Thursday, December 14. 2006

iFIND: Sharing Location With Friends - Not Big Brother

iFIND, a project of the SENSEable City Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology uses Wi-Fi locating but with a twist. Instead of allowing the location to be shared via a network, where ideally, the owner of that network can keep it for whatever purpose, the system uses peer-to-peer connections to share location information. That way, the network and the folks behind it, never have access to it. Moreover, the information that is "ok'd" to be shared with friends is encrypted.

Carlo Ratti, director of the lab notes the project's uniqueness.

Nobody is looking at this approach. The present trend in the industry is toward collecting data. This gives control back to the individual. . . . It's you who are calculating your location, and it's you deciding when to make it public and to whom.

I have to admit, this seems so simple! Of course MIT folks are likely to use it for geeky things like scavenger hunts and games, but it has real promise in the real world.

- Boston Globe