One of the most interesting market directions in recent months in my mind is the way the concept of a location service is evolving. People are using location as a vector to bring information that matters directly to them. A great example of this is Dash.net.
Dash is a GPS device that leverages the activity of its user base and the wider local data pools on the Internet to create a more personalized driving experience. Ricky Montalvo and I interviewed them for the latest Developer Spotlight on YDN Theater:
Of particular note are the ways that Dash pulls in external data sources from places like Yahoo! Pipes. Any geoRSS feed can be used to identify relevant locations near you or near where you’re going directly from the device. They give the example of using a Surfline.com feed built with Pipes to identify surfing hot spots at any given moment. You can drive to Santa Cruz and then decide which beach to hit once you get there.
There are other neat ways to use the collaborative user data such as the traffic feedback loop so that you can choose the fastest route to a destination in real time. And the integration with the Yahoo! Local and the Upcoming APIs make for great discoveries while you’re out and about.
You can also see an early demo of their product which they showed at Web 2.0 Summit in the fall:
The way they’ve opened up a hardware device to take advantage of both the information on the Internet and the behaviors of its customers is really innovative, not to mention very useful, too. I think Dash is going to be one to watch.
When is this Dash coming out…Seems really exciting
Matt,
You got it. Wewill get in trouble for implementing it. Your shadow is the best finger print. The following is an excerpt from a conversation that I wrote to Scoble, the guy they say is the smartest guy at Microsoft. If its ok, I would like to talk to you. I have an idea that is bigger than big.
Why is Google the most powerful company on earth and does anyone truly understand that the browser, the OS, your records, your email, and your history are historical data that COULD be used to extrapolate your thoughts, behaviors, and short term and future behavioral patterns? However the search engine is the optimal, ubiquitous mind control mechanism without breaking the law or performing cross platform extrapolation of personal data and hirachial importance categorization. The only thing more acurate is a supercomputing center that has phone, fax, email, text messaging, home phone, cell phone, (voice to text)credit card info, all personal history, browser input, cell location on, search engine keywords, interpersaonal correlation and communication between the 10 people you contact the most, bodildy functions and their indicies, and an algorithym that knows how to crunch that data on the fly for 7B + people. After you have that then you need API’s for lack of a better adjective into influence mechanisms that can profit from or derive a specific output based upon the particular aggitator.
What to do with all that data? Predict terrorism, financial winfalls, …….nothing would be impossible. Simply food for thought.
http://scobleizer.com/2007/04/24/google-tracking-my-history/
Regards,
Rob