Friday, June 20. 2008

The Great Tomato Chase

Perhaps it had been a while since I was in the grocery store but the notices and warnings about tomatoes took me by surprise. So, we find ourselves yet again faced with the problem of a food-borne illness.

InformationWeek provides two references to how Hawaii is using RFID technology to trace this problem from "farm to market" according to an article in the Denver Post. The work by the Hawaii Farm Bureau Federation to mitigate the problem was also detailed and cited for a ComputerWorld Honors program. From the citation: "With RFID systems in place, product traceability and feedback loops using a variety of temperature, humidity or biological sensors may be established to measure product safety and quality status through flow points using a variety of computer based sensor technologies."

I am often asked what the next big thing is with respect to location technology. I feel that sensor networks and RFID have enormous potential to allow citizens to better understand how to protect themselves. Whether it is a food-borne illness or a biological terrorist attack, location technology can support information flow to the general population in helping them understand dangers in greatest proximity to them.

Virtual Sticky Note

No, not a new idea, but here's an interesting twist - who's paying for research:

And [Romit Roy] Choudhury [an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke] said he was encouraged when Verizon agreed to pay for the undergraduate work involved in the project. Graduate student work is covered as part of a larger grant from the National Science Foundation.

- News & Observer

Laser Range Finders on Google StreetView Cars

Ben Yetman (famed robot mapping guy at Pen Bay Media, his wildly popular article was in Directions a few years back) notes on his blog that Google's StreetView vehicles are now capturing 3D data. It's not LiDAR but laser range finding. What could the data be for? Ben suggests:

3D point data could mean a couple things:
Google wants to scan your body to fit you for a new Super Search Suit (probably made of Spandex - the material of the future)… um, yah.
Enhanced image post processing algorithms use it to better mitigate frame overlap
Google is going to present some new textured 3D interfaces in GoogleEarth/Google Maps, beyond what they already model