LBS Tidbits: Mark Cuban, Foursquare and Search
Yes, THAT Mark Cuban. He writes:
I just invested in a company that takes video of an area and can tell you exactly how many people are in the capture area at any given time. It’s great for traffic patterns, security, and much more. We are posting cameras in certain environments where anonymity is required, and we don’t and won’t capture faces or anything that could identify an individual. We will simply provide incredibly accurate traffic information and patterns. It’s a great application with great opportunity.
The next extension is to install it in places where we can add facial-recognition software. So rather than someone checking in to a specific application, we would already know you are there.
Of course, there would have to be “opt out” mechanisms. Of course, there would be a battle over whether or not a store or venue should be “opt in” vs automated recognition. But that’s not a software issue.
- Vator.tv
Foursquare is still looking for a search partner (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft?) per Dennis Crowley in his discussions with The Telegraph.
Our data generates hugely interesting trends which would enrich search. We can anonymise data and use it to show venues which are trending at that moment. Twitter helped the world and the search engines know what people are talking about. Foursquare would allow people to search for the types of place people are going to – and where is trending – not what.
In the fourth quarter of 2011, 79.9% of cell phones shipped, amounting to 318.3 million units, will incorporate GPS functionality, up from 56.1% in the first quarter of 2009 or 187.8 million units, iSuppli forecast.
