Editors Joe Francica and Adena Schutzberg explore the technology of indoor location tracking and real-time locating systems (RTLS) . From asset tracking to location-based marketing, radio frequency technology is fast evolving for use in confined spaces such as grocery stores, hospitals and manufacturing plants. This technology will be in place for attendees and exhibitors to experience at Directions Media's Location Intelligence Conference in Santa Clara, April 28-30.

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Microsoft Research shows off its latest idea each year at TechFest. Among those of geo-interest this year were:

LucidTouch allows users to touch an alternate location to activate a touch screen. The demo showed users touching the back of a display. The big leap? Such a system gets around the fat finger problem - where a big finger hides what is of interest, or is not "fine enough" to zero in on a button or area of interest.

Another technology, unnamed, taps into cell phones, armed with accelerometers, to capture information about the commute - where potholes are, when and where horns are honked. The data is sent to a server for use by drivers to find the best route. I guess it could also be used to indentify where roads need to be repaired.

- InfoWorld

The U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) commission the report titled, "Independent Study of the Roles of Commercial Remote Sensing in the future National System for Geospatial-Intelligence" early last year. It explores four possible business cases for how the government and private companies might work together to provide needed imagery for those agencies and their government clients. The suggested path is not the status quo and may have implications for the two current U.S. commercial satellite providers DigtialGlobe and GeoEye. Our editors try to tease out what the report means and its implications.

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Technology that tracks not where you drive, but how has shown substantial ROI for businesses GreenRoad Technologies offers software that tracks how you drive (fast, slow, sudden stops) and offers tips to driver safer. The former info is then reported to bosses, insurance companies, etc.

By installing the software, some corporate customers have managed to reduce accidents by 54 percent and lower accident costs by 65 percent. Carbon dioxide emissions have declined by 7 percent in some instances.

- C|net

The work, being done at Purdue, depends on not just one sensor in one phone, but the input of many phones relaying sensed information to a central server which can put the "picture" together of say such material traveling down the street.

- Purdue News Service

via Slashdot and reader Larry

New Scientist reports on a project in the UK where bike messengers carry sensors and GPS units and use cell phones to report air pollution.

[Eiman] Kanjo [the computer scientist at Cambridge University] and colleagues gave local cycle couriers air-pollution sensors and GPS units that connect to their cellphones via Bluetooth. Custom software lets the phone constantly report the current air quality and location to servers back in the lab.

...
The sensors are carried inside storage bins on the couriers' bikes and record levels of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and nitrogen dioxide.
...
The Cambridge research is part of a UK project, called MESSAGE, developing new ways to collect air pollution data using sensors on vehicles and people.

Project details and maps are here. I first heard about this vision for data capture in one of the most memorable interviews I ever did, with David Rejeski from the Wilson Center in 2003 (pdf).