跟着智能手机走

Follow the Smart Phones

跟着智能手机走

Mining cell phone data could help target ads and rank local services.

使用手机数据可以帮助锁定广告和对本地服务进行等级划分。

By Christopher Mims

作者：克里斯多夫·米姆斯

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

发表于：2010年4月14日

A service launched last week by Skyhook Wireless will make it possible for other businesses to predict, with new accuracy, which local bars will be hot at 8 p.m. on Monday night, or how many people will walk past a particular billboard poster at noon on Friday.

上周Skyhook Wireless 开展的一项服务将会使对其他项目的预测成为可能，以一个新的准确度，测知星期一的晚上哪个地区的酒吧在晚上8:00会很热闹，或在星期五的中午，会有多少人路过某一个特定的巨幅海报。

What's hot: SpotRank generates “heat maps” showing the density of cell-phone users for a given time and place. This image shows the southwest corner of Manhattan's Central Park on Monday, March 29, at 6 p.m..

热点：根据SpotRank 生成的“热度图”，在指定的时间和地点，手机用户的多少—密度本图片表示了周一（3月29日下午6点）在曼哈顿岛中央公园的西南角的热度分布情况。

Credit: Skyhook Wireless  

本图版权：Skyhook Wireless

Skyhook Wireless's pool of anonymized location data, gathered from cell phones that have used its services over the past 24 months, shows user behavior in every major city in North America, for every hour of every day of the week at a resolution of 100 meters. This is enabled by the 300 million check-ins received daily from every iPhone, iPad, Snow Leopard-powered laptop, as well as Dell devices and a growing number of Android-powered smart phones.

Skyhook Wireless 的匿名位点数据库是从过去24各月中使用他们提供的服务的手机中收集的。这些数据表明了在美国北部每个主要城市手机用户的情况，以100米的分辨率记录每个星期每天每小时用户们的行动方向。每天在iPhone，iPad，Snow Leopard笔记本电脑，以及Dell 的产品，和越来越多的Android智能手机等近3亿用户登记使这项数据收集成为可能。

Several other companies are using similar technologies to map human activity across time and space--an activity first referred to as "reality mining." However, no other company has made available a comparable amount of data to independent developers.

另外好几个公司也试图使用相同的技术来绘制用户跨地域，跨时间的行为图—首先涉及到的就是“真实探索”（reality mining）行动。但是没有第二个公司收集到的数据量能与独立开发者收集到的相媲美。

Skyhook Wireless's new service, called SpotRank, is available to developers through an application programming interface (API) from its partner SimpleGEO--a cloud-based service for managing large quantities of geolocation data. The data resembles a heat map of population density in a given city at any point in time. The data can be strung into time sequences to show the changes in human activity as a city cycles through the workday, the commute home, and nightlife.

Skyhook Wireless提供的新服务（叫做SpotRank）可以让开发人员通过Skyhook Wireless 的合伙人SimpleGEO提供的一个应用程序接口（API）（一基于云计算的服务）掌握大量的地理位点数据。这些数据组成了一份给定任意时间给定城市人口密度的热度图。这些数据可以按时间顺序进行串联，把人们的生活划分为：工作，回家，夜生活3个阶段，从而表现出他们在这个周期的活动改变。

Internally, Skyhook Wireless has begun developing applications for SpotRank data--including new ways to inform buyers of outdoor advertising. "We can tell [advertisers] where the best spot in Manhattan is to put a sign on a side of a building," says Skyhook CEO Ted Morgan.

Skyhook wireless 自己也早已开始为SpotRank数据研究一种新的应用程序——包括告知购买者户外广告的一些新的方法。”我们可以告诉【广告商】在曼哈顿岛哪里的大楼放置广告牌最好，” Skyhook的CEO 特德·摩根（Ted Morgan）说。

Story continues below

故事仍在继续。

"It's very valuable data," says David Fono, a developer at Atmosphere Industries who has begun working with the SpotRank API for games that play out across a city. "The level of data they have is staggering," Fono says. "This is a pretty significant addition to the tool set. Just the fact that it's a fairly reliable metric for human traffic in an area, I don't know of anything else like that at the moment."

“这些数据非常有价值，”戴维德·福诺（David Fono）说。他是一个产业氛围开发专家，最近开始与SpotRank API合作开发将会在整个城市传遍的游戏。“他们目前拥有的数据水平还不够稳定，” 戴维德·福诺（David Fono）说，“这是工具箱一个非常重大的功能增加。就但看它被用来观测某个地区的交通情况，也是一个非常可信的衡量标准。其他的暂时我还不太清楚。

There is growing interest among technology companies in mining the physical movements of users, but privacy promises to be a hot-button issue. "We are keen to do something similar [to SpotRank], but we want to make sure we maintain user privacy," says Sharon Biggar, chief operating officer of U.K.-based Path Intelligence, which uses passive receivers to track the cell-phone traffic of shoppers and concertgoers as they visit public places. Path Intelligence can determine the location of a device to within a meter or two, and individuals can be tracked continuously as they move through an area, allowing engineers to tell business customers which stores in a mall tend to be visited together, for example. In contrast, SpotRank data only shows an aggregate number of people in any one area at any given time.

各技术公司对开发用户的物理动向越来越有兴趣，但是这时保护个体隐私权又是一个非常敏感的问题。英国Path Intelligence 首席执行官莎伦·比加（Sharon Biggar)就提到：“我们很想做一些类似的事情（像SpotRank），但是我又希望能够保证保护用户的隐私。” 英国Path Intelligence 利用被动接受者来追踪购物者和参加音乐会的人去公共场所时的手机通信量。例如，他们可以1-2米的精确度确认物体的位置，可以持续跟踪一个人从一个地方迁移到另一个地方，还可以让工程师们给业务客户们看大商场里的哪些商店顾客会一起光顾，等等。而SpotRank的数据却只能显示任一区域任一时间里的人数。

Sense Networks, a company cofounded by Sandy Pentland, a professor of computer science at MIT, also tracks population density in cities. It offers this data to companies through an application called MacroSense. An application offered by the company, called CitySense, shows data similar to that offered by SpotRank, but only for the city of San Francisco. This summer, Sense Networks also plans to offer developers an API. Sense Networks says its offering will be even more detailed, and will combine demographic data with geospatial tracking data.

感应网络，Sandy Pentland 共同创建的一家公司，在MIT的一家电脑科技专家，也会追踪城市人口的密集程度。它通过一个叫做 MacroSense的应用程序给各公司提供这方面的数据。这个公司的一个应用程序叫做CitySense，能给出与SpotRank相似的数据，但是它只能用于圣弗朗西斯科城。这个夏天感应网络（Sense Networks）还计划给开发商们提供一个API。他们说他们这次的应用程序将会更加细致，并且能够结合人口资料与地理追踪数据。

A few developers are beginning to explore the potential applications of the kind of location data provided by SpotRank. Utkarsh Shrivastava, a master's student in information security at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has combined SpotRank data with Yahoo's database of companies to create a search tool that ranks local businesses according to how busy they are at any time. "It could also expand to a route based model," says Shrivastava. This would allow users to choose the least-crowded means of transport between two points--an application feature that has already been implemented on roadways by some GPS devices.

有一部分开发商正开始开发SpotRank 提供的位点数据功能的潜在的应用价值。佐治亚技术学院信息安全系的研究生UtKarsh Shrivastava就将SpotRank的数据和雅虎的公司数据结合起来，研发了一种搜索工具，可以根据任意时间里公司的忙碌程度对这些公司业务进行排列。Shrivastava说，“这个成果也可以扩展成一个路线模型。”这样一来，用户就可以选择两地点之间人流最少的交通方式--这个应用特点早已安装在道路上的一些GPS装置上了。

Joe Stump, cofounder of SimpleGEO, says developers are working on a wide array of ideas based on using SpotRank's data. "There are lots of ideas around potential variable pricing for advertising," he says. The data could also be used to make location-based social networks like FourSquare more interesting and useful, Stump says.

SimpleGEO的另一个创建人Joe Stump说，“开发商们正在努力实现基于SpotRank的一系列的想法。”“现在有很多关于广告价位变化的想法。” Stump也提到，这些数据还可以用在基于地理位置的社会网络上，如可以让FourSquare更有趣，更有实用价值。

The next step, say developers working with SpotRank, is real-time data. This would let them check the "social weather" in a town to determine, say, if there's a particularly popular event going on.

与SpotRank 合作的开发商说，下一步就轮到实时数据了。这个可以帮助他们检测商业界的“风云变化”以便作出决策，换种说法就是如果发生了什么特别受欢迎的事情。

"You could see where activity is almost in real time and overlay geo-tagged images and tweets and watch as it happens," says Skyhook's Morgan. "We're also building out a social compass, which looks like a regular compass, but it can direct you based on the volume of activity [in an area]."

“你可以几乎实时地看到哪里有活动，在看这些信息时覆盖标记地点的图片和声音，”　Ｓｋｙｈｏｏｋ的摩根说道，“我们同时也想制作一个社会指南针，跟普通的指南针差不多，但是它可以通过（一个区域的）活动流动量来指导你该怎么做。”

However, even SpotRank's existing offering, which is strictly historical data, is useful because people are predictable. "We see that in our data, which is 24 months worth of history, we can tell you with 90 percent confidence what will happen at 2:15 on a Tuesday," says Morgan. "Ninety-nine percent of the time we know what will happen on any given spot. We can do that for almost every street corner in the world right now."

但是，就算是ＳｐｏｔＲａｎｋ已有的数据（这些数据具有严格的历史意义）在人们的预见看来也是有利用价值的。摩根说：“　我们看到的这些数据，具有２４个月的历史意义，我们有９０％的信心告诉你，在某个星期二的２：１５会发生什么。”　他还说：“　９９％的情况我们知道在任意指定地点会发生什么。现在我们可以对世界上每个角落进行这样的数据统计。”

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