Then you'd have the global, digital equivalent of a cloak of displacement!

Of course, they could just beam you a personal, encrypted ad that says, "Psst... hey you... go into the Fry's Electronics on nth street and pick up the last special preview edition Playstation 2 gaming console, cheap!".

Then all they have to do is wait 10 minutes and aim their satellite-based laser death rays at Fry's, instead of trying to hit a moving target...

See? Free enterprise really does make things more convenient!
--

Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.

No, it just means that now they appear in an HUD on your personal VR goggles, superimposed over your normal visual field.
--

Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.

-Earthman
Capt`n! The spellchecker kinna take this abuse!

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

What do you weigh on Mars?

But my point was just that Slashdot (apparently) gets some significant amount of revenue from the ads, and I like Slashdot, thus I have to accept the idea that the ads (though I may never see them) may be providing something I like. Which is a lot better than most banner ads I run across, on sites that just plain suck.

Let's say that we want to find a street corner is Seattle, do we have to wait an extra two minutes while it downloads an animated banner at 9600 bps?

--Nicholas

I can see it now:

"Dear Consumer, according to our GPS data, you've been commuting 1.5 hours every day.
We have a new house for sale coming up here.
*beep* You're 1 mile from it
*beep* You're 0.5 miles away
*beep* Driving by now, c'mon take a look
*beep* Your loss ... Enjoy your longtrip home

The problem with this technology is it closes the "last mile" of the privacy gap.

WHO:From the data on your frequant shopper card
WHAT:From your caller ID number and credit card information.
WHAT:From the data on your shopper card
WHERE:From the GPS information triangulating your position with a time stamp.
WHEN:From the time stamp in the GPS signal.
WHY:From the eshilon style monitoring system on your cell phone (logged to give advertisers better feedback on their adds effectivness)

___
GNUTella: Because the client is the server.

You left out the best part of the scene...

After you buy your beer, open the can, and head down the road, in the next block you get pulled over, because..........

The ad was paid for by the City and the police were automatically notified when you stopped for a certain period of time to respond to the ad. The city manager has noted a 1000% increase in revenue from fines since the new advertising campaign went into effect.

.

Take all good things in moderation, including moderation.

Constantly broadcasting your location is a serious invasion of your privacy. Even people who don't pay attention to privacy issues now will probably pay attention to this.

Theoretically it wouldn't be much of a privacy issue of only the wireless service provider knew your location. As a matter of fact, by using some sophisticated triangulation algorithms, they track your cell phone to a few hundred feet now, without GPS.

The problem with that is that there'll probably only going to be a few large advertising firms (like DoubleClick for the Internet now) and so they'll get a pretty good idea of where you go, even if there are some gaps in the record. They'd be able to learn quite a bit about you: where you shop, who your friends are, where you work, etc.

Not that some multi-national corporations can't learn that kind of stuff about me now. However, it'd be a lot harder to piece together information of disparate types. Consistent location information would be much more useful.

Bah. I spend most of my time at work or at home. I have plenty of computing and communication power at both locations. Maybe I should give up all my mobile devices, or at least the ones that can transmit something. At least at home I'm behind a firewall, to restrict the information I reveal to the Internet. Will I need firewall software for my mobile phone too?

James

Constantly broadcasting your location is a serious invasion of your privacy.

This whole privacy issue is also easily surmountable if you must grant permission for your location to be disclosed as a security setting on the phone (disregarding the FCC/EMS requirements, since there's no evidence that they're about to start up an advertising racket).

High-precision GPS will be an absolute godsend when it comes to things like navigation. I wouldn't want to exclude the possibility of having this technology in mobile phones and devices because of privacy worries, as long as we, the users, have control of who gets that information.

And as a final note, I think advertisers are barking up the wrong tree with this. They're far more likely to catch (and irritate) my eye with a huge billboard in my face than they are from a little chirp and cheesy low-res display on a device that's sitting comfortably in my backpack. :-P

My point was, knowing location is an important ability for mobile communication. So, better ability to communicate location is a Good Thing™ -- provided that steps are taken to protect your location from simply being handed out to destinations without your knowledge and consent.

After that, they chat with each other and exchange location info.. and someone just draws the damn thing on a map (optional) and drives over to the person's house, knocks on their door, and says "tag, you're it!" :)

It takes any respectable computer no more than 3 seconds to track you, with sophisticated ones taking under a second. I'm completely serious. You only need two things to do triangulation: the direction of the signal, its strength, and 3 or more receivers. The more receivers, the quicker it goes. Anyway, that aside, you can even use time-delay algos to figure out where someone is nearly instantaniously, provided you can sync each of the receivers to exactly the same time (and I *mean* exact - like within a few hundred uS). Bleh.. forget it.. anyone with a couple hundred bucks can build accurate triangulation equipment. You don't need GPS for this...

-o Disclaimer: My employer doesn't even agree with me about C indentation style. o-

The FCC has mandated that starting in October 2001, wireless carriers must deploy subscriber location systems capable of locating the subscriber's radio transceiver to an accuracy of 125 meters or better, at least 67% of the time. This is to support the 911 system, so that emergency services can be dispatched to the location of the caller.

Your phone is constantly sending data back to the base stations (towers) - when you're not receiving a call it is still sending information on the quality of the received signal from the towers in the area (so handovers can be arranged). Adding in some GPS data wouldn't be too tough.

So it's gonna cost advertisers plenty of money to have cell phones that are broadcasting your whereabouts all the time, and sending down those adds. I bet the per-view cost of this type of advertising would be prohibitive for most advertisers.

I remember a quote from a communications class I took way back when which said something to the effect that advertising never pays for itself; that the increase in revenue due to advertising almost never equals the money spent on the ads.. Yet everyone still advertises. This remark was from before internet advertising had taken hold, so things have probably changed in terms of cost and returns. Knowing the recipients' exact location is the ultimate tool in one branch of directed advertising (the other being what's easy on web pages - showing them ads for products similar to what they're looking at now).

That adds battery drain to the cell phone, which is exactly what nobody wants

GPS receivers are still a very small market - once big mobile phone companies get into the game the size/power requirements of GPS will drop dramatically. The market isn't big enough yet to justify huge efforts in power reduction, or in receiver cost.

GPS is Line-of-Sight

This is a very good point, and unless receivers get considerably better I can't think of any way around this.

One other factor in this game is whether the end user is willing to pay to AVOID receiving ads.. Personally, I only have a cell phone and no normal telephone line. I did this largely because I wanted mobile service that I wouldn't be afraid to use (so I pay $100 a month for a LOT of free air time), but another really nice benefit is that I *never* get called by solicitors. Never. They can't - at the time of writing it is illegal for solicitors to call your mobile since you're footing the cost of the call (I remember some legislation floating around that would require the caller to pay for the call, which would then allow solicitors to call your mobile). If one service provider allowed GPS-based ads I would be entirely willing to switch..

One other note: it would be really easy for mobile service providers to accomodate location-based ads. Keep in mind that they know where you are based on which tower your phone is communicating with.. In the GSM system your phone often shows the name of your location right on the screen (such and such town, cafeteria of the building, etc) based on the tower/micro site you're talking to. Perhaps there is a profitability argument keeping location-based phone ads from happening..

You Know You've Been Watching Too Much Ranma 1/2 When...
...You periodically kick people into the sky.

___
GNUTella: Because the client is the server.

Five tons of flax.

Actually, GE sells stock with those ads. That's why you tend to see them on CNN and CNBC. If you are looking to invest, you may be watching those networks. CNBC is really interesting. If you want to sell stock, you appear on one of those shows that make the market look like a sporting event (squak box, etc). It has been shown that just a mention by one of those "experts" pushes the price up.

As for stadium sponsorships, it is the same thing. Why does Alcoa buy a sign in 3 Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh? It says "Hey, we're a local company that happens to have a stock. Since you have enough money to afford Steelers tickets, you may want to invest." Naming a stadium is a huge deal for these companies. For example, the Pirates are getting a new field - PNC Park. This is a "slam dunk" for PNC bank. It puts their name out there for the general population, so that people will think "gee, this is a great thing for the community, I'm going to bank there." The fans like the fact that they ponied up the cash for their new park, and a small percentage will switch banks to support them, and finally, it says to investors that they are solid enough to be able to pay for all this, so they might be a good stock to buy long.

At least, that's the theory.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

Does anyone else(author included) find it just a little chilling that this post was rated as "funny"? I think we need a Ha Ha, Only Serious rating.

"Bloody Hell!" -- Chief O'Brien

Go near a Frye's and you get an advertisement for COMPUSA. Many even a 10 minute special.

Head towards a McDonalds, get an ad beamed to you that gives you $1 off your next purchase at Wendy's, good for 20 minutes.

RSI injured geek wins against Mattel, Mattel still retaliates!

.

Take all good things in moderation, including moderation.

There's scarier stuff around, though. Under the guise of better 911 support (emergency services calling in the US; most of the world uses 999), the FBI is pushing the FCC to require the next generation of digital cellphone standards to be able to locate you within ~50 meters. (Some cellphone standards can get pretty close to that by triangulating sites through the network; it's interesting if your phone can do it as well, especially if you don't need to buy GPS to do it. And better GPS makes it easier for cell sites to get precise timing and know where they are precisely so they can do this much more accurately, which is especially important for microcells that you might deploy lots of.) They'd really like to be able to ask your phone where it is without notifying you or asking for permission; there are some people in the cellphone standards committees who are quite annoyed about this, and many who don't see what all this privacy fuss is about and of course it makes it easier for 911 to find you if you're hurt. The interesting trick is that if there's a GPS in the phone, they can ask it where you are without having to leave it on full time, though it does take a little while for the GPS to locate satellites, especially simpler sets that don't locate them in parallel.

Thanks! Bill Stewart

This is a bit off-topic, but where are you getting this from? 999 is used in the UK (IIRC), and quite possibly in other places too, but in general each country has its own emergency number(s). The EU is trying to standardize on 112 for its members, and 112 is already working in some of them, and on all GSM phones. Other than that, I believe that you'll find a variety of numbers used throughout the world.

GPS-pin-pointed ad near Bally's:

LA Fitness rocks and is 2-4-1!

GPS-pin-pointed ad near Starbucks:

Be Original. Drink Sprite.

I lived through the IPO Rush of '99

Thanks! Bill Stewart

http://www.monickels.com/

Dammit, that didn't even cross my mind til you said it. No wonder everyone was looking funny at those gargoyles in "Snow Crash"
--sugarman--

"It's a bit of a marketer's wet dream," says Kyle Shannon, cofounder of Agency.com, an Internet marketing consulting firm.

What a wonderful phrase, just the level of couth and wit I would have expected from an advertiser. I bet he uses phrases like "let's run it up the flagpole and see who salutes" too.

-- I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.

But the cost of cel phone service is still expensive enough (especially since some plans also charge your incoming calls as well as outgoing) that if you signed up for service without any mention of ads, would this be comparible to the Unsoliciated FAX law?

I wish there was something that we could do as a nation (or united world) as private citizens to contest the increasing invasive advertizing. Companies think it works, but when you advertize for common necessities, people are going to buy them anyway, and a boycott is probably impossible since the items are required.

"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - The Brain

This is an example of using the wrong technology to solve the problem. If the actual goal is to deliver targetted ads to a consumer based on his/her location, the right thing to do is to use a local solution, not a global one.

If all stores acquired short range transmitters that continuously broadcast their advertisements, and phones (or other PDAs) were equipped with simple receivers, then simply being in proximity to the store would allow the PDA's owner to get the messages. Each store would be able to provide custom messages without having to bother to send ads and location information to some sort of central server. This would give much greater flexibility for stores, as well as removing the need to broadcast fine-grained location information to random advertisers.

I imagine technology like Bluetooth could easily be adapted to do this. It almost seems like the only reason to use GPS is to make use of an existing (centralized) infrastructure...

It happens now, to some degree.

You are paged to call some number, maybe it's flagged urgeant, or some sort. but it's really a scam, or someone making you call to listen to an ad on your nickel, or call extra long distance for a big phone charge.

sounds like it is time to expand the anti-fax advertising law to include pagers, cell phones, and the like.

too bad I can't set up my cell phone to charge the caller for incoming calls, unless I hit a function key or enter a pin on my cell phone.

actually, that sounds like that would be a good idea for another service to offer. I would not mind having it right now. sort of like a 900 option for regular home phones, that you can turn on and off as needed.

certainly within the technology the telcos offer these days....

Someone had to put all that chaos there!

Our marketeers tell us that it costs US$150-200 per customer (Usually when they want us to push more product on the customers). We usually don't start making money until the customer has been around for 6 months or so. Anything that can deliver a targeted ad to a specific person or group is cheaper than broacasting a message to the world. Billboards are a good example of location based advertising. Anyone who drives I-95 to Flordia has had the excitement of reading all the South of the Boarder billboards (that used to be much better when they were mechanical, BTW). There's no reason to show them on I-81, so they don't bother to buy any.

When you can deliver an ad to the front of a business, that will mean something to the marketeers. At first, they'll get it all wrong, pushing ads to whoever happens by, thinking they are doing a good job, since it will increase foot traffic, but this will peak quickly, and many of those customers won't convert to long term customers (the goal of marketing). Then, your phone will do 1 of 2 things: either start broadcasting your preferences, or the marketeers will build huge relational databases to figure out what ads you *want* to see. Either way, you'll see many fewer ads after they get the bugs out, and they may even be for something you are interested in.

Having said that, it will be very difficult to adapt ads to the moving person. Most people are moving for a reason. Since it requires some higher level navagation on the part of the person moving, and use of energy to do it, you usually don't move unless you have a purpose for it. Think about it: Why would you just suddenly change your mind, unless that's exactly why you were moving in the first place (window shopping)?

Stomach to brain: "I'm empty. Energy low."

Brain: "What am I hungry for? I know -Pizza! I need a pizza place."

Given that dialog, what comes to mind? Wondering aimlessly until my phone sends me an alert that I'm in front of a pizza shop? No, because most of us have the ability to plan ahead, create a map in our minds (or check on a paper/whatever map), and navagate in the world. Just because an external device tells us that something exists doesn't mean we are going to change our internal schedule to accomidate.

This "solution" sounds more like something that will cater to impulse buyers only, meaning mostly people who haven't been in the world long enough to know the difference between advertising and reality, the value of a dollar, and planning ahead - you know, morons.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

First, why do Beer and Pampers get sold together? The theory is that the wife picks up the groceries in the sedan, and leaves the bulky stuff for the husband (often driving the SUV). She asks the husband to pick up the Pampers, and while he is at it, he also gets the beer.

Wal-Mart uses their datawarehouse as a HUGE competitive weapon. K-Mart uses the same technology (see below) and have not gotten much competitive advantage off it. The reason is that Wal-Mart analyze detail data, but K-Mart analyzes sample branch.

Wal-Mart uses extensive research to open new branches. This includes demographic, driving distance, average household income, ...etc. They know that the average customer drives 17 minutes to shop at a Wal-Mart, and passes two K-Marts and a Target on the way!

By the way, the visionary behind their datawarehouse (Randy Mott) left them after two decades, and joined another company.

By the way, their datawarehouse is probably the largest commercial database, and it runs on NCR Massively Parallel hardware (Worldmark), and the really unique Datawarehousing Optimized database called Teradata

I know, because I used Teradata, and work for NCR :-)

Recently, Travelocity and E-Trade joined the who's-who list of Teradata users (British Airways, Bank of America, Wal-Mart, Delta Airlines, Royal Bank of Canada, and tons more).

Basically, if you have a large amount of data to analyze, (specially 500 GB or more, the more the better :-), don't use Informix, nor Oracle nor IBM DB2: Teradata just shines!

-- Rely on your intuition! But make sure you get the facts first!

Sure, advertisers could do evil things with access to cell phone/PDA GPS info.

But it could also be useful for individuals. Especially drunken ones. Ever pass out and forgotten where you've been? just retrace your GPS coordinates! No, it won't tell you all the stupid things you did while you were drunk, but at least you can retrace your path of chaos.

He started a cell phone provider, and it now has somewhere around 80% market share in Zimbabwe (really, how many cell phone providers can there be?).

And as it was time for presidential elections to be held, guess what started popping up on all of the cell phones? Political messages endorsing the revolutionary candidate. It started as a message from one user to another, and it kept getting passed along until everyone in the country with a cell phone had gotten the message.

The guy who owns the company claims not to have started it, but he certainly didn't do anything to stop it, even if it was taking up his network's bandwidth.

I would post a link, but the WSJ is for-pay-only, sorry.

When I receive something in the mail (countless crappy credit card offers, vacation property...) I tear up the contents, and put it back in their postage paid envelope. This COSTS THEM MONEY. I'm not sure what effect this has, but I have noticed that in recent months, I get FAR fewer of these.

When I get flyers on my car or the door to my apartment, I call the business, and tell them specifically that I will never do business with them because of their advertising methods. I think if more people did this, and they got some idea that people DON'T like this (and I think most people don't), then they might think twice.

Maybe not.

If you lend someone $20, and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

GPS signals can still be regionally jammed by the government, for national security concerns.

What these telemarketers are drooling over is the ability to acurately track cell phone users. And the technology is improving to do this.

Disclaimer (standard for me). It is late, and I need to get to bed.

1. Make an ASIC chip which has both GPS and Mobile Phone/Pager functionality built into it. This makes it hard for you to remove one function from the unit selectively.
2. Use encryption on my digital phone link (it's a sensible precaution). In fact, I'll do all my customers a favour and use public key cryptography to make it all the more secure.
3. I'll go read Matt Blaze's paper entitled "Oblivious Key Escrow", or any other paper which details subliminal channels.
4. I'll encrypt your GPS current location with my public key (also stored in this single monolithic phone/advertising chip).
5. I'll leak your GPS location as part of the key-setup procedure for your phone conversations and the general "ping-pong" that phones send to their nearby stations.
6. I'll check that your GPS information isn't completely forged by making each station check that you are actually within its range (so blatantly stuffing junk in as your GPS information in this complicated protocol won't work). I'll deny service to anyone I can't locate reasonably.
7. I'll tell customers that I don't give out your information to third parties. After all, I want to keep that secret so that third parties pay me to do the targetted advertising.
8. I'll also tell customers that I reserve the right to display whatever messages I like on the top 30 pixels of their LCD screen on their phone.
9. I might even let customers use these phones for free (who could resists free phone calls all day, anywhere?) because the system is almost paying for itself with all the money made from advertising.
10. Better yet, I'll give the customers discounts on their phone charges based on how well they respond to adverts (that way covering up the top half of the LCD is actually less beneficial).

Maz
-- All ideas presented in this post are copyright the EvilLilBlackKittie Company. Anyone wishing to implement these ideas should contact me for licensing details. Terms and conditions apply. Ask for written details.

--
$ echo "roberto@calvin.ocfis.furg.br" > e-mail_address

47 USC Section 227 seems to apply to GPS-triggered wireless advertising. If it does, then what the CNN article describes may be illegal.

In particular, section (b)(1)(A)(iii) says: "It shall be unlawful...to make any call using...an artificial or prerecorded voice...to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call."

This paragraph also applies to an "automatic telephone dialing system", but it doesn't appear to me that a GPS-triggered dialer would fall within the definition of that term in section (a)(1). So the marketroids could escape this clause by using real people.

Section (b)(3) establishes a right of private action "if otherwise permitted by the laws or rules of court of a State", with statutory damages of $500 or actual damages, whichever is greater.

--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze

Advertisers are probably not the only ones excited about GPS tracking of cell phones.

Since many of us have cell phones assigned to us by companies we work for, I imagine some companies would be interested in tracking employees who have phones as well. Companies already have considerable rights in recording phone conversations, tracking web usage, installing security cameras in premises, and collecting various bodily fluids. I wonder how long it will be before they make a deal with their cellular service provider to provide a log of where employees have been Monday through Friday from 8 to 5.

I suspect within a few years we'll hear of someone who was fired for inexplicately being away from the office during business hours, courtesy of their cell phone records.

If you don't like the idea of people knowing where you are, JUST DON'T USE IT !

That will work as long as you can find a cellphone that doesn't broadcast your position. That also assumes that those that do will make that clear before you buy and sign up.