Real-Time Information

Here on Hilton Head Island, there are not many route choices for getting from point A to point B. During peak season I try to avoid the circles by using New Orleans and Arrow Rd., but other than that the choices are pretty limited. But for commuters in the big city, sometimes knowing which route to take to and from work can make all the difference in the world. A quick way to assess whether it would take 10 minutes or two hours would be a useful tool.

Enter Google’s “traffic” button. The search engine giant has added a traffic tool to the Web and mobile versions of its site that let drivers see how heavy traffic is in their area via a color-coded chart.

As you zoom in closer to a city, Google will highlight the main roads and code them red for heavy traffic, orange for medium traffic, and green for no traffic. A red/black color means stop-and-go traffic.

How will Google get this information? From you.

If you use Google Maps for mobile with GPS enabled, you can enable Maps with My Location, and send bits of information to Google about how fast you’re moving. “When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions,” Dave Barth, product manager for Google Maps, wrote in blog post.

Google pointed out that some phones like the T-Mobile myTouch 3G and the Palm Pre come pre-loaded with Google Maps and traffic crowd sourcing pre-installed, though the iPhone Maps application does not support crowd sourcing.

The company acknowledged that this feature might appear a tad Big Brother-ish, but insisted that privacy protections are in place to prevent Google from stalking you. “We only use anonymous speed and location information to calculate traffic conditions, and only do so when you have chosen to enable location services on your phone,” Barth said. “We use our scale to provide 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.”

For those who are concerned, Google has provided details on how to opt out of My Location.

This is an example of real-time information being used creatively to make everyday work more efficient. Here at Progressive we implement real-time data access for companies across Hilton Head and the country, making their email and workplaces accessible from their phones, laptops, and home computers.

For more information on our mobile services, please call or emailing us.