Monday, August 25. 2008

Location Privacy: Are you over it yet?

Seems like we don't hear much anymore about location privacy. In an op-ed piece today in the Wall Street Journal, L. Gordon Crovitz thinks we "got over" the concerns we had about many privacy issues. He cited several areas of privacy concerns that seemed to have vanished. For example, he cites an AOL study in Britain that found that 84% of people said they would not reveal personal income information online but that 89% of them willingly did. He provided a litany of other examples such as the fact that Amazon "closely records our choices of books" and that Google "scans emails to deliver relevant ads" as well as electronic tolls that record our location.

These digital examples ignore some of basic things that have always been around. Your name and address, for most of us, are in the phone book. If you gave out your business card, we know where you work too. Adding in the digital information such as profiles on LinkedIn or Facebook, you have probably listed your place of business, past associations, clubs, etc. So for about 90% of your day, just about anyone can find where you are. If we add in your travel time, your location is likely recognized by your cell phone. If you have a "friend finder" application...game over...we know where you are.

So, let's not offer faux concern over Internet privacy when we so willingly give and want people to see some of our private lives. And let's not cower behind the pretense of total location privacy when we desparately want the most accurate GPS-enabled mobile device. Can you say, "location-based advertising..."anyone, anyone? We let our guard down so easily and the online and mobile tools are there begging us to do so.

Crovitz cites Lawrence Friedman's book, "Guarding Life's Dark Secrets," and wraps up his editorial quoting Friedman who says, "If the nineteenth century was a world of privacy and prudery...then the twenty-first century is the world of the one-way mirror, the world of the all-seeing eye."

MapQuest adds Citysearch to Results

MapQuest has partnered with Citysearch to add its content (reviews, menus, photos) to results.

- MapQuest Blog
- via Search Engine Watch

Google Gears Geolocation API

Announced on Friday, but not really popping until today, is the Google Gears Geolocation API. Gears is a browser plug in used to make Web apps run when not connected to the Internet.

What, then is this API?

Per PC Mag it's "a platform designed to provide Web sites with location-based information without the aid of GPS." That said it can tap into GPS, cell-tower triangulation, or your computer's IP address to determine location and then "pass it on" to an application. So far, lastminute.com, a travel site and Rummble, a social networking site has used the API which runs on Internet Explorer, Firefox, and IE Mobile.

Google states that it will not store location information, but users need to check with the sites they visit about their policies. Users are prompted the first time a site asks for a location. Here's the Google announcement on the Gear blog.

Scot Military Leader Not Keen on Communications/Mapping for his Soldiers

Lieutenant Colonel Nick Borton is the commanding officer of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (5 Scots) currently on duty in Afghanistan. He is dismayed at the communications tools provided by his country: range is poor and batteries short making the devices good candidates for being "off" when perhaps needed. Their solution is called Bowman: Better Off With Map And Nokia.

- Daily Record (UK)

Quote of the Week: Keys to Success

Keys to Success, from the Crawfordsville, Indiana online GIS intro page:

REMEMBER Layers are called layers because they lay on top of each other. Make sure the layer you want is visible and there isn’t another layer covering it up.

REMEMBER be patient, you CANNOT mess anything up, if you do you can always back out of the site and start over, no harm done.

Satellite Damage Assessment For Tskhinvali, South Ossetia, Georgia (as of 22 Aug 2008)

Check it from ReliefWeb. "Damaged buildings have been identified with WorldView-1 and Formosat-2 satellite imagery acquired on 19 August 2008 at a spatial resolution of 50cm and 2m respectively."