- Few users have the iPhone hooked up to a car charger when in their cars.
- The GPS receiver sucks up power like mad when it's on. A constant connection will drain the battery very quickly.
- The iPhone is also incapable of passively uploading GPS data to a remote source, nor is it capable of running an app in the background. This is to say, your users must keep their iPhone unlocked (disabling auto-sleep) and your app open at all times. This is similarly a large drain on your battery.
The amount of work (buying a car charger, making sure to hook it up, unlock the phone, and open your app, and disable auto-lock) every time the user needs to use the service is just absurd. This has no chance of working as it is.
It's a cool idea, and if we all had devices in our pockets that can, without excessive hackery, sustain a continuous GPS feed to a 3rd-party source, this would actually work. Sadly, the iPhone is not it.
Is that even a requirement? Can't you just sync every 5 minutes or so? Or sync more often when the battery is full, and sync less often when the battery is starting to deplete - given enough users that should take care of the power issue. Because it doesn't take a lot of energy to download the congestion information, so like with Bittorrent you only need a couple of seeders.
Bear in mind that you need only one data point to prove there is no congestion: a single car driving at 70 miles/hr rules out congestion at that road.
I expect it will work if all taxis are seeders, and all commuters are leeching. Considering taxis benefit a lot from such a service it's not unrealistic.
The auto-locking problem is another technical nuisance. A firmware update would fix that.
Also, I think the problem should be solved entirely without GPS. You don't want a machine to tell you that traffic is OK, what you really want is to receive a text message whenever there are traffic problems on your usual route on weekdays. "Traffic jam at intersection X" is all you need. When you get that message you just have to take a minute to figure out alternative route. The passive approach is much more appealing. After all, if traffic has been good all week you're not going to check your iPhone the next morning. Just not worth the trouble.
Also bear in mind that position acquisition is far from instantaneous, and has a high fixed cost. 5 minutes is probably ok, but keep in mind that your receiver is puttering away for a good minute before your scheduled check-in, just so your GPS can reacquire its position.
This would work if the software was integrated into a GPS unit, but not a cell phone. Taxi drivers in particular always have their GPS units chained to a car charger source, and this eliminates your power issue. Further, a GPS unit doesn't need to be hacked to support background applications :)
I think you misunderstand the intent of the idea - which is to use other people stuck in traffic jams to warn others who are approaching to divert. This absolutely requires a GPS unit of some sort. The data in this model is emergent, as opposed to human processed (e.g. a driver calling in an accident at an intersection).
I'm tempted to call BS, especially given the content of http://web.archive.org/web/20011130151150/http://radar.com/
Anyone else ever see or hear of this invention?
And it also goes to show that anybody can think of a good idea - it takes someone with real talent to execute it in a successful way.
I too have many good ideas. Wouldn't the world be better off if we could just, like, replicate our food? Starvation would become nonexistent! Quick! Somebody give me all the credit and post my blog everywhere!
and it works exactly the way that Seth describes, even down to Dash users participating to provide real-time traffic updates.
It's an in-car device like a Garmin but internet-oriented. Personally, I'm not sure if it's a viable niche -- it's somewhere in between the Garmin and the iPhone. And the idea of Dash users providing real-time data is obviously a chicken and egg problem.
In any case, maybe Seth's idea was an improvement over radio reports in 2000 but is already behind what Dash, Google Maps or Yahoo maps does today.
On his main idea, I have one comment: why don't people who live where the primary impediment to their getting around just move ? In theory, the internet and modern communications should allow a much more dispersed population and economy, without the costs that come from overcrowding. In practice, everyone in that traffic jam has an economic reason to be there. I think that any services or business ideas that allow a more "free range" type of economy instead of the "factory farm" overcrowded cities will have a strong demand.
Obviously conditions can change pretty quickly, but most of the time they don't. So this could be a good 90% solution without requiring people to broadcast their location to you.
Some stand-alone GPS, if given traffic data, will take that into account when trip planning. http://www.gpsreview.net/traffic/
All he's saying to do is combine the two into a single application. Not that interesting IMO.
