[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.

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The sensors are carried inside storage bins on the couriers' bikes and record levels of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and nitrogen dioxide.
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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.

“I have been building and refining the H3 detector over the last eight years of experimentation. I started out building analog machines that weighed 200 lbs. This version of the detector is the fourteenth iteration of the device and it weighs less than 10 ounces. . . . The next version of the H3 detector will feature full mapping through GPS.”

Christensen is also keeping the device open to other markets and devices: “I am now designing an ASIC chip set (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) that will be a miniaturized engine with APIs. . . . The APIs will be open to the world of designers so they can use the engine in any application and integrate this engine with existing devices, like the cell phone, weapons systems, and other hand held devices.”

The new local search capabilities in Live Search include not only a broad set of expert sources but also broad access to user-generated content from Live Search and from across the entire Web, through searchable user-created collections and Keyhole Markup Language (KML) support.