Wired had something to say about it too:Ever wanted to know where you were, but didn't have a GPS handy? Wondered about ways to use that cell phone sitting in your pocket to find out where you are?
These are things that the network providers want to offer to you -- at high cost, either to you or a partner that would charge the cost back to you.
As a broke college student, I asked myself these things. Then I got a GPS, and realized that there *is* another way around it. With some Python code and a lot of free time, I wandered around town, recording GPS traces and associating them with cell towers.
This project was born of that. I've loaded my data in, and I'm working with other people around the country (US) and the world to collect data in every city, town, country. Want to help? Grab a program, grab a GPS, and upload some data. Don't have a GPS? Use the simple form to enter your location and cell ID.
The Geowanking project sounds coooool.Schmidt spends his time wandering around his hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts, using his custom cell-phone software to unmask the ID numbers on each GSM cell tower he passes. Then he associates that tower ID with a GPS-defined location, and uploads it to his website.
When his electronic surveying is complete, Schmidt will have a system that can tell him where he is at all times -- without GPS -- by triangulating the signals from the newly mapped cell towers.
Calling himself a "neogeographer," Schmidt is part of a generation of coders whose work is inspired by easily obtained map data, as well as the mashups made possible by Google Maps and Microsoft's Virtual Earth.
I've long been a fan of such projects as platial - I was speaking last year about how these mashups will change the face of GSM and LBS. Bring it on!
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