Citysense: Socializing the network

Suppose you have set your mobile alarm at 7:30 a.m., but it starts ringing at 7:00 a.m. in order to let you know that the city is busier than normal. This is not my speculation but a reality that you will soon get in your own city. You can use many other such real time like getting traffic updates on a specific route, crowd gathering in restaurants or pubs.

A New York based company Sense Networks is ready to index the real world with its recently launched services, CitySense and MacroSense. The services use a combination of cell phone data, WiFi activity and vehicle GPS locations to measure where crowds are -- and then put the information to use in a number of ways.

You can use this program on your Blackberry and soon on your i Phone -- to locate a city's hotspots at no cost. Once you sign up to this program, it will remember what kind of locations you visit and then compares your movements to other users with similar patterns. According to Skibiski, Sense Networks CEO and cofounder, it opens up an entirely new kind of social networking.

Social Privileges

Using the citysense service, people can look at real time maps to track crowd activity and decide the least congested routes. If you are planning to go for an outing or a nightclub, this service can guide you to discover the busiest places at the moment. Both the services can prove revolutionary from the social perspective. They can easily rectify a lot of our day to day problems. At the moment this program is only available in San Francisco.

Business Applications

Another application of this program is MacroSense, the business application of Sense Networks. All the electronic data currently just floating around can be harnessed by all the companies that want to utilize this service. The giant retail stores can use this service to track the traffic patterns and that will help them to put their stores at the most suitable places.

MacroSense provides the companies a wide range of information ranging from where else its customers shop to how far people travel to get to its stores. It can also determine where customers were exactly before entering the business.

Securing Privacy

A lot of questions arose about people's privacy but Sense Networks has its answers. All the data collected is anonymous that means no specific users can be identified and users will be able to remove their information at any time. They have the choice to delete either their data from the past 24 hours or all their data while connected to the CitySense service.