What if your nightlife agenda was dictated not by text messages, phone calls, or your city edition of Time Out, but by a shifting pattern of dots on a Google Map?
As absurd as it may sound, a New York company called Sense Networks thinks that's the solution. On Monday, the company emerged from stealth mode and simultaneously released an "experimental" product called CitySense, an urban navigation product that puts a new spin on the hot market of location-based mobile networking.
A Citysense map of San Francisco.
(Credit: Sense Networks)Backed by hedge funds rather than the venture firms that typically fuel tech start-ups, Sense Networks wants to do a whole lot more than just tell you where your friends are. Rather, the company plans to use its database of location-based information--sourced not only from people who download its mobile client but also from previously untapped resources like taxicab GPS logs--to create both consumer- and enterprise-oriented products. It's calling that mapping technology "Macrosense."
CEO and co-founder Greg Skibiski described Macrosense to me as a platform for crunching and analyzing location-based data in real time. That has major implications for the retail and financial services industries, he told me. If it's accurate, it could be a huge asset for predictive markets--as well as possibilities for some cool consumer applications.
The first of those, Citysense, has been unveiled along with its more corporate sibling. Currently available as a free download for BlackBerry and iPhone handsets, Citysense displays what look like heat maps to show where the most human activity is going on at that moment, down to the street intersection; future releases of the product may make those locations even more detailed, but Skibiski said that's not yet decided due to the important issue of privacy concerns.
In its initial alpha phase, it's limited to San Francisco. Other cities, including New York, are in development.
Citysense can also show you where, based on historic data, the most "unusual" levels of activity are going on. You then have the option of looking up nearby businesses on Yelp and Google Maps, or bookmarking locations on Socialight, thanks to external APIs built in.
Then, using the location-aware technology built into the handset, Citysense eventually begins to "learn" where you spend most of your time, and as the product grows beyond San Francisco, eventually it'll be able to suggest nightlife options to you in cities around the country--all this without taking any kind of user registration information.
That's a crucial talking point, considering some people are inevitably going to find Citysense and its brethren more than a little bit Big Brother-ish. Skibiski stressed to me that it's not for meeting people, it's for "meeting" places: No personal information is mined, users have the option to completely erase their past navigation histories if they wish, and there's no way to track other users in the system, he said.
Citysense, with its focus on "unusual activity" and machine learning, might be a bit too wacky for the average BlackBerry user, but that's not a big deal for Sense Networks. The company plans to profit primarily from business clients purchasing deeper data from the Macrosense platform; Citysense and all future consumer applications are intended to be strictly icing on the cake.
The biggest problem with JetBlue's inaugural "BetaBlue" flight, equipped with Yahoo and BlackBerry e-mail and instant messaging, was the fact that there aren't power outlets on board the aircraft.
Sure, there are those little 110-volt things in each bathroom. But if you hog the airplane toilet so that you can give your laptop some juice, you're going to be the second most unpopular person on that flight. (The screaming kid in seat 15D still beats you.)
All joking aside, if in-flight Wi-Fi is going to take off, airplanes are going to need power outlets. Virgin America already has them, as do many pricier foreign airlines (some only in first class). So do high-end Amtrak trains, like the Acela Express line from Washington, D.C., to Boston. Sure, you might be able to make it from New York to Miami on your laptop battery, but New York to San Francisco just doesn't cut it, especially if you're not sure when you're going to be able to get to a power outlet on the ground.
As for the service itself, let's just say it's complicated. If BetaBlue's connection were my home ISP, I'd ask them to cancel my subscription; it was hardly ultra-reliable, and the instant-messaging application took quite a bit of time to boot up. But this was the first flight of a brand-new program, so I'll give JetBlue the benefit of the doubt here.
And JetBlue representatives, including a handful of engineers from its LiveTV division, which operates the Wi-Fi service, seemed quite thrilled when BetaBlue touched down. It didn't have to work perfectly. It just had to happen.
That's because the upside to BetaBlue (in addition to the fact that I was able to send IMs to every single one of my co-workers and say "Guess what?! I'm on a plane!!!") is that it was an actual realization of in-flight broadband access. In other words, JetBlue's extremely limited offering was potentially a kick in the pants to any other commercial carrier that's been wringing its figurative hands over a similar project. After the disaster that was Boeing's Connexion service, and the trepidation that followed, some airline needed to take that first step forward in order for Wi-Fi on planes to become a reality.
And there are going to be a ton of questions to answer. Will it be free? Ad-supported? Will there be a subscription charge? What if the guy in the seat next to you is looking at porn? Even worse, what if he plugs in a Skype headset and starts yakking away?
But at least the ball is rolling. TechCrunch reported last week that the Aircell service--which owns part of the same 800 MHz spectrum that hosts JetBlue's air-to-ground wireless--may soon make appearances on both Virgin America and American Airlines.
And additionally, I will remember BetaBlue fondly for this most paramount of reasons: it lifted me up from cold, rainy New York and planted me in the middle of a sunny, mild San Francisco day.
If there were snakes on this plane, you could IM your friends and tell them.
Low-cost airline JetBlue has equipped one of its Airbus A320 planes with an onboard wireless network and has forged partnerships with Yahoo and BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion to give passengers access to the companies' e-mail and instant messaging functions while in the air. The airline considers the plane, nicknamed "BetaBlue," to be an early-stage test as the company explores expanding in-flight communication options.
(Credit:
JetBlue)
Passengers won't be able to surf the full Web. But if they bring Wi-Fi-equipped laptops along, they can access lightweight versions of Yahoo e-mail and instant messaging services; BlackBerry owners who have Wi-Fi-enabled handsets (the BlackBerry 8820 and BlackBerry Curve 8320) will be able to access their personal and corporate e-mail. BlackBerry models that have only cellular connections rather than Wi-Fi won't be compatible--the Federal Communications Commission still has a ban on cellular service in-flight.
The plane will take its inaugural flight on Tuesday morning, making the cross-country trip from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport to San Francisco International Airport. After that, "BetaBlue" will be added to JetBlue's regular flight lineup; a company representative told CNET News.com that there will be no way to specifically request the messaging-equipped plane, nor will any additional fee be charged for the service.
It's been known for well over a year that JetBlue had been planning some sort of in-flight wireless initiative. LiveTV, a division of the airline, was awarded a 1MHz air-to-ground wireless license from the FCC in June 2006, following an intense bidding war. After 120 bids, LiveTV paid $7 million for the license, which offers full coverage of the continental U.S. above 10,000 feet. Another company, AirCell, obtained a 3MHz license for $31.3 million in the same FCC auction.
Earlier this year, JetBlue representatives hinted that they were interested in exploring options for in-flight text messaging--but that would require a relaxation of the FCC's stringent regulations.
As the major players in the airline industry compete with one another in an increasingly tech-savvy world, carriers have touted in-flight tech innovations like satellite TV service and electrical power connections. JetBlue already offers DirecTV service, as well as XM satellite radio on some of its newer planes. When Virgin America first took off in August, geeks drooled over the USB and power connections, MP3 library, and a messaging service that lets lonely passengers strike up conversations with fellow travelers on the same plane.
But when it comes to communication services (Virgin America's intra-plane messaging aside), there have been some major momentum issues. Cell phone use on planes is still a contentious topic, but it's nevertheless likely imminent on some foreign carriers and some wireless companies see it as a potential source of profit.
Broadband Internet is a different story. Connexion, a paid in-flight broadband service from Boeing, was used by a number of foreign airlines, like Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines, before it was officially shut down at the end of 2006. There's been no word from Panasonic recently on a rumored plan to succeed where Connexion had failed.
And when BetaBlue takes off on Tuesday, it will make the Forest Hills, N.Y.-based JetBlue the first domestic airline carrier to offer any kind of wireless service in the air. Virgin America's planes have Ethernet ports at each seat, but they remain inactive.
JetBlue representatives said that if BetaBlue proves successful, expansions to the program will become evident over the next year. This would possibly include either installing the Yahoo and RIM services on other planes, or expanding the wireless offerings.
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