The Government has offered Australia's three mobile operators, and vividwireless, renewal of their existing spectrum allocated on 15 year licences in the late 90s and early 2000s at set prices, while the Government expects to rake in $3 billion.
Google also tells us that one of the coolest parts of
this new Google Maps feature is that “everyone can play a part in
helping other motorists make smart decisions based on traffic
information.” But, how?
The answer, says Google, is by crowdsourcing. In
short, if you have Google Maps for mobile running on your phone, have
GPS enabled on the device, and choose to enable My Location, your phone
will send anonymous bits of data back to Google about how fast the
device is moving.
When Google Maps combines that anonymous speed data with that of other
mobile devices travelling on the road ways, across thousands of phones
moving across a city at any one time, it can get an even better picture
of live traffic conditions, and Google shares it with everyone for free
in the Google Maps traffic layer. “The more people that participate the
better - because traffic results get even more accurate for everybody,”
Google says.
What’s more, in case you’re wondering, Google’s product manager, Andrew
Foster, in his posting on the Google website, says that privacy
protections have been built into the Google Maps traffic feature right
from the start.
“We only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate
traffic conditions, and only do so when you have chosen to enable My
Location on your phone. Scale provides further privacy protection: when
a lot of people are reporting data from the same area, we combine their
data together to make it hard to tell one phone from another.”
And, even though the vehicle carrying a phone is anonymous, Foster says
that Google doesn’t want anybody to be able to find out where that
anonymous vehicle came from or where it went — so it finds the start
and end points of every trip and permanently deletes that data. Cool,
indeed!
However, if you'd like to stop your phone from sending anonymous
location data back to Google, Foster says you can find opt-out
instructions here .
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
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