The peer-to-peer world of the Internet is taking a step onto the nation's freeways in a cellphone application that aims to offer up-to-the-second traffic information.
Until now peer-to-peer networks have conjured up file-sharing systems like Napster and Kazaa or social networking organizations like Friendster, Orkut and Linked-in.
But Zipdash, a startup in Palo Alto, California, hopes to take advantage of the growing number of mobile telephones with global positioning satellite receivers to gather the travel speeds of thousands or tens of thousands of drivers, displaying highway conditions as maps on cellphone screens.
The Zipdash application displays a map of traffic speeds as green, yellow and red arrows, graphically representing traffic jams and bottlenecks. The company plans to add features, including route planning and accident alerts. The service will be free to cellphone users and Zipdash is planning to create a business by selling accurate traffic information to Web sites and other publishers.
The system is available in the Bay Area and is expected to be extended nationally in the coming months.
"The demand for traffic data is very real," said Rich Miller, a wireless industry consultant at Breo Consulting in Palo Alto. "The guys who crack the code are going to make a lot of money eventually, but a lot of people will be working on this idea."
Currently in many states, highway departments offer some traffic information drawn from sensor networks embedded in freeways that report speeds and fixed cameras that monitor different choke points. By contrast, the Zipdash system uses both traffic data gathered from individual travelers as well as additional information from taxi and trucking and shuttle fleets. That allows a much finer picture of traffic patterns than what is available with sensor data.
privacy concerns
The company said the new system did not raise privacy issues because no data about individuals was gathered from the wireless carriers, only location, direction and speed information.
The global-positioning-system receivers are being added to cellphones in response to regulations issued by the Federal Communications Commission requiring wireless carriers to provide location information accurate to within 100m.
Nextel is the first major cellphone service provider to make commercial applications like Zipdash's available. Verizon, the nation's largest wireless carrier, plans to begin offering commercial location information capabilities later this year.
Zipdash is the brainchild of three entrepreneurs with backgrounds in a variety of Silicon Valley startups and technology firms.
`Traffic angst'
Two, Mark Crady and Michael Chu, are electrical engineers who have worked at Intel and Palm and have consulted for wireless carriers. The third, Diprenda Nigram, has been a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton and worked at AOL in business development.
The initial Zipdash idea was sparked by the possibility of using the wireless Internet to make travel more efficient in terms of time and energy, said Crady, who is the nephew of Andrew Grove, Intel's chairman and co-founder.
Having precise information, Crady said, about traffic conditions on freeways changes the entire experience of driving in crowded urban areas.
"Maybe I have more traffic angst than the next guy," he said, "but I think this information is a real value."
Pioneering system
The system is one of the first examples of wireless location-specific information. Using cellphones to deliver information and advertising to users in specific locations has long been seen by Silicon Valley venture capitalists and entrepreneurs as one of the areas ripe for commercial development. But it has been slow to develop because of concerns about privacy and the ownership of information.
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