite you to list in the comments any other trends you're noticing - and just as importantly, what products you're seeing that exemplify these trends.

Here's the original 5-minute presentation which kicked this series off:

Image credits: cartoon screenshot from Geek And Poke; nano:ztag by aaron schmidt

Twitter Meets Google Street View: Stweet!

Thanks Mashable for this post on a pretty cool idea for a twitter/maps mashup.... nice idea, but not quite there yet.

May 9th, 2009 | by Pete Cashmore11 Comments

We’ve seen plenty of interesting Google Maps mashups over the years, and Twitter mashups too; but rather than just plotting Tweets on a map, why not go even further and show the street Tweets are posted from?

That’s what Stweet, a fun mashup of Google Street View and Twitter (), attempts to do. In an imperfect way, it takes the co-ordinates posted by some Twitter apps, like TwitterFon () (location must be enabled), and uses that data to find the approximate street address the Tweet came from. It then overlays the Tweet on a Google Street View image.

If you’d like to test it out, the best city by far is San Francisco, with a high volume of Tweets. A dropdown menu lets you browse various US cities, and you can see if there are Tweets from countries not listed by changing the end of the URL to “city,country”. For instance, this is the URL for Tweets in London, UK.

Is it any use? Perhaps not, but it sure is an interesting distraction, and raises the question: do I want the world to know what street I’m on?

---

Tags: Google, Google Maps, google street view, twitter

Zappos Launches Realtime Ordering Map

Thanks psfk for this post on Zappos real time visulaisation of what's happening in the online ordering system. Dunno why, but i really love this. Less shoe fetish but more a transparency thing...

April 16, 2009

Want to know what shoes people are buying in Montpelier, Vermont? Then just watch the realtime map on the Zappos website long enough and you just might find out. With this new feature, the popular online retailer is giving consumers even more reason to keep up with the Joneses, as users are granted the ability to zero in on their home towns and wait to see what items pop up. Currently, monitoring a specific location requires a bit too much active participation to be a worthwhile endeavor - the map continuously scrolls as new orders are being placed - but down the road we suspect Zappos will offer a static view for members wanting to make sure they don’t miss out on the latest trends in their area.