Mobile Behavior: an Omnicom Group Company

Amazon’s Kindle iPhone app may seem like one in 25,000, but the underlying technology is a milestone. It takes us closer to the day when information will follow us around and our houses react to our every move. Read on....

The Kindle app competes on many levels with various other e-book and reader apps such as InstaPaper, Evernote, and Stanza. However, one important aspect is its ability to sync wirelessly and seamlessly with the Kindle device. Using Amazon’s cell-based Whispersync technology, the app allows you to move from iPhone to Kindle and not have to shuffle for what page you were looking on.

Now, while this may seem useless to non-Kindle/iPhone owners, the underlying thinking is very important. The idea of having a session with a device that can transfer its state and to another device upon command from the user is the heart of active syncing. However, the Kindle does it without interaction from the user. This is constant content that follows you.

A prototype of this idea was developed by Nick Bilton for the NYTimes and resulted in an app called Shifd. The idea here is that if you’re reading an article online and you leave your desk, that same article appears at the same spot on the your phone. When you get home, your TV knows what you’ve been reading all day and pulls up ancillary video content on your screen. This means that content can react to what you’re doing at that time. Both Shifd and Instapaper have moved one step closer to making this concept into a reality, and the Kindle app gets even closer as it removes the active act of syncing.

The next step is using a mobile device to establish your presence. In lieu of installing various sensor systems to locate you, one can merely look for a phone. We’re not quite there yet. GPS is a great for urban environments, but when indoors--or even in city canyons--its capabilities are diminished or non-existent.

Moving from global to local positioning systems (LPS) solves that problem. LPS systems can be implemented using line of sight sensors (infrared, lights, lasers), audio sensors (ultrasonic rangefinders, sonar) or radio technology (Bluetooth, 802.11x). While the first two would require significant hardware installation, radio technology is already in place in many commercial and residential buildings. Most laptops and phone have WiFi and Bluetooth, so the radio technology route seems the way to go.

To this end, some work coming out of the University of Toronto shows promise in using existing networks to position people indoors. Their WiFi-based Positioning System (WIPS) uses public wireless network information to determine the position of WiFi-enabled mobile devices. How accurate is it? WIPS can tell for sure the building and floor number where your device is located. Within that floor, the accuracy is about 10 meters, enough to figure out the room number.

The potential here for content delivery is huge. This means that software can maintain a continuous flow of information to the user all the while adjusting to the context of each interaction. But these capabilities can also extend to services beyond content delivery. Consider the science fiction surrounding the "smart house", i.e. a home that know where you are within it and reacts accordingly. Simple applications include turning down the volume on your computer if you walk away, sending an automatic text to let someone know you’re on your way, energy conservation at home, allowing people to find each other in a bar, patient tracking (already being implemented), personnel locating, school attendance, and even some intense indoor gaming.

- Vikram Tank

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