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Google Maps change to suit what you like best
TECHNOLOGY Graffiti codes let you surf with a simple wave
–To each their own–
Maps that know you Google is using social media to transform our relationship with maps YOU fancy going for pizza but you’re Reducing the differing views to new in town. Wouldn’t it be nice if you which we are exposed may risk a knew where your friends who live ghettoisation of the web. But others there liked to eat? That is one of the believe creating a bespoke map for ideas behind Google’s latest move to each user has its benefits. automatically tailor maps for individuals. A family driving through New York At its annual developer conference City as part of a road trip needs a last month, Google announced that slightly different map than a lone it would be using data from users’ tourist on the way to the Statue of social-media friends to alter their Liberty, for example. Such context personal maps. A preview version plays a central role in defining what of the new-style maps is rolling out information we need from a map, around the world right now. At first says Georg Gartner, president of the it will result in nothing more than International Cartographic Association. restaurant recommendations. But “Google conquered ideas it will eventually lead to a highly augmented way to navigate, based on and culture with search – now it’s trying to organise a hidden world of data representing the emotions, movements and actions the physical world” of other people. The restaurant recommendations “Experiences and emotions – and will be based on ratings given by your those of my friends – are all part of friends on Google’s social network, that context,” he says. Google+. The firm unified its privacy Gartner’s research group is working policies last year to allow the sharing on a system that embeds emotional of user data between its cloud-based information into maps. Called EmoMap, applications in order to build new kinds it uses smartphones to gather of services, and ultimately sell more ads. people’s emotional responses to Besides the privacy issue, some their immediate environment, with worry that personalised maps will only individuals ranking places on comfort, enhance the so-called filter bubble safety, diversity, attractiveness and effect, whereby our own views or relaxation. The results are compiled prejudices are reflected back at us. into a “heat map” and overlaid on the 22 | NewScientist | 8 June 2013
maps of OpenStreetMap. This method would allow people to plot the most comfortable walking path through a big city, for instance, or show the safest route home, as judged by strangers. Pete Warden, founder of travelmapping company Jetpac, based in San Francisco, says personalised maps will work best on a large scale. “Up-andcoming restaurants would be really interesting,” he says. By tracking which restaurants Google Maps users search for and navigate to in real time, Google would be able to identify hot new restaurants far faster than any traditional media. “You can imagine a billboard chart of which restaurants are becoming fashionable for every city,” says Warden. Maps built on Google’s wider range of data would allow for the popularity of different routes, areas and destinations to be tracked over time. Warden ultimately sees map personalisation as Google’s way to put its massive caches of geographical data to use, ultimately through future versions of Google Glass. “Google conquered ideas and culture with search, now it’s trying to organise and index the physical world,” he says. “Glass and Maps are different lenses to view the world with.” Hal Hodson n
EVERYWHERE you look nowadays there seems to be a QR code. Those are the complicated square patterns that contain links to websites, for example, in a format smartphone cameras can read. Problem is, they need to be printed in advance. What if they could be created on the spot, like graffiti? That’s the aim of a project from Jeremy Rubin, working in the Viral Spaces group under Andrew Lippman at the MIT Media Lab. Instead of taking a photo of the code, people move their phone over the pattern and Graffiti Codes uses the phone’s accelerometers to pick it up. The phone’s software recognises the pattern and converts it to code that digitally links to a web page. A pattern can be drawn on any surface with a marker. Anyone can scan the graffiti with their own phone and be pointed to the same information. Rubin says the hybrid digitalphysical tags could eventually be used to offer coupons to shoppers on the move, or even to recognise movement patterns like walking up stairs, triggering a message. “Graffiti Codes are part of a larger effort to make the world accessible and understandable,” Lippman says. “The idea is that it is easily created by anyone and as easily detected. Most other codes are harder to compose and imprint.” Hal Hodson n
PKrzysztof Dydynski/getty
Sean Gallup/Getty
Insight Social media
–To each their own–
Maps that know you Google is using social media to transform our relationship with maps YOU fancy going for pizza but you’re Reducing the differing views to new in town. Wouldn’t it be nice if you which we are exposed may risk a knew where your friends who live ghettoisation of the web. But others there liked to eat? That is one of the believe creating a bespoke map for ideas behind Google’s latest move to each user has its benefits. automatically tailor maps for individuals. A family driving through New York At its annual developer conference City as part of a road trip needs a last month, Google announced that slightly different map than a lone it would be using data from users’ tourist on the way to the Statue of social-media friends to alter their Liberty, for example. Such context personal maps. A preview version plays a central role in defining what of the new-style maps is rolling out information we need from a map, around the world right now. At first says Georg Gartner, president of the it will result in nothing more than International Cartographic Association. restaurant recommendations. But “Google conquered ideas it will eventually lead to a highly augmented way to navigate, based on and culture with search – now it’s trying to organise a hidden world of data representing the emotions, movements and actions the physical world” of other people. The restaurant recommendations “Experiences and emotions – and will be based on ratings given by your those of my friends – are all part of friends on Google’s social network, that context,” he says. Google+. The firm unified its privacy Gartner’s research group is working policies last year to allow the sharing on a system that embeds emotional of user data between its cloud-based information into maps. Called EmoMap, applications in order to build new kinds it uses smartphones to gather of services, and ultimately sell more ads. people’s emotional responses to Besides the privacy issue, some their immediate environment, with worry that personalised maps will only individuals ranking places on comfort, enhance the so-called filter bubble safety, diversity, attractiveness and effect, whereby our own views or relaxation. The results are compiled prejudices are reflected back at us. into a “heat map” and overlaid on the 22 | NewScientist | 8 June 2013
maps of OpenStreetMap. This method would allow people to plot the most comfortable walking path through a big city, for instance, or show the safest route home, as judged by strangers. Pete Warden, founder of travelmapping company Jetpac, based in San Francisco, says personalised maps will work best on a large scale. “Up-andcoming restaurants would be really interesting,” he says. By tracking which restaurants Google Maps users search for and navigate to in real time, Google would be able to identify hot new restaurants far faster than any traditional media. “You can imagine a billboard chart of which restaurants are becoming fashionable for every city,” says Warden. Maps built on Google’s wider range of data would allow for the popularity of different routes, areas and destinations to be tracked over time. Warden ultimately sees map personalisation as Google’s way to put its massive caches of geographical data to use, ultimately through future versions of Google Glass. “Google conquered ideas and culture with search, now it’s trying to organise and index the physical world,” he says. “Glass and Maps are different lenses to view the world with.” Hal Hodson n
EVERYWHERE you look nowadays there seems to be a QR code. Those are the complicated square patterns that contain links to websites, for example, in a format smartphone cameras can read. Problem is, they need to be printed in advance. What if they could be created on the spot, like graffiti? That’s the aim of a project from Jeremy Rubin, working in the Viral Spaces group under Andrew Lippman at the MIT Media Lab. Instead of taking a photo of the code, people move their phone over the pattern and Graffiti Codes uses the phone’s accelerometers to pick it up. The phone’s software recognises the pattern and converts it to code that digitally links to a web page. A pattern can be drawn on any surface with a marker. Anyone can scan the graffiti with their own phone and be pointed to the same information. Rubin says the hybrid digitalphysical tags could eventually be used to offer coupons to shoppers on the move, or even to recognise movement patterns like walking up stairs, triggering a message. “Graffiti Codes are part of a larger effort to make the world accessible and understandable,” Lippman says. “The idea is that it is easily created by anyone and as easily detected. Most other codes are harder to compose and imprint.” Hal Hodson n
PKrzysztof Dydynski/getty
Sean Gallup/Getty
Insight Social media