Geo-Privacy bubbles: controlling smart phone features based on location

The new iOS 5 integration with Twitter is great and the ability to geo-tag posts is fine and dandy. But there is a problem, when I get home and tweet I don't want to send the location, nor do I want to send the location when I pick the kids up from school or do any number of stalker/burglar friendly things. These elements are almost always related to specific physical locations that I don't want to be recorded.

So here is my next idea, the concept of physical privacy or functional bubbles, places where you draw a circle in Google Maps (or similar) and state that when you are within that bubble you do no want your location to be recorded. This could be extended to other functions on a smart phone, for instance by setting "no call" zones in places where you go fishing or setting a inverse zone for a kids smart phone so they can only access the internet when at home or school.

So in this example we've got two "no location" bubbles, one "no call" bubble and an "auto location" bubble, the later is basically for places where you want to automatically check-in to as soon as you get near, for instance the airport, work, etc.

The concept here is that people can manage their privacy, particularly their geo-social privacy, my marking out places on a map where these features will become disabled on their smartphone. So rather than having to remember "oh I'm at home, must turn location off in Twitter" you instead just mark these zones and the features are automatically disabled on the phone as you enter into that zone. This gives parents the ability to better control what their children are accessing and gives individuals greater automatic control over the information they are sharing online.

Now the reason why I haven't just written an app to do this is I quickly realised that this needed some pretty low-level integration with the device in order to make it happen (iOS doesn't like apps changing fundamental settings!) so its something that Google or Apple would have to do rather than it being a download from an app store (unless someone proves me wrong) but I also wanted to make sure that there was published prior art in case someone in future tries to patent what is, for me, a ruddy obvious next development.

Technorati Tags: SOA, Service Architecture

The problem of mobile places in a geo-social world

I'm sitting writing this on a train, a specific train, the 06:37(ish) leaving St Austell Station and heading to London Paddington. Later in the week I'm going to take a specific train to Paris from London and then probably another to get back to the UK. A few weeks ago I took a specific flight to get to the US.

When considering the current state of the Geo-Social world its clear that movement is not something that is being expected of places but I think this is a classic case where a new technology can, and should, make it easier in the future.

Today for instance if you want to find out if a UK train is on time then your best bet is to go for something like Live Departure Boards which tell you about trains to a station and from there you can find out about a specific train.

Now however lets imaging a future world where moving entities are integrated into Geo-Social solutions. Now instead of "checking in" to the station, I would "check-in" to the actual train. This would then allow me to be automatically tracked, if I want, as my journey progresses until I "check-out" of the train at a specific station.

What are the advantages of this? One of the first is that for plane journeys people could check-in and the person picking them up could check their profile, via FB for instance to get the flight details and from there actually get the current status of the flight, its gate information, etc. Someone picking someone up from a station, or waiting for someone in a meeting, could see that a train is delayed and hence the person will be running late. Indeed by automating these pieces through Geo-Social you could set up notifications of delays automatically in the way that certain travel companies enable you to do today when, and only when, you book tickets with them.

Now there is of course the obvious privacy question of being able to track someone for an extended period of time, but for me if you are signing up to geo-social then you should be considering your privacy and what to share/not to share on a regular basis.

Part of this post is about prior art, namely me making sure there is something on the internet that could be cited as prior art if some numpty in the US tries to patent the idea of mobile geo-social places. The other part is prediction that this will happen.

Geo-social for public transport I can certainly see... for private transport? Probably only in the valley.

Technorati Tags: SOA, Service Architecture

Cloud media backup store - not a patent

I'm writing this because its an idea I've written about before but I just want to make sure that if there is some idiot or idiot company out there who tries to patent this then I've already written it down in a way that is internationally accessible so arguably could be considered as prior art.

Amazon's Kindle store is a bit like this already in that the purchases that you own are held by Amazon for syncing to multiple devices from their cloud but this doesn't go far enough hence the idea... bloody obvious in my mind but that hasn't stopped people previously applying for patents.

When you buy something from either a physical or virtual channel it comes with a form of identified (e.g. DVDs and CDs have identifying information which can be used to uniquely identify its content independently of that content... its a title of the CD in other words) this identifier can then be looked up in a database to prove that you own the content whether via a physical channel purchase or a virtual store....

Now for the cloud bit....

The cloud service holds the identifiers to which you have content access rights and provides you with future access to that information and the associated content from any device which you own or have access rights to. The cloud service provides a library of approved content from the original distributor and copyright owner. The access identifiers that are purchased (by physical or virtual channel) then act as access tokens to this library and enable the information to be copied to devices that you own and streamed to those that you use.

This service therefore provides a single copy of each file rather than a file per user and maintains the access to that information and content.


Or put it simply, its like having iTunes remember what you have bought and allowing you to download it all again with the added advantage of it recognising that you have already bought a specific CD in the real world and allowing you to download the digital version because you have registered your ownership of the CD via iTunes.

This is for me an obvious addition to MobileMe for Apple and the sort of thing that Amazon, Google or Microsoft could also do. It is also the sort of thing that the record industry should do as it would provide them with a degree of control while providing obvious benefits to consumers.

I don't want to patent this and I don't think software and architectural elements should be patentable... so this is prior art.

Technorati Tags: SOA, Service Architecture

Idea for proximity wakeup call

This is a simple idea to stop people missing their stop on a train or bus station by using a proximity detection from the phone or other mobile device of a person. Once the device is within 10 miles (configurable) of the destination it will emit a loud noise or vibrate in order to inform its owner that they should be awake and ready.

Yes I missed my stop on the train today.

Technorati Tags: Prior Art