MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
I'm Robert Siegel. And it's time now for our weekly technology segment, All Tech Considered.
(Soundbite of music)
SIEGEL: Last week, cell phone users clogged up the servers in Washington as they twittered and texted the inauguration. This week, we're going to talk about another cell phone function that is growing in popularity, the built-in global positioning system or GPS.
GPS technology is evolving way beyond that dashboard navigation system, and to help us navigate the new, we're joined, as always, by our tech expert Omar Gallaga. Hi, Omar.
OMAR GALLAGA: Hi, great talking to you, Robert.
SIEGEL: What's happening with GPS?
GALLAGA: Well, it's becoming cheaper and much easier to embed in smaller devices like cell phones. We're seeing it a lot, especially in the newer smart phones, and really, it's going to change the way we not only communicate with each other and travel and catch up with friends, but what I'm finding most interesting is how it might actually influence our behavior as we're using it.
SIEGEL: That sounds very intense, and we'll talk about that. But first, we're going to hear about one kind of GPS mobile phone application, the brave new world of traffic prediction. Here's David Gorn of member station KQED in San Francisco.
DAVID GORN: The newest and coolest traffic prediction system is based on a simple assumption that every car has a driver and every driver has a cell phone. One of those drivers and cell phone users is Lisa Alvarez-Cohen, a professor at UC Berkeley. As she gets into her Toyota Prius, she sets her cell phone on her dashboard and flips it on.
(Soundbite of traffic update)
Unidentified Man: Here's the traffic for the major roadways.
GORN: Alvarez-Cohen is an early adopter of a new system and says that for her, the daily commute around town is less important than the weekends, when she says, it becomes invaluable.
Dr. LISA ALVAREZ-COHEN (Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley): My two sons are on traveling soccer teams. And so, we are often taking long trips out into all kinds of parts of California that we haven't been to before.
GORN: That's when Alvarez-Cohen needs something called the Mobile Millennium. Her cell phone tells her when traffic is bottled up, right when it's starting to bottle up. The new system uses cell phones to both distribute and gather traffic information. UC Berkeley engineering professor Alex Bayen heads the project.
Dr. ALEX BAYEN (Systems Engineering, University of California, Berkeley): Because of the high penetration rate of people with phones on the road, we hope to be able to gather information at a much, much larger scale than ever before.
GORN: That is Bayen is using everyone's cell phone as a data point. The software works by determining the location and speed of a person's cell as it passes specific GPS coordinates. The information from those thousands of data points on the roads is sent back out to the phones in the form of a traffic report. So changes in traffic are updated constantly, and you can see it online, on your small GPS screen, or you can hear a computerized voice announcing traffic conditions.
(Soundbite of traffic update)
Unidentified Man: On I-80 skyway, eastbound, there's construction in both directions.
GORN: There is money to be made here. This new gizmo might eventually persuade consumers to pony up for a phone with a more costly global-positioning feature, the kind with an unlimited data plan. But if you already have all of that, Bayen says...
Dr. BAYEN: This technology is free. Anybody who has a GPS-equipped phone that will support can download the software for free.
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GORN: At the recent unveiling of the Mobile Millennium project, dozens of people crammed into one of the halls at UC Berkeley to try out the new devices. The dean of engineering, Shankar Sastry, stood back and observed the technology scrum like a proud papa. With three billion cell phones worldwide, he says, the applications of cell phone technology are endless.
Dr. SHANKAR SASTRY (Dean, College of Engineering, UC Berkeley): I think you can imagine a world where everything, you know, entertainment, news, you would be doing on a computer today, would be on a cell phone.
GORN: Sastry sees a future where you don't even have a desktop computer, you just walk into your office and put your memory-packed cell phone into a docking station and use it as your computer. And one of the first applications of this unlimited potential, monitoring traffic.
Project director Bayen says he's got good results in a trial period with just 100 users. He estimates that to cover every section of every highway, and even most surface streets, he'll need about 10,000 users in the Bay area. If all goes well, he says, he should accumulate that many users by early spring, and he eventually expects this traffic-warning system to go national within a year.
SIEGEL: That's David Gorn of member station KQED in San Francisco. We're back with Omar Gallaga. And Omar, I somehow can't get past the problem of people who have such a system we just heard David report on, park their cars in the garage, walk around with their cell phones on and a crowd of pedestrians would translate just like a huge traffic jam from what I would figure.
GALLAGA: Right. Well, generally you wouldn't be running the traffic application while you're walking or once you were done with your trip. But you know, if you do happen keep it on, yeah, it is a problem, and they've said that a lot of that is going to be solved just by making the software smarter, by being able to detect whether you're actually on the road or whether you're off to the side of the road...
SIEGEL: Right.
GALLAGA: Or if you're walking somewhere for instance.
SIEGEL: Oh, so be it. What are some other ways that GPS will seek us out in our daily lives?
GALLAGA: Well, one of the fastest changes I've seen is how quickly people have adopted so-called location based services on their cell phones. There are programs that let you figure out where you're friends are at any given time if you want to meet up with them. Or you can find nearby restaurants based on where you're located. You can read reviews and skim the menu before you go.
SIEGEL: Is this really something that we want? Do we want to have a device on us that lets many, many people know exactly where we are at any moment?
GALLAGA: Well, you're able to disable that feature on these phones, but even if you do, I mean, it seems like the cell phone providers and some of the companies that want to market to you may be able to find ways around it. They might be able to text message you or find other ways to get to you. You might be walking down the street and receive a text message for a two-for-one drink special to a bar that you're walking closed to.
SIEGEL: Are we talking about applications that presently exist? That is, are there places where you could get that come on for the two-for-one drinks offer at the bar?
GALLAGA: Right. A lot of it right now is applications that you might be using and you're seeking out that information, but definitely, it's the direction that advertising and marketing is going.
Definitely, Google is going to be part of this. I mean, a lot of people believed that's why they have made such a big push in the mobile market where their android platform is this will be an installed based for Google's advertising.
SIEGEL: But haven't the mobile phone people with the GPS heard about spam, and what the public's reaction generally is to spam?
GALLAGA: Yeah, definitely and that's the danger, and that's why a lot of privacy advocates are very worried about this, that this is going to be kind of a new frontier for new ways of annoying us. But on the other hand, I mean there are people who may want that information, there are people who would like to receive that kind of information based on where they are at any given time.
If you're walking by a snow cone stand and you all of a sudden get $2 off a snow cone, you make take advantage of that. You may be like, hey, bonus (laughing), so some people will actually appreciate that. And if there's even slight interest in that, you can bet that marketers and advertisers are going to jump all over it.
SIEGEL: Well, Omar, as always, thanks for your help and guidance.
GALLAGA: Thanks so much for having me.
SIEGEL: That's Omar Gallaga who covers technology culture for the Austin American-Statesman. And next week, Omar will help us try to make sense of the coming conversion to digital TV, and if you have a question about that, we'll take a crack at answering it for you. Go visit us at npr.org/alltech, and post your question on the blog.