Nokia Mobile Millennium Turns Your GPS Phone Into a Traffic Reporter

John Herrman — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:57:19 EST

Nokia, in collaboration with UC Berkeley, has opened a six-month pilot program for Mobile Millennium, a crowdsourced traffic reporting system that grabs data from GPS-equipped cellphones. The Mobile Millennium client will work on any Java-capable GPS phones with a data plan, so the hope is that adoption would be wide enough to provide useful, real-time traffic data to potential travelers.

Despite the unfortunately Orwellian name, the project feels more innocent than the similarly devised radiation detectors, but it will probably encounter the same problems. As it stands, a dedicated Java app is required to submit data, which will probably severely limit the userbase, not to mention battery life. Bundling the software as part of a mobile OS would set off privacy advocates' alarms almost instantly, but I don't see much harm in an opt-in tracking system, assuming it is turned off by default. [Slashphone]

Microsoft's Live Maps Integrates Complex Clearflow Traffic Modeling Data To Tell You To Avoid Busy Streets

Jason Chen — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Microsoft's Live Maps is adding Clearflow, a system in 72 cities that takes four years of real-world traffic data and uses it to interpolate what traffic is going to be like "today". The project started with traffic algorithms from GPS units in Microsoft employees' cars, and now has "over 125,000" miles worth of info. This traffic data should be free and available on Live.com for you to plan out your next trip to Albertsons. It's not quite as good as Dash, but it beats going in blind. [NYT via Slashdot via JKOntheRun via Lifehacker]

Gizmodo: traffic data

Nokia Mobile Millennium Turns Your GPS Phone Into a Traffic Reporter

Microsoft's Live Maps Integrates Complex Clearflow Traffic Modeling Data To Tell You To Avoid Busy Streets