http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHc9NI2FRDk

On OLN in Canada is a program called Mantracker that I watch quite regularly. This is where experienced Search and Rescue tracker, Terry Grant from the Foothills Search and Rescue Team in Alberta tracks down contestants in the mountains of remote Canada. Each week he and a buddy track down two individuals who team to get to a finish line 40kms away from the start. Using only his tracking skills, looking for clues in the dirt and mud, he skillfully hunts his prey over the course of 36 hours.  He employs a technique of reading tracks called forensics. This is where elements are bought together to paint a picture of the prey’s whereabouts.

Meantime I am looking through all the accounts that I have online and realize that all tracks seem to lead back to my Gmail account. Aside from the obvious mail, flickr, Blogger, Google Sites, adwords, adsense, You Tube, and Maps, it is also attached to Facebook, Stumbleupon, Mybloglog, Gravator, Newsvine, Reddit, Digg and many others.

It would not take much for Google to employ forensics to create a full and complete view of my actvities online and paint a picture of how and what I do online to a much greater degree than what is possible from straight search logs. Indeed search logs only reflect about 10% of my activity and are exceedingly boring (most research on what to blog about).

What it does however is show to Google, and any other interested party, a complete picture of how and what I think on a wide range of subjects. It so happens that I commit many of those thoughts to blog postings, but there is plenty of stuff that I would prefer not or explicitly don’t express an opinion on.

The challenge will be in the future will be for the keepers of this information on the straight and narrow, to keep the information inside boundaries of what the information was originally intended for. Are we really ready for large corporations to know so much about us. We of course already surrender vast amounts of information to financial institutions but this is different. Are we to trust these companies at their word or will the time for legislation to protect users be nearing?.

Related Posts:

• Google Latitude, The Beginning of the End
• Why Nokia Will Buy PocketGear.com
• The Future of Wireless is Fixed
• Microsoft Looks for a New View
• End of an Era at Microsoft

With release of Google Latitude and the birth of wide spread people tracking technology, we are onto the next stage of improved social tools at the expense of privacy. From the Google Blog:

Latitude is a new feature of Google Maps for mobile, as well as an iGoogle gadget, that allows you to share your location with your friends and to see their approximate locations, if they choose to share them with you. You can use your Google account to sign in and easily invite friends to Latitude from your existing list of contacts or by entering their email addresses. Google Talk is integrated with Latitude, so you and your friends can update your status messages and profile photos on the go and see what everyone is up to. You can also call, SMS, IM, or email each other within the app

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-Oq-9enE-k

With a few simple clicks of the mouse, a whole new world of detail can pervade one’s existence and create opportunities for the less scrupulous of us. With the addition of location information along with credit information, corporations can track to an even greater depth what you can and cannot do.

Recently it was reported in the New York Times that American Express was changing your credit limit based on where and whom you shop with:

In recent months, American Express has gone far beyond simply checking your credit score and making sure you pay on time. The company has been looking at home prices in your area, the type of mortgage lender you’re using and whether small-business card customers work in an industry under siege. It has also been looking at how you spend your money, searching for patterns or similarities to other customers who have trouble paying their bills.

Not only is it possible to see your transactions at the local Cash Converters or Value Village, simply being in the vicinity of a Dollar Store makes you a credit risk. This ability will soon be available to any developer:

In the meantime, with Latitude Google is moving to commoditize both the map information and the location beacon. Google is using triangulation data from cellular networks, and Wi-Fi positioning along with GPS data for its Latitude offering. It is only a matter of time before this location information is made available to other developers for free, especially Android app developers. After all, Google needs apps for its Android platform, and more importantly it needs developers to think differently.

The issues do not stop at intrusive corporations, according to Privacy International it can also extend to unwanted attention from unsavory types:

“The company has a long way to go before it can capture the trust of phone users. As it stands right now, Latitude could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jealous partners and obsessive friends. The dangers to a user’s privacy and security are as limitless as the imagination of those who would abuse this technology.”

Couple that with long time Google wannabe, Microsoft Live Maps and you have a potential problem waiting to happen.

Next up, pre-crime….

Related Posts:

• Twitter — From New Idea to No Idea?
• Will Mantracker Have Your Google ID?
• Mobile Times They Are A Changing

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

2007 will go down in history as the turning point where smartphones became mobile phones. With RIM on a roll with it’s business ready blackberry, to Apple charging onto the scene with their user (and app) friendly iPhone, to Google’s Android mobile platform, 2007 was packed the sort of tipping points that make Malcolm Gladwell giddy.

Each of the “new” vendors are predicated on the user experience as the dominant need, not the need of the carrier and their business model. Indeed I have argued before that existing manufacturers (eg Nokia, Motorola) are subjected to the limitations their market and have acted accordingly. The carrier decides what features will be provided to whom and the manufacturer created it. Sure their was some give and take, but the immutable law was that the carrier decided what was on the phone and the manufacturer build it, and the sales person sold it.

So the key limitation was not that phones were not offered by the manufacturers but that phones were delivered consistent to what the manufacturers believed would be accepted by the carriers in their network. However 2007 was characterized by a fundamental change in how the consumers view the mobile phone lead by Apple.

Subsequently two new business models have arrived, the Apple iphone alternate reality and the Google application goodness reality.

Right in this mix you have an extremely clever consumer products organization that knows how to play hard ball. It is no secret that ATT was on the receiving end of negotiations with Apple over the iPhone. Apple received concessions that were unheard of in the industry up to that point. What is lesser known is that Apple’s iPhone pricing strategy is exactly that a strategy. The original $599 price was there to straddle the market. What that means is that you price the product close to the perception price when you launch it (ie $599) to capture the early adopters and to set R&D budgets for competitors because they had to respond to the product. Then 6 months later drop the price back to an aggressive position ($399) and again make the competitors respond. This is a technique used simply to slow down the competition by creating two reaction points. (This also allows consumers to react as well. Consumers react to changes in prices not absolute prices.) Apple brings a degree of marketing and product sophistication that has not been seen in the mobile market.

Much to the chagrin of the traditional model, Google’s Android platform is largely subsidized by search and advertising revenue. It is main premise is to allow developers and customers to come up with a platform that appeals to the widest audience. It is largely based on open source and hence is very extensible.

More importantly it has the support of Google’s core applications including search, docs, maps and others. It dominant motive is to provide a consistent platform for the delivery of Google goodness, and the extensibility to allow new applications (such as say traffic reporting system based on GPS, Google maps and real time traffic data. The Android platform has an anchor tenant so to speak.

2007 provided much in the way of change for the mobile market. It was a world of change from the beginning of the year to the end of the year in how the consumer viewed their role. However this has only opened the flood gates of change. The Block C auction in the USA proved that the open access rule does not destroy the value of the network as the carriers threatened, Apple and Google (and Symbian) are pushing the value of mobile applications, and Intel and ARM are pushing the limit of what’s possible with CPUs and by extension personal mobile devices.

Related Posts:

• Why Nokia Will Buy PocketGear.com
• The Future of Wireless is Fixed
• More Head Wind For Windows Mobile
• Facebook’s Future Is Not Mobile It Is Me
• Bright New Mobile Future

A new feature of Google Maps is drag and drop changes in driving directions. I used it yesterday to get around traffic from Toronto to Pembroke. Very cool…

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