Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone, and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette and I am an editor at how stuff works dot com. Sitting across from me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland, and Leon is getting larger. You've been threatening to do that for a while, I haven't you, Yes, I have. So today's episode comes to us courtesy of a little listener mail. Let's listen to. Mail comes from John, and John says, how are you guys? I hope this email goes through. I didn't see a contact email on your web page, but I always hear you announced it at the end of your podcasts. It got through. John. First of all, I love listening to your podcast. You guys are great and the subjects you discussed are also. Keep up the good work. My question is in regards to Google maps traffic overlay. I usually check it before I leave from work in case I have to take an alternate route due to a traffic problem. I'm wondering how Google can display how the relative speed is of a particular stretch of highway or road. Do they use cameras? Do they measure cell towers handing off phones? Do they rely on people calling in? Google seems to have a lot of public information gathered in one place, but I don't know how they got their real time traffic data. If you've already done an article or podcast on this that I've missed, just please direct me in the right direction. It'd be great to hear an answer on the podcast. Of course, I am really interested in the answer, So any way you can help would be appreciated. Keep up the great work, John. Thanks John, you want to You want to know the fascinating thing about that, John, is they're getting it from you. Yes. Um, Actually, if you're using a any kind of if you're using any kind of cell phone that happens to have a GPS receiver in it and also is using Google Maps with the my location option turned on, you are contributing to the information that Google is using to generate those traffic overlays. And that's pretty cool. Well, it depends on how you look at it. You might be afraid, uh for example, that hey, wait a minute, so I have Google uh Maps for mobile turned on on my phone. I thought I was just checking out the traffic. You mean they're taking information from me? Uh. Google actually would would say not to worry too much about that, because they are they're not really taking any identifiable information from you. However they are, um, they are also taking pains to mix it in with other information, uh, taken from other customers. So don't worry so much. You're you're not being peaked upon, and they weren't aren't following you on your way to work? Right, UM, probably let's give an overview of exactly what's going on here so that we can kind of discuss where the concerns come in and uh and how Google has decided to try and meet those concerns. Because you you raise a really good point, Pillette, I mean that there is a privacy issue here. What if you're not driving to work, What if you're driving to say, I don't know, maybe you're driving to the hospital and you don't necessarily want people to know that you have to go to the hospital. You know, it's none of their business, it's your business. And the thought of well, does this mean that there's some technology tracking my every move and that if someone were clever enough they could figure this out. Um, well, we'll get to that. So generally, what's going on is when you're using these these devices, the GPS receiver is what is is identifying your location. Um. Now, they can use cell towers to try and approximate your location, but that's usually within about all. It's not really that accurate, you know, it's it's several dozen meters at the at the at best when you're talking about just cell towers, you know, whereas GPS you're talking about a few hundred feet max um. So cell towers not that great when you're looking at trying to to figure out the traffic patterns of a particular area, because if if it's narrow enough, theoretically you wouldn't be able to narrow it down to a specific street, right Like especially the cities laid on a grid. You might be like, well North South travel seems to be going pretty well, but we aren't really sure which North South street this guy's on. GPS hower gives you a much more specific location. So what happens is you've got the GPS system identifying where you are, and then uh, your phone is contacting the self cell towers up on a pretty regular basis. As a matter of fact, this wouldn't work if you didn't have a phone, if you had just a GPS receiver, you'd kind of be out of luck because a typical GPS receiver, just a plain old receiver, is a receiver. It's not a transceiver. It's not sending information back to the satellites. So Google gets the information. Uh, the GPS information is going to your phone, and your phone is contacting the cell towers, and that's how Google's figuring out where you are, right. And so what happens is it sees think of your car, is just that little dot if you turn on the my location you know you know I'm talking about. But if you if you don't have it, here's what looks like. You open up Google Maps, you turn on your my location and then you get a little blue dot that indicates your specific location on the map. As you move around, the little dot moves around. Well, what happens is Google will track how fast you're moving along a particular route and extrapolate from that how traffic must be moving. So this is not really useful unless Google is able to do it with lots and lots of users, right, because, for example, you could be walking down the street and everybody else is moving quickly, so Google is saying, oh, well, apparently traffic is flowing normally and this other person is doing something else, So you would you would be an anomaly in that case because all the other traffic moving down the street is moving much more quickly than you are. Or maybe your your car's broken down and you're pushing it down the street, right. Yeah, so Google could could ignore you in that case. But if you were the only person in the area who happened to be you seeing this, then Google's conclusion would be, Wow, traffic on this street has crawled to a to almost a standstill. Look at how slowly they're moving. So obviously, these sort of systems are really only useful if lots of people are already participating. Um, you can't just kind of go right out of the gate with accurate travel information. You really do need lots of different participants. So Google will look at the big picture and the traffic overlay just gives you an indication of how fast traffic is moving along any individual streets. Google is not the only company to take this approach. In fact, there was another company that uh that some people in the tech industry were really really excited about that. Were they were producing GPS units that, uh, that seemed really innovative and use this kind of feature where customers who use that that GPS unit were contributing to the overall information about the city's traffic. Yes. Yes, I was actually one of those people because I saw the company technology at c e S two thousand eight, and uh, I was really I was thinking how cool it was that they had a way to, uh to identify the businesses around where you were and give you an idea of what was going on because uh, the information from the GPS receiver was blended with Internet and you could see you got sort of a um um augmented reality effect. Really right, So, and I assume we're talking about the same company. Let's make sure dash excellent. Well, why oh my gosh, oh my gosh, listeners, you just got to hear a renaissance festival slip up, I said, excellent. Well, oh man, I've already been working there for a few weeks, just in case you guys were wondering, and it is starting to seep into my normal speech, So feel free to write in and and chastise me for doing a festivalism because I can't believe I did that. All right, anyway, blooper real um the so so. Yeah, these two systems work very similarly. You've got a centralized uh computing system that is colating all this data and then sending it back to the to the individual units. For the individual units themselves are what is contributing to the data. It's this kind of interesting circular system. And um, again, let's talk about why you need a lot of people. It's not just for the accuracy. It's also for privacy. Yes, because imagine that Google institutes this and there's only one person out there who happens to have the phone that does this. All right, I mean, this is obviously just a ridiculous example, But let's say that Let's say that Palette is the only person in the world, or at least the only person in Atlanta, let's say, who has one of these phones and Google has already turned on the system. That would mean that the system would become not a traffic system, but a hey, where the heck is Palette now system? I'm the one, in case you were wondering, I'm the one wearing the red and white striped shirt and the toboggan. Right, he's also carrying a cane. Um. So anyway, the yeah, that that's why you need lots and lots of people, because if you don't have a lot of people, it actually is possible to figure out, oh, this has to be you know so and so because he lives in that part of town and look where's he going? Oh my gosh. Well, another thing Google does to try and minimize any chance that people would be able to identify a specific individual based upon traffic patterns is they will erase the origin and destination of any trip, right, so that what they're looking at is they're just trying to figure out the the speed of traffic along any particular route. They're not interested in the starting point or the finishing point, which is kind of interesting. So that's that's Google's approach. They're saying, all right, well, we understand your your privacy concerns, which is weird for Google. They don't always seem to be really that concerned. Um, you can ask people who had to you know, protest street View for example, or buzz That's another really good example about how Google sometimes seems to overlook the i'vous issue, But yeah, they really did think about it this time, and as Poulette was talking about earlier, they also try to mix your data and with the data of other users so that there is no you know, in visualization in there um. So that's that's I mean, really that's the basics. It's it's really just data collection and then incorporation into the maps application. You know, there may be another reason why Google erases the destination and the trip, because really it's all about the journey anyway you want it, the way you need it, anyway you want it so well, and also another reason why you would want it to be private, not just because of where you're coming from and where you're going to, which is you know, obviously, like let's say that you don't happen to know that Jonathan likes on a Friday night to go to the local gentleman's establishment and watch uh dancers. Jonathan doesn't. This is just an example. But if but let's say that you let's say that he did want to do that, well, that would mean that Jonathan would probably not want you to know that by looking at Google Maps. Well, that's not the only thing. The only other reason you might not want this information to be uh identifiable to you. You might not want people to be able to tell that you're, um, I don't know, speeding down a main drag at a breakneck pace. Yeah, you might not want folks to say, hey, I noticed on Google Maps last night that you were drag racing down main street. Um. That would also be a reason why you'd want it to be privatized, so that both the the destination and the speed would be kind of hidden from other people. Right right, Jonathan, we noticed that you had the company car out last night and you were speeding. Yeah, that would have been really awkward, seeing as how I don't drive. Just probably Actually, I'm sure I would end up in a pond somewhere, possibly a pool somebody of water. The pond would be good for you, I think, so. Um wow, how many how many movie references are we going to make in this podcast? At least one more? Yeah? Probably so. Uh. One of the cool things to um that I hadn't realized until I had started doing some research on on the the traffic feature on Google site is that um, Google is also keeping and this is also a bit of a privacy concern, But I don't I don't know that this is more so than anything else. Um, the Google is keeping track of historical traffic information. So if you are planning a trip, um, you know, say next Thursday, to go to the airport, and you want to know how traffic is on a Thursday morning going to the airport between say eight thirty and ten o'clock in the morning, you can look on Google and try to get a prediction of how traffic will be in the future. It's gonna clearly be over the roads because we'll all be driving flying cars. Yes, I'm not gonna say it. I came really close to making the other movie reference myself, but I'm just gonna leave it up. Okay, where we're going, we don't need roads. I told you we were having that was that was the obvious one there. But no, I think that's a very useful feature because, uh it just seems like, um, you know, you could easily plan a trip that way. Something time sensitive like that, especially, it's going to uh benefit from having that information. So, um, if you can, if you're not concerned about the privacy feature thing, um, you know, there are lots of people who are going to be concerned about regardless of what the company tells you. UM. You know, then then it can be useful to have that information and contribute to everyone else's overall UH knowledge of traffic patterns over you know, the recent past few minutes, you know, as far as traffic is concerned, but also in the as in the in terms of a historical sense. But you know, Google is not the only one who does this. No, No, Like we said, Dash does it as well, and UM and some system incorporate other elements as well, not just not just the user traffic or user experience, but they'll incorporate things like if UH they might have a report about a big event that's going on downtown and will automatically factor that in when routing your trips so that way you don't end up going through a street that's been closed off for that day, or even some might even incorporate weather reports. The more advanced you get, the more information they'll they'll bring into UH to factor these things in before you go on a trip, which is really kind of cool. UM. A lot of them use a system completely different from Dash and Google, which is one of the things. A lot of them the GPS receivers that are not phones they're just the just the GPS receiver. They'll also have a second receiver in there besides the GPS signal to to accept traffic message channel signals. Now, the traffic message channel is UH. That's a way of of sending traffic, real time traffic information out, usually over an FM signal, but you can also do it over satellite UM and you send that out to subscribers to your service. So various companies have their own specific frequencies like tom Tom has its own frequency in various cities, that kind of thing. And the UH what will happen is it'll the company will send the real time traffic information out and so your GPS will update automatically. UH. And this way, if let's say there's a big wreck on one of the highways, it'll come back with that information and give you the chance to reroute, you know, in the middle of a trip. UM. There are some problems with this technology and that a lot of the companies that use it, UH, they kind of have their system laid out on a grid, and so because that's just the way the maps are, so when they have to mark down where an incident occurs, but because it's a grid, it's not. It's not terribly precise. It's not like you can put a thumbtack exactly where the incidant happened. You you get an approximation. Sometimes that approximation is wrong because let's say that there's an incident that's at an intersection, and it may mean that one road leading into the intersection is affected, but the other three aren't. Well, if the the grid isn't exactly placed at the intersection in the proper way, it may show up as affecting the wrong road. So your route may say, oh, well, you can completely go this way, there's no problem here, it's unaffected, when in reality, that's exactly where the problem is. Right, So it's not as precise as it needs to be. Uh, it's not foolproof in other words. Right, Meanwhile, you're cursing because you got stuck in traffic somewhere right. You wanted to turn left and the roads completely closed, and you thought the roads the right was going to be closed. But it's fine. Yeah, that's very irritating. Um. Going back to something that you had said earlier talking about incorporating weather and different events. Of course, a system like that, it involves human interaction. UM, it's not completely completely computerized. UM. Traffic Cast is one of those companies that does that. And they UM they actually are the company that provides Yahoo with its UM service. That's that you can see on the Yahoo Maps website. UM. And one of the things that UH that has improved about traffic information in general, I think is that both systems, both Google and the traffic cast system used on Yahoo and other sites UH, is that they're starting to show information for arterial streets as well, not just the major highways. UM. And it's done traffic casts and traffic casts system is done in a is handled partially you know, through human interaction, UM, partially through other kinds of sensors, like for example, they have the they use the remote Traffic microwave sensor, which tells whether or not you're making burritos in your car. Oh no, I'm sorry, that was my wrong notes No it Uh I was really disappointed. Uh No, not so much. Uh No. It's a traffic sensor that uses microwave signals to figure out what's going on. It can actually go across several lanes of traffic UH to identify, UM the number of vehicles and their speed. Um, either you know from the side or from the front, and uh it can. As a matter of fact, you can monitor up to eight lanes according to the information UM from traffic casts website. But um, you know it can it can get an idea of how fast you're moving. Now that's those are stationary. It doesn't work the same way as having the the the GPS system, uh through the maps functioning your phone. Um, it doesn't get an idea over the same thing. So they have to have it. They use a number of collection methods, including including using GPS, but it's a it's kind of neat too that they are able to do that. And they're also in contact with the local governments who have cameras and other systems set up so that they can at monitor traffic. So in general, I would say it's a lot easier to get an idea of what your commute is going to be like before you leave than it was just a few years ago. I mean, because it seems to have come a long way in a very short period of time. Right, They've they've got a much more comprehensive list of data collection sensors and and and methods. It's beyond just the users, which that's a good good thing. I mean, I remember when when I first started getting into the working world and I was looking at at traffic reports things like that. Really the only the only information you had where it came from cameras that were placed along certain highways and you can get a live look at what the traffic was like, and you would get an approximation of the traffic. It would you know, show up green, yellow or red. It was all like the main highways. It was none of the service streets and uh. And this is this is much more useful for most people, I would think, because it gives you a better glimpse of what traffics light throughout the entire neighborhood. Yeah, or you know, then then you got the other option, which is the traditional, uh traffic copter five over the main thoroughfare. Yeah. Was that an episode of w k RP. Anyway, he started pounding his own chest because the cop chopper was was on the Fritzi. I'm sorry, I had a traffic copter was I had had the Flight of val Cree playing and the Charlie don't surf there's another one for you. Um, but yeah, well, the I think that I mean that pretty much wraps up all the information I have because this this topic is fairly cut and dry, especially for a stuff topic it is. But um, but it was kind of fascinating to me once I started looking at the other ways that they measured traffic and explained some of those weird beige boxes that they have on the polls along the side of the road, right, you know, I'd always wondered what some of those are. And I know that there are other things too that they use, uh, you know, like air pollution detect ors and things like that that that that you'll see you on there. But um, some of the boxes, uh, the next time you go for a drive, some of the boxes that you see with a little solar collector next to him maybe using microwaves to uh check your car's speed and position out to help the traffic people identify whether the roads are clear or not. Yeah. Yeah, it's an it's neat stuff. And I really do like the idea of crowdsourcing your traffic information because I mean, when you think about it, that's gonna, assuming the enough people are using it, that's gonna give you probably the most accurate, big, big picture view of what traffics like going you know how it's going in the city, and um, I mean again, it will depend entirely on whether people feel comfortable participating or not. Well, I totally get that. I guess that that pretty much wraps that up. Will go on to our second round of listener mail. This listener mail comes from Jaden, and Jaden says, Hey, Chris John, I just listened to your Cyborg episode and wanted to tell you about something I read. I read about a girl with some sort of degenerative eye condition. She got a mechanical eye implanted where a normal I would go. It had a camera and connected to her optic nerve. It was pretty cool. I just wanted to say that I love the podcast and to keep them coming. I hope you could maybe tell me about space shuttle tech or do a podcast on it. And I'm only thirteen and love tech, so I want to know everything about it. Please let me know. Thanks again, Jaden, Well, Jane. We do have the space shuttle technology on our list o topics, so it is on the list for us to tackle, along with about a hundred and fifty other topics, but we are determined to hit them all eventually. And as for the the cyber cybernetic eye, I've heard of an artist who wanted to have a camera implanted in a prosthetic eye. She is missing an eye, and she thought it would be an interesting way to capture images from her point of view about as literally as as possible, and even programming it in such a way where she could control the method of capturing images by certain blinks. If you blink twice and then something, it's it's capturing still images instead of video, that kind of thing. She had put out a call for engineers to try and help her with this, but from the last I had checked, it still has not become a completed project. And also this was not connecting to her optic nerve at all. It was merely to capture images and then you would then upload the images to a computer. And there's also a filmmaker who's trying to do something similar where he wants to have a camera implanted in his eye socket so that he could shoot a film um from his own point of view, the same sort of thing, though again not connecting to his brain in any way, just connecting to an outside source or an outside a recording device and then um his brain would eventually get around to seeing it when you watch the playback. So interesting ideas. Not not really cybernetic in the sense that it's not enhancing their own abilities. It's really it's really just a new way to hold a camera. If you really want to think about it. Yeah, that's true. That's still kind of cool and also scary. Come with me if you want to live. All right, Well, that wraps up this discussion of text stuff. If you have any questions, comments you have that, uh, some topics you would like to suggest and have us add to the list o topics right us. Our email address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon if you're a tech stuff and be sure to check us out on Twitter text Stuff hs ws r handle, and you can also find us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash tech Stuff h s W. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the house stuff Works homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you

Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone, and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette and I am an editor at how stuff works dot com. Sitting across from me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland, and Leon is getting larger. You've been threatening to do that for a while, I haven't you, Yes, I have. So today's episode comes to us courtesy of a little listener mail. Let's listen to. Mail comes from John, and John says, how are you guys? I hope this email goes through. I didn't see a contact email on your web page, but I always hear you announced it at the end of your podcasts. It got through. John. First of all, I love listening to your podcast. You guys are great and the subjects you discussed are also. Keep up the good work. My question is in regards to Google maps traffic overlay. I usually check it before I leave from work in case I have to take an alternate route due to a traffic problem. I'm wondering how Google can display how the relative speed is of a particular stretch of highway or road. Do they use cameras? Do they measure cell towers handing off phones? Do they rely on people calling in? Google seems to have a lot of public information gathered in one place, but I don't know how they got their real time traffic data. If you've already done an article or podcast on this that I've missed, just please direct me in the right direction. It'd be great to hear an answer on the podcast. Of course, I am really interested in the answer, So any way you can help would be appreciated. Keep up the great work, John. Thanks John, you want to You want to know the fascinating thing about that, John, is they're getting it from you. Yes. Um, Actually, if you're using a any kind of if you're using any kind of cell phone that happens to have a GPS receiver in it and also is using Google Maps with the my location option turned on, you are contributing to the information that Google is using to generate those traffic overlays. And that's pretty cool. Well, it depends on how you look at it. You might be afraid, uh for example, that hey, wait a minute, so I have Google uh Maps for mobile turned on on my phone. I thought I was just checking out the traffic. You mean they're taking information from me? Uh. Google actually would would say not to worry too much about that, because they are they're not really taking any identifiable information from you. However they are, um, they are also taking pains to mix it in with other information, uh, taken from other customers. So don't worry so much. You're you're not being peaked upon, and they weren't aren't following you on your way to work? Right, UM, probably let's give an overview of exactly what's going on here so that we can kind of discuss where the concerns come in and uh and how Google has decided to try and meet those concerns. Because you you raise a really good point, Pillette, I mean that there is a privacy issue here. What if you're not driving to work, What if you're driving to say, I don't know, maybe you're driving to the hospital and you don't necessarily want people to know that you have to go to the hospital. You know, it's none of their business, it's your business. And the thought of well, does this mean that there's some technology tracking my every move and that if someone were clever enough they could figure this out. Um, well, we'll get to that. So generally, what's going on is when you're using these these devices, the GPS receiver is what is is identifying your location. Um. Now, they can use cell towers to try and approximate your location, but that's usually within about all. It's not really that accurate, you know, it's it's several dozen meters at the at the at best when you're talking about just cell towers, you know, whereas GPS you're talking about a few hundred feet max um. So cell towers not that great when you're looking at trying to to figure out the traffic patterns of a particular area, because if if it's narrow enough, theoretically you wouldn't be able to narrow it down to a specific street, right Like especially the cities laid on a grid. You might be like, well North South travel seems to be going pretty well, but we aren't really sure which North South street this guy's on. GPS hower gives you a much more specific location. So what happens is you've got the GPS system identifying where you are, and then uh, your phone is contacting the self cell towers up on a pretty regular basis. As a matter of fact, this wouldn't work if you didn't have a phone, if you had just a GPS receiver, you'd kind of be out of luck because a typical GPS receiver, just a plain old receiver, is a receiver. It's not a transceiver. It's not sending information back to the satellites. So Google gets the information. Uh, the GPS information is going to your phone, and your phone is contacting the cell towers, and that's how Google's figuring out where you are, right. And so what happens is it sees think of your car, is just that little dot if you turn on the my location you know you know I'm talking about. But if you if you don't have it, here's what looks like. You open up Google Maps, you turn on your my location and then you get a little blue dot that indicates your specific location on the map. As you move around, the little dot moves around. Well, what happens is Google will track how fast you're moving along a particular route and extrapolate from that how traffic must be moving. So this is not really useful unless Google is able to do it with lots and lots of users, right, because, for example, you could be walking down the street and everybody else is moving quickly, so Google is saying, oh, well, apparently traffic is flowing normally and this other person is doing something else, So you would you would be an anomaly in that case because all the other traffic moving down the street is moving much more quickly than you are. Or maybe your your car's broken down and you're pushing it down the street, right. Yeah, so Google could could ignore you in that case. But if you were the only person in the area who happened to be you seeing this, then Google's conclusion would be, Wow, traffic on this street has crawled to a to almost a standstill. Look at how slowly they're moving. So obviously, these sort of systems are really only useful if lots of people are already participating. Um, you can't just kind of go right out of the gate with accurate travel information. You really do need lots of different participants. So Google will look at the big picture and the traffic overlay just gives you an indication of how fast traffic is moving along any individual streets. Google is not the only company to take this approach. In fact, there was another company that uh that some people in the tech industry were really really excited about that. Were they were producing GPS units that, uh, that seemed really innovative and use this kind of feature where customers who use that that GPS unit were contributing to the overall information about the city's traffic. Yes. Yes, I was actually one of those people because I saw the company technology at c e S two thousand eight, and uh, I was really I was thinking how cool it was that they had a way to, uh to identify the businesses around where you were and give you an idea of what was going on because uh, the information from the GPS receiver was blended with Internet and you could see you got sort of a um um augmented reality effect. Really right, So, and I assume we're talking about the same company. Let's make sure dash excellent. Well, why oh my gosh, oh my gosh, listeners, you just got to hear a renaissance festival slip up, I said, excellent. Well, oh man, I've already been working there for a few weeks, just in case you guys were wondering, and it is starting to seep into my normal speech, So feel free to write in and and chastise me for doing a festivalism because I can't believe I did that. All right, anyway, blooper real um the so so. Yeah, these two systems work very similarly. You've got a centralized uh computing system that is colating all this data and then sending it back to the to the individual units. For the individual units themselves are what is contributing to the data. It's this kind of interesting circular system. And um, again, let's talk about why you need a lot of people. It's not just for the accuracy. It's also for privacy. Yes, because imagine that Google institutes this and there's only one person out there who happens to have the phone that does this. All right, I mean, this is obviously just a ridiculous example, But let's say that Let's say that Palette is the only person in the world, or at least the only person in Atlanta, let's say, who has one of these phones and Google has already turned on the system. That would mean that the system would become not a traffic system, but a hey, where the heck is Palette now system? I'm the one, in case you were wondering, I'm the one wearing the red and white striped shirt and the toboggan. Right, he's also carrying a cane. Um. So anyway, the yeah, that that's why you need lots and lots of people, because if you don't have a lot of people, it actually is possible to figure out, oh, this has to be you know so and so because he lives in that part of town and look where's he going? Oh my gosh. Well, another thing Google does to try and minimize any chance that people would be able to identify a specific individual based upon traffic patterns is they will erase the origin and destination of any trip, right, so that what they're looking at is they're just trying to figure out the the speed of traffic along any particular route. They're not interested in the starting point or the finishing point, which is kind of interesting. So that's that's Google's approach. They're saying, all right, well, we understand your your privacy concerns, which is weird for Google. They don't always seem to be really that concerned. Um, you can ask people who had to you know, protest street View for example, or buzz That's another really good example about how Google sometimes seems to overlook the i'vous issue, But yeah, they really did think about it this time, and as Poulette was talking about earlier, they also try to mix your data and with the data of other users so that there is no you know, in visualization in there um. So that's that's I mean, really that's the basics. It's it's really just data collection and then incorporation into the maps application. You know, there may be another reason why Google erases the destination and the trip, because really it's all about the journey anyway you want it, the way you need it, anyway you want it so well, and also another reason why you would want it to be private, not just because of where you're coming from and where you're going to, which is you know, obviously, like let's say that you don't happen to know that Jonathan likes on a Friday night to go to the local gentleman's establishment and watch uh dancers. Jonathan doesn't. This is just an example. But if but let's say that you let's say that he did want to do that, well, that would mean that Jonathan would probably not want you to know that by looking at Google Maps. Well, that's not the only thing. The only other reason you might not want this information to be uh identifiable to you. You might not want people to be able to tell that you're, um, I don't know, speeding down a main drag at a breakneck pace. Yeah, you might not want folks to say, hey, I noticed on Google Maps last night that you were drag racing down main street. Um. That would also be a reason why you'd want it to be privatized, so that both the the destination and the speed would be kind of hidden from other people. Right right, Jonathan, we noticed that you had the company car out last night and you were speeding. Yeah, that would have been really awkward, seeing as how I don't drive. Just probably Actually, I'm sure I would end up in a pond somewhere, possibly a pool somebody of water. The pond would be good for you, I think, so. Um wow, how many how many movie references are we going to make in this podcast? At least one more? Yeah? Probably so. Uh. One of the cool things to um that I hadn't realized until I had started doing some research on on the the traffic feature on Google site is that um, Google is also keeping and this is also a bit of a privacy concern, But I don't I don't know that this is more so than anything else. Um, the Google is keeping track of historical traffic information. So if you are planning a trip, um, you know, say next Thursday, to go to the airport, and you want to know how traffic is on a Thursday morning going to the airport between say eight thirty and ten o'clock in the morning, you can look on Google and try to get a prediction of how traffic will be in the future. It's gonna clearly be over the roads because we'll all be driving flying cars. Yes, I'm not gonna say it. I came really close to making the other movie reference myself, but I'm just gonna leave it up. Okay, where we're going, we don't need roads. I told you we were having that was that was the obvious one there. But no, I think that's a very useful feature because, uh it just seems like, um, you know, you could easily plan a trip that way. Something time sensitive like that, especially, it's going to uh benefit from having that information. So, um, if you can, if you're not concerned about the privacy feature thing, um, you know, there are lots of people who are going to be concerned about regardless of what the company tells you. UM. You know, then then it can be useful to have that information and contribute to everyone else's overall UH knowledge of traffic patterns over you know, the recent past few minutes, you know, as far as traffic is concerned, but also in the as in the in terms of a historical sense. But you know, Google is not the only one who does this. No, No, Like we said, Dash does it as well, and UM and some system incorporate other elements as well, not just not just the user traffic or user experience, but they'll incorporate things like if UH they might have a report about a big event that's going on downtown and will automatically factor that in when routing your trips so that way you don't end up going through a street that's been closed off for that day, or even some might even incorporate weather reports. The more advanced you get, the more information they'll they'll bring into UH to factor these things in before you go on a trip, which is really kind of cool. UM. A lot of them use a system completely different from Dash and Google, which is one of the things. A lot of them the GPS receivers that are not phones they're just the just the GPS receiver. They'll also have a second receiver in there besides the GPS signal to to accept traffic message channel signals. Now, the traffic message channel is UH. That's a way of of sending traffic, real time traffic information out, usually over an FM signal, but you can also do it over satellite UM and you send that out to subscribers to your service. So various companies have their own specific frequencies like tom Tom has its own frequency in various cities, that kind of thing. And the UH what will happen is it'll the company will send the real time traffic information out and so your GPS will update automatically. UH. And this way, if let's say there's a big wreck on one of the highways, it'll come back with that information and give you the chance to reroute, you know, in the middle of a trip. UM. There are some problems with this technology and that a lot of the companies that use it, UH, they kind of have their system laid out on a grid, and so because that's just the way the maps are, so when they have to mark down where an incident occurs, but because it's a grid, it's not. It's not terribly precise. It's not like you can put a thumbtack exactly where the incidant happened. You you get an approximation. Sometimes that approximation is wrong because let's say that there's an incident that's at an intersection, and it may mean that one road leading into the intersection is affected, but the other three aren't. Well, if the the grid isn't exactly placed at the intersection in the proper way, it may show up as affecting the wrong road. So your route may say, oh, well, you can completely go this way, there's no problem here, it's unaffected, when in reality, that's exactly where the problem is. Right, So it's not as precise as it needs to be. Uh, it's not foolproof in other words. Right, Meanwhile, you're cursing because you got stuck in traffic somewhere right. You wanted to turn left and the roads completely closed, and you thought the roads the right was going to be closed. But it's fine. Yeah, that's very irritating. Um. Going back to something that you had said earlier talking about incorporating weather and different events. Of course, a system like that, it involves human interaction. UM, it's not completely completely computerized. UM. Traffic Cast is one of those companies that does that. And they UM they actually are the company that provides Yahoo with its UM service. That's that you can see on the Yahoo Maps website. UM. And one of the things that UH that has improved about traffic information in general, I think is that both systems, both Google and the traffic cast system used on Yahoo and other sites UH, is that they're starting to show information for arterial streets as well, not just the major highways. UM. And it's done traffic casts and traffic casts system is done in a is handled partially you know, through human interaction, UM, partially through other kinds of sensors, like for example, they have the they use the remote Traffic microwave sensor, which tells whether or not you're making burritos in your car. Oh no, I'm sorry, that was my wrong notes No it Uh I was really disappointed. Uh No, not so much. Uh No. It's a traffic sensor that uses microwave signals to figure out what's going on. It can actually go across several lanes of traffic UH to identify, UM the number of vehicles and their speed. Um, either you know from the side or from the front, and uh it can. As a matter of fact, you can monitor up to eight lanes according to the information UM from traffic casts website. But um, you know it can it can get an idea of how fast you're moving. Now that's those are stationary. It doesn't work the same way as having the the the GPS system, uh through the maps functioning your phone. Um, it doesn't get an idea over the same thing. So they have to have it. They use a number of collection methods, including including using GPS, but it's a it's kind of neat too that they are able to do that. And they're also in contact with the local governments who have cameras and other systems set up so that they can at monitor traffic. So in general, I would say it's a lot easier to get an idea of what your commute is going to be like before you leave than it was just a few years ago. I mean, because it seems to have come a long way in a very short period of time. Right, They've they've got a much more comprehensive list of data collection sensors and and and methods. It's beyond just the users, which that's a good good thing. I mean, I remember when when I first started getting into the working world and I was looking at at traffic reports things like that. Really the only the only information you had where it came from cameras that were placed along certain highways and you can get a live look at what the traffic was like, and you would get an approximation of the traffic. It would you know, show up green, yellow or red. It was all like the main highways. It was none of the service streets and uh. And this is this is much more useful for most people, I would think, because it gives you a better glimpse of what traffics light throughout the entire neighborhood. Yeah, or you know, then then you got the other option, which is the traditional, uh traffic copter five over the main thoroughfare. Yeah. Was that an episode of w k RP. Anyway, he started pounding his own chest because the cop chopper was was on the Fritzi. I'm sorry, I had a traffic copter was I had had the Flight of val Cree playing and the Charlie don't surf there's another one for you. Um, but yeah, well, the I think that I mean that pretty much wraps up all the information I have because this this topic is fairly cut and dry, especially for a stuff topic it is. But um, but it was kind of fascinating to me once I started looking at the other ways that they measured traffic and explained some of those weird beige boxes that they have on the polls along the side of the road, right, you know, I'd always wondered what some of those are. And I know that there are other things too that they use, uh, you know, like air pollution detect ors and things like that that that that you'll see you on there. But um, some of the boxes, uh, the next time you go for a drive, some of the boxes that you see with a little solar collector next to him maybe using microwaves to uh check your car's speed and position out to help the traffic people identify whether the roads are clear or not. Yeah. Yeah, it's an it's neat stuff. And I really do like the idea of crowdsourcing your traffic information because I mean, when you think about it, that's gonna, assuming the enough people are using it, that's gonna give you probably the most accurate, big, big picture view of what traffics like going you know how it's going in the city, and um, I mean again, it will depend entirely on whether people feel comfortable participating or not. Well, I totally get that. I guess that that pretty much wraps that up. Will go on to our second round of listener mail. This listener mail comes from Jaden, and Jaden says, Hey, Chris John, I just listened to your Cyborg episode and wanted to tell you about something I read. I read about a girl with some sort of degenerative eye condition. She got a mechanical eye implanted where a normal I would go. It had a camera and connected to her optic nerve. It was pretty cool. I just wanted to say that I love the podcast and to keep them coming. I hope you could maybe tell me about space shuttle tech or do a podcast on it. And I'm only thirteen and love tech, so I want to know everything about it. Please let me know. Thanks again, Jaden, Well, Jane. We do have the space shuttle technology on our list o topics, so it is on the list for us to tackle, along with about a hundred and fifty other topics, but we are determined to hit them all eventually. And as for the the cyber cybernetic eye, I've heard of an artist who wanted to have a camera implanted in a prosthetic eye. She is missing an eye, and she thought it would be an interesting way to capture images from her point of view about as literally as as possible, and even programming it in such a way where she could control the method of capturing images by certain blinks. If you blink twice and then something, it's it's capturing still images instead of video, that kind of thing. She had put out a call for engineers to try and help her with this, but from the last I had checked, it still has not become a completed project. And also this was not connecting to her optic nerve at all. It was merely to capture images and then you would then upload the images to a computer. And there's also a filmmaker who's trying to do something similar where he wants to have a camera implanted in his eye socket so that he could shoot a film um from his own point of view, the same sort of thing, though again not connecting to his brain in any way, just connecting to an outside source or an outside a recording device and then um his brain would eventually get around to seeing it when you watch the playback. So interesting ideas. Not not really cybernetic in the sense that it's not enhancing their own abilities. It's really it's really just a new way to hold a camera. If you really want to think about it. Yeah, that's true. That's still kind of cool and also scary. Come with me if you want to live. All right, Well, that wraps up this discussion of text stuff. If you have any questions, comments you have that, uh, some topics you would like to suggest and have us add to the list o topics right us. Our email address is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon if you're a tech stuff and be sure to check us out on Twitter text Stuff hs ws r handle, and you can also find us on Facebook at Facebook dot com slash tech Stuff h s W. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on the house stuff Works homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you