Sunday, June 22, 2008

I Saw What You Did....and I Know Who You Are

Link to June 21 New York Times article, "Predicting Where You’ll Go and What You’ll Like".

Excerpt:
That hoariest of real estate truisms — location, location, location — may soon be a clarion call for all sorts of businesses.

We’re in the midst of a boom in devices that show where people are at any point in time. Global positioning systems are among the hottest consumer electronics devices ever, says Clint Wheelock, chief research officer at ABI Research, a technology market follower. And cellphones increasingly come with G.P.S. chips. All of these devices churn out data that says something about how people live.

This article has a familiar ring to it. See http://paulsnewsline.blogspot.com/2008/05/yes-you-are-being-watched.html

Link to NPR "Talk of the Nation" from 12/11/2007, "GPS Privacy Concerns Hard to Navigate". The Global Positioning System is a great tool for traveling through a maze of unfamiliar city streets — but it can also serve as an effective tracking device. As employers, government officials and even parents adopt GPS technology, critics worry that it will lead to violations of privacy.

For some of you, the title of this post might bring to mind this silly movie. (According to WorldCat, there are only 3 copies available in Wisconsin libraries: 2 DVDs and 1 video.) It was released 8 months after this slightly better received effort . (10 DVDs and 6 videos in WI public libraries.) This next tidbit probably tells you more than you want to know about me, but after 42 years, I still remember the name of the Mad magazine spoof of the "better received effort": Hack Hack Sweet Has-Been. If you're interested, Wikipedia provides a list of Mad's movie spoofs. (For some reason, I can't get the link to work.)

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