(People Like) You Are Here

New software can tell mobile-phone owners, in real time, where to find people with similar backgrounds and interests–students, tourists, or businesspeople, for instance. The software, called Citysense, acquires data from users who opt in. Their profiles and their movements throughout the city, as recorded by the GPS chips on their mobile devices, are logged in a database. (It also takes in feeds from other applications that record real-time location data.) The software removes personal information but records activity patterns so that users can find hot spots of activity among their peers, as determined by the activities of other users.

Courtesy of Sense Networks