

Watch London in real time: tweets, tubes, etc. - vjvj
http://wearedata.watchdogs.com

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actionscripted
What an amazing site to build as a companion to a video game. Can anyone
explain if this is somehow integral to the game itself?

~~~
rrss1122
It's related to the game's story. In the game, Chicago is interconnected with
a computer system that allows one to control city infrastructure and eavesdrop
on people. I guess the site is showcasing the eavesdropping part, in a case of
life imitates art.

~~~
corin_
Surely it's already art imitating life, just because they've then looked
backwards and shown the life example that's similar to the art it doesn't make
it life imitating art?

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thefreeman
So one of the sources listed is [http://opencellid.de/](http://opencellid.de/)
and there are similar services for the other countries tracking mobile phones.

Can anyone familiar with this explain how this type of service is possible?

From my limited understanding, it seems like these services all track /
utilize cell phone base stations, which I understand to essentially be the
device that connects you to the network. But how do they identify the
positions of all of the mobile devices utilizing each station? Is this
something that is openly broadcasted by the base stations?

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dan1234
The OpenCellID data is collected by volunteers via smartphone apps.

The location of the phones on the map is where they were when they reported
the base station.

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SideburnsOfDoom
It appears to be broken rather than "amazing" for me in 3 different browsers
on 2 OSs.

"click on the map or on a blue symbol ..."

Clicking on the map does nothing and there are no blue symbols shown.

~~~
treerock
Works in Chrome for me. In firefox I got a blank screen, then an 'easyXDM'
window popped up with some logging data in it. Strange.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
Today with the same browser, there is stuff that wasn't there yesterday: blue
symbols, the outlines of boroughs, click through, the works. Most likely their
servers were choking under the load yesterday and failing to supply many of
the data sets.

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modelm2hb
Works fine on Windows 8.1 with Chrome 35.

By far the most interesting thing is the overlay of map with tweets. I'm using
a cinema display, so can't say I have problems reading small type. Although
the color scheme looks very Blade Runner, it makes overlaying only a few
options difficult to grok. Scrolling is slow.

Still impressed this was rolled out for a video game. Have there been any
other presentations like this in the past?

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grimtrigger
Do tweets have location data attached to them?

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duiker101
> Users must opt-in to use the Tweeting With Location feature (turn location
> "on").

[https://dev.twitter.com/terms/geo-developer-
guidelines](https://dev.twitter.com/terms/geo-developer-guidelines)

~~~
grimtrigger
Interesting. Why would anyone do that?

~~~
richardmjohn
Because a location often adds context? You can turn it on/off very easily on a
tweeet-by-tweet basis.

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oalders
I find it especially helpful to add location when posting a photo of some
landmark or public event. I wouldn't tag tweets by location when I'm at home,
but if I'm out it's a neat way to complement the tweet.

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randunel
300% CPU Usage...

model name : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4702MQ CPU @ 2.20GHz

Interesting data aggregation, but impossible to use without a supercomputer.

~~~
yitchelle
Seems to work fine on my i5 win7 Lenovo T430 "nothing special, off the shelf
workhorse" laptop

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Angostura
Loads on an iPad 2 Safari and the crashes the browser shortly after a city is
selected.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Same on Chrome on current Android

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PostOnce
Is this data gathered by the Watch_Dogs companion app for mobile devices, I
wonder?

~~~
marmarlade
You can find the data sources in the footer -
[http://imgur.com/QknNS6B](http://imgur.com/QknNS6B)

If the companion app also feeds in, cue the obligatory "OMG SURVEILLANCE HAS
GONE TOO FAR" remarks.

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BlackLamb
Amazing, How was this coded?

~~~
corford
Looks like it's done in Flash. Still very impressive but would have been even
cooler if it was all JS/webgl/canvas voodoo. Would love to know where they're
getting some of the data from (e.g. the bikes and atm locations).

~~~
marmarlade
[edit] For sources, hit Legals in the bottom right footer, then Sources -
Credit in the top (as per
[http://imgur.com/QknNS6B](http://imgur.com/QknNS6B)) [/edit]

Not sure about the other cities, but for London, the bike locations are
probably coming from the GLA Datastore
[http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/package/tfl-cycle-
hire-l...](http://data.london.gov.uk/datastore/package/tfl-cycle-hire-
locations). ATM information perhaps through Mastercard's API?
[http://www.programmableweb.com/api/mastercard-atm-
locations](http://www.programmableweb.com/api/mastercard-atm-locations)

I saw this a while back and thought it was a brilliantly executed marketing
campaign.

On a side note, whatever happened to Ingress?

~~~
Iv
Are you sure that they are not just faking the data?

~~~
marmarlade
Hmm, if they are, they're elaborately faking to the extent of making up
sources in the footer. I'll take a look tonight if there is a CCTV camera
where they claim there is and let you know!

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ChrisArchitect
year ago
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6001799](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6001799)

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pantalaimon
Why does this eat up all my CPU?

~~~
vgnanand
it's flash after all

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hankcharles
working on something similar for chicago with a bit less load time:
citypulse.io

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dalek2point3
where does the data come from? OpenStreetMap?

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markcrazyhorse
pretty amazing

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strict9
Splash screen, loading screen, Adobe Flash, microscopic typefaces. Feel like I
went through a time warp to 2001.

Also does not work at all on Chrome for Mac.

~~~
sebkomianos
It works fine on my MaChrome. And I got the same '00s feeling.

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pcocko
It looks amazing but getting data from a twitter mainstream with geolocalized
tweets as other social data as well is not difficult to implement. In my
opinion the key is how to create that map from scratch.

