SOURCE: Sense Networks
June 09, 2008 08:00 ET
Sense Networks Launches Software Platform That Indexes the Real World Using Mobile Location Data
NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - June 9, 2008) - Sense Networks today announced the launch of
the company as well as Macrosense™, a software platform that leverages
patent-pending technology to analyze historical and real-time location data
from mobile devices. The company is also debuting the alpha version of a
real-time social navigation and nightlife discovery application,
Citysense™.
"The Macrosense platform enables an entirely new business model for
location based services," said Greg Skibiski, CEO and co-founder of Sense
Networks. "Location data is monetized by companies and investors who
receive value from understanding emerging trends in real-time, while
consumers receive compelling applications free of intrusive mobile
advertising, remaining completely anonymous."
THE MACROSENSE PLATFORM
Macrosense collects massive amounts of anonymous location data emitted from
mobile phones and automobiles. The platform leverages machine learning
technology to analyze each new data point in the context of billions of
historic location data points. This allows companies and investors to
quantify aggregate consumer behavior and uncover macro trends in spending
and sentiment in real-time.
"Just as Google indexed pages on the Internet to optimize web discovery,
Sense Networks has indexed the real places in a city and characterized them
by activity, versus proximity or demographics, to better understand the
context of consumers' offline behavior," said Tony Jebara, Chief Scientist,
co-founder of Sense Networks, and Director of the Machine Learning
Laboratory at Columbia University. "Due to the high dimensionality of
location and time data, Sense Networks had to develop a revolutionary
approach to effectively reduce the number of dimensions and scale the
system."
CITYSENSE
The Citysense alpha release is a mobile map application that shows users
nightlife hotspots in real-time, initially in the city of San Francisco.
Users can identify the busiest places, with another option to only view
spots with unusually high activity based on years of historic data. From
any real-time hotspot, the application allows one-click searching of
nightlife activities and restaurants in that area on Google and Yelp.
"Citysense demonstrates the power of combining anonymous, aggregate
location data for social navigation," said Sandy Pentland, Chief Privacy
Advocate, co-founder of Sense Networks, and Director of Human Dynamics
Research at MIT. "The idea is similar to automobile GPS systems sharing and
pooling current road speed conditions so that everyone can avoid
congestion."
Users can download Citysense today on BlackBerry® phones from
www.citysense.com. A version for Apple's iPhone will be available when the
iPhone App Store launches.
About Sense Networks
New York City based Sense Networks indexes the real world using real-time
and historic location data for predictive analytics. Backed by leaders from
the hedge fund industry, more information can be found on Sense Networks
and the Macrosense platform at www.sensenetworks.com, and Citysense at
www.citysense.com.