
The bright side of sitting in traffic: Crowdsourcing road congestion data - peter123
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/08/bright-side-of-sitting-in-traffic.html
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param
I was driving on CA-46 last week and had 5 mins of driving at 55mph left to
get onto I-5. Suddenly, all traffic just stopped. I booted up google maps on
my iphone and saw the remaining segment (to I-5) yellow. After a few mins, it
had turned to red, and I hadn't moved an inch. It was very impressive to see
the data change in such a real time fashion. Of course, it was too late for
me.

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brown9-2
This is a really neat idea, and it sounds like they tried to cover many
conceivable privacy concerns from the get-go...

But given the fact that you have to enable this (by running Google Maps) each
time you start a car trip, it makes me wonder how much useful data it will
actually collect.

Also what if you leave Maps open on your phone while you walk around the city?
I would imagine that would skew the data as well.

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mrduncan
_Also what if you leave Maps open on your phone while you walk around the
city? I would imagine that would skew the data as well._

It sounded to me like they only show the data if there enough reportings to
give them confidence. So, even if someone did leave it on while walking around
they would be an outlier in the data and more than likely ignored by Google
until they started to fit in again. Also, if you're walking around I'd imagine
you're unlikely to be on the road, more likely on a sidewalk which should show
up in the data as not quite on the road and therefore less likely to be
accurate. I suppose there is also the case of a lot of people walking around
on the street, but I'd imagine that traffic isn't moving very fast if there
are a lot of people doing that anyway.

I for one would love to get my hands on some of this data. My first thought
when I saw this was a road-based version of FlightCaster but it could have all
sorts of applications. I predict that Google Maps will get a lot better at
routing you around congested areas in the future.

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AndrewWarner
Looks like another app that iPhone can't participate in.

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symesc
Agree. Google +1. Apple -1.

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jsares
The downside is right now running Latitude slows your phone to a crawl after a
few days <http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3453>

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andyking
The people who generate the traffic news bulletins for local radio stations
have had this sort of system for years - it's not wrapped up in trendy terms
like "crowdsourcing", but it is very similar.

They take phone calls from the public about traffic problems, log them all
down in a system called Regis and are able to identify trends and blackspots
from the years of accumulated data. Now, if the traffic news people could
somehow make use of this GMaps data...

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sachinag
Wasn't this the whole point of Dash Navigation? I love how old companies can
totally obliterate new startups' differentiation with a quick, single stroke.
Now, Google Maps needs to be better integrated with turn-by-turn directions
(like Dash was) to make this a real killer.

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ynniv
I was just commenting on that with a friend. Poor Dash, all that VC and no
customers. Mixing hardware into your startup isn't easy and brings an extra
level of risk. Dash never struck me a particularly good Navigation Device,
tho. Would you buy a top notch navigation device with traditional traffic
reporting, or a second rate one with fancy traffic that only works in a few
cities? When you go to reinvent a market, realize that your goals are to

    
    
      1) do everything that your competitors do
      2) do some things better
    

Just solving for (2) won't help you win.

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sil3ntmac
Sounds like an idea Seth Godin posted a while back, iirc:

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/an-iphone-
ap...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/11/an-iphone-app-t.html)

