The technology behind this is based on nano-sensing research done by HP Labs. The sensors are similar to RFID chips, but in this case they are tiny accelerometers which detect motion and vibrations.

Use Cases

Peter Hartwell, senior researcher and project team lead, listed some example use cases for these sensing nodes. The nodes could be "stuck to bridges and buildings to warn of structural strains or weather conditions [and] they might be scattered along roadsides to monitor traffic, weather and road conditions." A bridge like the San Francisco Golden Gate might take 10,000 nodes, said Hartwell.

Other uses include embedding the CeNSE nodes in everyday electronics, tracking hospital equipment, sniffing out pesticides and pathogens in food. Ultimately they may even "recognize" the person using them and adapt.

According to HP Labs, CeNSE sensors will enable real-time data collection, analysis and better decision making.

Potential Issues

This is an ambitious project by HP Labs and there are other large IT companies, such as IBM, building out similar platforms for sensor data and services.

HP senior fellow Stan Williams noted that for CeNSE to work, "we have to make sensors that are vastly more sensitive than anything else that have ever existed before, while being absolutely dirt cheap so that we can deploy them in very large numbers."

RFID technology has had numerous cost and technology issues over the past decade, so HP Labs will surely run into similar real-world obstacles in this project. HP Labs admits that existing sensitive detectors are expensive; but it hopes to make them much cheaper.

The Race to Build a Worldwide Sensor Network

HP Labs' ultimate aim is to have a worldwide network of these CeNSE sensors. A trillion of them "should do the trick," says HP. The company is hoping that at that scale, sensor nodes will cost "next to nothing, yet measure everything." HP is also positioning this, boldly, as a technology that could "save the planet" by enabling it to be monitored.

These are big claims and the proof will be in the pudding. One thing is for certain: sensor technology will become as pervasive as HP Labs says it will, in due course. The questions that remain unanswered though are: how long will it take, and which company (or companies) will gain the biggest footholds in this network?

The automotive industry has been an early user of this track and trace technology in shipping containers. According to IBM, many automotive manufacturers carry container inventories in excess of 100 million dollars. One use case is suppliers of car parts, who fill the containers with components and sub-assemblies. These are then sent to the manufacturer. A sensor with a unique serial number is attached to each container, so that manufacturers and their trading partners can track them as they move along the supply chain.

Networks of Sensors Gaining Momentum

Networks of sensors are becoming increasingly used to monitor and track things. The term Internet of Things refers to when real-world objects are connected to the Internet, for example goods in a shipping container.

It's early in the evolution of sensors, but they're already being used for a variety of tasks - such as management of water infrastructure, levee oversight management and flood control, monitoring highway traffic conditions, sensing changes in seismic activity and air quality, and more.

As IBM noted in its press release today, RFID tags (Radio Frequency Identification sensors) are becoming particularly popular for the purpose of item tracking and authentication. By 2010, IBM estimates that approximately six billion of these tags will be in circulation.

Who's Using Sensors?

Other than automobile manufacturers, IBM told us that about 7-8 other industries are using this kind of sensor technology to track and trace goods. An example is the medical industry, where InfoSphere Traceability Server is used by hospitals and doctors to keep track of the medical devices implanted in individual patients.

A specific example cited by IBM is a company called Implanet, which sells medical implants such as hips and knees. It attaches RFID tags to the device packaging, allowing hospitals to scan a tag and store information about an implant with the patient's records.

As well as tracking and trace use cases, IBM's software is used by pharmaceutical distributors and manufacturers to combat counterfeiting.

Image credits: runner310; jdnx

Today at the Web 2.0 Summit, Brady Forrest of O'Reilly Media ran a panel called Humans As Sensors. With him were four organizations doing innovative applications using sensors: Markus Tripp (Mobilizy), Deborah Estrin (Computer Science Department, UCLA), Sharon Biggar (Path Intelligence), Di-Ann Eisnor (Waze).

Each of the speakers started by explaining what they do.

Eisnor said that Waze aimes to take sensor data from "entertainment to action." It started out being used to map objects, then people, now processes.

Path Intelligence is bringing online innovation to the real world, according to co-founder and the Chief Operating Officer Sharon Biggar. They are targeting the retail market - specifically shops in malls. She said that the online world is good at collecting data on user experience, but the local mall doesn't have that data.

What Path Intelligence is doing is analogous to Google Analytics, said Biggar. It works by collecting sensor datas and anonymous pings from cellphones - it doesn't require downloads.

Biggar said that what they are measuring is real-time behavior, "right now." One of their current aims is to help the offline retail industry cope with recession. At mall sites they respond directly to the way shoppers are behaving. They do this by installing sensors and accurately locating mobile phones indoors. They use that data to help businesses improve in the real world and in real time.

Mobilizy makes the AR browser Wikitude, which we have covered extensively here on ReadWriteWeb. It works on mobile phones that have GPS and a compass. As we've explained before, Wikitude is overlaid information on the real world.

What's next for the product? Mobilizy manager business development Markus Tripp said that they plan to open it for the public, so people can create content for AR. It will be in the same format as Google Earth.

Deborah Estrin from the Computer Science Department at UCLA was on next. She explained that they are doing a lot of research into "participatory sensing." They are taking it from aggregators to personal apps. The use cases include specific civic and citizen data campaigns. She suggested that what they do is "twitter with a purpose," although she admitted that this was a cynical thing to say.

Example apps include whatsinvasive.com - enabling users to provide data on what plants are invasive (weeds etc) - and Biketastic.

Discussion

The panel then had a discussion on where sensor and mobile-generated data is headed on the Web.

Brady asked the panel about how users can trust the data, whether it be implict or explicit.

Estrin from UCLA said that giving people visibility back into the data is key. Let people have legible feedback on the data. She also remarked that they always have "eyes on the process" - in other words, humans in the loop. So what they do is not entirely automated.

Waze has learned from web 2.0 that you need to apply different weighting for different people.

Brady asked next: what type of critical mass of people is needed for these kinds of apps?

Di-Ann Eisnor from Waze said that it really depends on the app and its goals. She noted that for them Israel was an incubator / test bed. So they shot for half a percent of the market.

Sharon Biggar from Path Intelligence agreed that it depends on the app and what you're trying to achieve. For them their focus is retail, so their comparison point (in terms of data) is what users had before they came along.

Deborah Estrin from UCLA remarked that as you get more data, you get more value.

Brady asked the magical Web 2.0 question: how do you all plan on making money?

Sharon Biggar from Path Intelligence explained that their business model is built into what they do: retail. She said that retailers will pay for the data they provide. However she noted that these companies "need to get the sensors out there, somehow" - which is a cost to those businesses.

Di-Ann Eisnor from Waze said that the "navigable data market" is worth $4B and is dominated by the big map data companies like Navteq. Waze sells their data at low cost, but she noted that Google is trying to disrupt the market. She admitted that this is shaking things up for Waze, but she thinks that location based services are coming into their own (which they are indeed, according to Morgan Stanley).

Markus Tripp from Mobilizy said that they are a very new business, but he said they are generating revenue. He said that the main goal with Wikitude is to get reach and as much content as possible into its system.

Brady asked as a final question: is Twitter the ultimate sensor?

Sharon Biggar from Path Intelligence said that Twitter data is "another indicator of interest" - another piece of data to add to the equation.

In the past, we've looked at companies building the "internet of things," where we've discovered how everyday objects can be linked to the web using sensors, RFID, and even Twitter. In many cases, the applications of such technology are practical, such as with IBM's investment in food supply chain tracking or the web-connected bathroom scale. But web-enabled objects don't have to simply be useful - they can also be fun. The Nabaztag, for example, is an adorable little rabbit that sits on your desk delivering ambient information through lights and sounds according to changes and updates to information found on the web.

But now "augmented reality" is moving beyond the conceptual and practical stages meant to inform (or merely amuse) technology enthusiasts and is reaching out to a new generation: today's web-savvy children.

About Mattel's New Toys

According to Mattel, each action figure, vehicle, and creature in their new Avatar toy lineup will come with a 3-D web tab called an i-TAG which can be scanned using any computer webcam. After doing so, special content unique to that product will be revealed onscreen. The content will vary by toy, but will include things like biographical information, additional images, and 3D animated models showing off the action figures' "engaging, evading, or defending moves." Even better, scanning two of the i-TAGs will reveal an onscreen animation showing 3D images interacting with each other.

Although this isn't the first time we've seen augmented reality integrated into a product, this new way to "play with toys" is notable for being among the first attempts to integrate technology in what is clearly a mainstream consumer product. And a product for kids, at that.

With each new generation, children are becoming increasing comfortable with technology starting at earlier ages. Where today's kids may tote around toy computers, it seems the upcoming generation will have even more options for interacting with the web-enabled world, such as with these new internet-connected toys.

Assuming the Avatar toys are popular (and since they appeal to the comic-obsessed adult fans too, they probably will be), we'll likely see more augmented reality-powered toys like these launched in the near future.

Images of Avatar toys via TheHDRoom

The website will be focused on weight monitoring. Features will include interactive weight and BMI charts, and a food diary and intake calculator. Of course there is a social networking component (almost goes without saying these days!) - users can create groups, upload pictures, have discussions, and so on. The website boasts a self-described "motivational interface," to encourage users to share their weight loss progress, exercise ideas, and recipes.

The BodyTrace blog makes for interesting reading, as it details the history of the product and how it evolved. From recent updates about privacy (you don't have to upload or share photos) and Twitter (there's been a lot of demand, so you'll now be able to "tweet your success" when the product launches), to beginnings and first drawings...

...to product design

...and the final products

I'm sure we'll see many more such products, everyday objects that connect to an accompanying website, over the coming months.

As this trend becomes more common over the next few years (and it will, as both Web-connected sensors and virtual reality ramp up), what are the implications on how people use the Web? How will it change our interactions in both real and virtual life? In this post we'll explore some of these issues and offer some ideas: for example a bookstore that offers you personalized, contextual information on your mobile phone, in real time and with virtual reality.

Better and More Personalized Information

The more data that is exposed online about a person, the more personalized their media experience will be. This appears to be the most compelling argument for allowing your movements and interactions in the real world to be recorded and uploaded to the cloud. As long as there are privacy controls in place that allow people to opt out at any time (even for just a short period of time, e.g. if they're having a private conversation with a friend), then the pay-off of a much more personalized and contextual media experience seems worthwhile.

Imagine for example walking down to your local shops and entering a bookstore. Theoretically, the bookstore would recognize you as you entered and would 'ping' your mobile device, which then might bring up that wish list of books you've been compiling (let's assume it's not an Amazon wish list, but an independent third party app - perhaps an opportunity for any entrepreneurs reading!). The app would let you know which of your wish list books are available. Also it would display a virtual map on your phone of exactly where each book is located in the store, via the barcodes of the books. Armed with all of this handy, very contextual information, you make your way to the first bookshelf...

You may say: well I could've just ordered the book on Amazon and not gone to the bookstore in the first place. But a lot of people still want that experience of going to their local shops and wandering around, socializing and being part of the 'real world.' By integrating the online world more deeply into the real world, it creates a more compelling shopping experience.

Changing the Way You Live

A more fundamental way in which sensors and virtual reality might mix is in your home. An example that Joe Paradiso mentioned was being able to control a thermostat in your home without even touching it. Instead it would be controlled by sensors connected to the Web. All you'd need to do is send your preferences into the Internet cloud, once. And the thermostats would control your home heating from there on out. You could also check in on your home when at work or traveling, on the virtual Web.

One does wonder what would happen though when multiple people live in the same house, but have different thermostat preferences! Well, let's presume that the Internet will be able to work out an efficient sharing program for that too ;-)

Changing Social Networking

Sensors and virtual reality will change social networking. Paradiso mentioned that you might have a Zigby badge, which would automatically post data to Facebook. For example when you entered that bookshop mentioned above, Facebook would get pinged. Theoretically then this will enable your friends in the vicinity to meet up with you, or you could make new friends if you allow people to 'discover' you at bookshops.

You could do this virtually too - e.g. if you find that you have great conversations whenever you're in a bookshop, then why not try catching up with some friends via Second Life's version of that bookshop (which connects in real-time to the real bookshop)? And what's to stop you from visiting overseas bookshops, virtually, and meeting/making friends?

Wait, What About My Privacy?!

All of the above potential benefits (which just scratch the surface of what's possible) sound marvelous, but of course we haven't yet touched on the not insignificant privacy implications of living in a world enhanced by sensor data and virtual worlds.

This issue was discussed in the academic paper which we summarized in yesterday's post. The paper asked what happens when "potentially invasive media capture becomes an intrinsic property of devices scattered all over our environments?"

To try and solve this issue, MIT is experimenting with a small badge that people can wear to "passively manage dynamic privacy" in environments where potentially sensitive information is streamed across real and virtual worlds. Such a device might be embedded in your mobile phone, or on your body somehow, in the near future. It's early days, so don't panic just yet about brain implants. But here is how MIT describes the current solution:

"We have elected to address this [privacy issue] with badge systems, which periodically beacon a unique ID, to wirelessly mediate privacy (a prototype privacy badge is shown in Figure 7). Using received signal strength and/or the localization engine, the Portals know which badges are potentially within sensor capture range, and can passively and dynamically control data access according to the badge users' preferences. When the red "NO" button is pressed, however, an immediate opt-out signal is transmit to block any sensors in range - an important option if a sensitive conversation is initiated. The current protocol answers to the most restrictive privacy setting that is received. If we have any indication that the wireless network is being jammed or spoofed, the portals will revert to a conservative privacy level."

Conclusion

Clearly much work needs to be done to enable people to effectively - and easily - control personal data from sensors. The benefits described above are compelling, but equally we want to ensure that our personal data is under our control and not being monitored by governments or corporations.

Now tell us what changes you forsee on the Web, as a result of the emergence of Web-connected environmental sensors and the continued growth of virtual worlds.

Image credits: sndrv; MorBCN; Alpha Auer; butkaj.com; Responsive Environments Group

Paradiso co-authored a paper that has just been released in the July-September edition of the IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine. The paper outlines and analyzes Cross Reality experiments done within Second Life, the most popular virtual world with 15 million current subscribers. In this post we'll give you a layman's overview of the paper, because we think this trend is important to the Web's future.

Cross Reality is about connecting "location-specific 3D animated constructs" in virtual worlds to in-building sensor installations.

The paper notes that "the convergence of shared 3D virtual worlds with popular web-based data sources to form a "Second Earth" has been broadly predicted." It's also been the topic of many a science fiction novel. So it's interesting to see the latest practical experiments in this "hyper reality."

It should be noted that there are already commercial applications. The paper points to IBM's visualization of datacenter operation and VRcontext's ProcessLife technology. The latter "uses high-fidelity 3D virtual replicas of real plants or factories to remotely browse and influence industrial processes in realtime."

Billowing Power Strips

In one of its projects, MIT created a cross reality environment called "ShadowLab," which is a Second Life map of the Media Lab's third floor animated by data collected from a network of 35 "smart, sensor-laden power strips" (a.k.a. PLUGs). MIT chose to use power strips "because they are already ubiquitous in offices and homes," plus they have power and can be connected to a network.

Virtual DataPond in the Virtual Atrium (left) and a real DataPond in the real Media Lab Atrium (right)

MIT added other features to the power strips via expansion boards - such as motion sensors, temperature sensors, and memory cards for local data logging.

Ubiquitous Sensor Portals

MIT has also created a whole portal network that maps sensors to virtual worlds, called the Ubiquitous Sensor Portal. There are 45 portals currently in the Media Lab, each one featuring a myriad of environmental sensors - such as motion, light and sound level, vibration, temperature, and humidity. They have a small touch-screen display and audio speaker, for user interaction.

The Portals also act as base stations for an 802.15.4 network inside the lab, "enabling wireless communication with a variety of wearable sensors." Each portal has an extension into Second Life, allowing people to visit the Media Lab virtually. This isn't just a one-way process either; as well as affecting virtual worlds, portal interactions can push virtual phenomena into the user's physical space.

Two views of the virtual extension of a Portal into Second Life; the first shows sensor data over time, the second streaming real-time audio/video into Second Life.

Mobile

MIT expects that handhelds and mobile devices will play an important role in future Cross Reality applications, "both as a source of data to animate their users' environments and avatars and as augmented reality terminals through which local sensor networks can be explored and programmed." The lab has already begun to experiment in this area, with a Star Trek-inspired device it calls a Tricorder (image to right) and a newer device called the "Ubicorder." Both devices provide a real time interface to sensor data.

MIT expects the mobile area of cross reality to expand rapidly "once smart phone Augmented Reality becomes better
established." ReadWriteWeb has been following this trend closely; read our recent Augmented Reality analysis here and here.

Conclusion

The projects of the Responsive Environments Group at MIT are enabling real world data, increasingly being provided by sensor/actuator networks, to be plugged into virtual and physical interfaces.

The group is still exploring both the technical and practical sides of this, so it's uncertain what it will lead to in the commercial world. But we're certain it will fuel future startup innovation in the coming year or two. Watch this space!

Would you pay a premium for an event ticket that includes real time stats like that delivered to your iPhone? I would. Of course Apple is granted all kinds of patents all the time and only some of them amount to anything - but this one is very cool.

Call it augmented reality, call it ubiquitous wearable computing, call it Web 3.0 if you must. It's widely believed that networks of sensors feeding data into computers for analysis and visualization are going to be a big thing in the near term future. Value-adds built on top of that data hold huge potential for the development of software we can't even imagine today. This vision is big in the electrical utility world, but private sector innovators are being hampered by the lack of vision seen in public utility companies. When it comes to the world of sports, the sky could be the limit. Imagine attending a sporting event and being able to select from a variety of apps for the app store, built just for that kind of sport.

It's not only in scientific realms. We're seeing this on the Consumer Web too, as Marshall Kirkpatrick explained this morning in an article about social media monitoring tools. He wrote that data mining tools are being democratized and used more nowadays, similar to how online publishing tools were democratized in Web 2.0. The cloud computing servers that the University of Washington will utilize are relatively cheap and easy to use Web platforms that will enable data mining on a scale not seen before. These projects will access a cloud datacenter established for educational use in 2007, through a partnership between Google, IBM and six academic institutions (including the University of Washington).

Oceans and Galaxies of Data

Bill Howe, a researcher at the UW's eScience Institute, explained the impact of cloud computing on his ocean climate simulation project. Instead of running a simulation to test a single hypothesis, he said, climate scientists are now running long-term simulations and then sifting through tens of thousands of gigabytes of resulting data to discover trends.

Andrew Connolly, a UW associate professor of astronomy, explained that for his project analyzing astronomical images, cloud computing makes it easier to store and process information in the cloud and make the information available over the Web. He said that whereas scientists once competed for time on telescopes, recorded data and then studied the individual images in detail, now "telescopes continuously record high-resolution images that are available to all, providing millions of times more information." So the shift is that the data gathering has been automated and is available on a much larger scale than before for scientists to analyze it.

Data Rich - And Useful

This current era of the Web, which some are calling 'Web 3.0' (but we frankly don't know what it's called yet) is increasingly data rich. The same thing could have been said about the Web 2.0 era, when oceans of 'User Generated Content' were created. However the world of sensors is rapidly pouring even more data onto the Web. Ed Lazowska, a UW professor of computer science and engineering, noted that "the rapid evolution of sensors is transforming all sciences from data-poor to data-rich." He said that "the challenge is to use modern cloud computing resources, such as Amazon Web Services, and modern computer science advances, such as data mining and machine learning, to explore these massive volumes of data." He claimed that this new computational science will be pervasive and will have enormous impact.

We're always pleased when the Web has a meaningful impact on the 'real world' - and particularly on science projects such as this, where the findings could be profound.

The integration of sensors with social networks will lead to real-time data and more useful web apps.

In recent posts we reviewed an MIT experiment called WikiCity, that gathered real-time location data from mobile phones in Rome and graphically mapped trends from it. We then looked at a more commercial product doing similar real-time location data analysis, called Citysense. That product aims to let users find the most popular night spots in San Francisco and the most efficient ways to get to them. The next stage of projects/products such as Wikicity and Citysense will be to enable users to social network, using data from sensors as one input.

Emerging Trend: Integrating Social Networks and Sensor Networks

Sensors have become much more prevelant in mobile devices over the past few years. This means that when we talk about sensors, we're not necessarily talking about the microchip embedded in your fridge door. Increasingly, sensors are attached to a human via their mobile phone. Both the Apple iPhone and the Nokia N95 contain GPS and accelerometer sensors. Sensor data is transmitted via GPS if available or via Wi-Fi positioning techniques.

In a recent W3C Workshop on the Future of Social Networking, held in Barcelona in January, the trend of sensors mixing with social networks was discussed. An accompanying paper entitled Integrating Social Networks and Sensor Networks provides some useful information. Again, these are mostly research projects right now so not much has filtered into the commercial Web yet.

One application for sensors in social networks is to help people to meet others, using alerts based on their location at a particular time. These alerts could be triggered by either explicit opt-in by the user, or by implicit means. An example of the latter is a user receiving an alert on their mobile phone when someone that they exchange messages with on a blog is in the same room. There would need to be the appropriate permissions and privacy controls in place, of course - and this is one of the challenges that these applications are facing.

Sensors Aren't Just About The Socializing

Social networks are often still thought of as fun, consumer applications such as Facebook, MySpace or YouTube. However, the W3C paper notes that social networking + sensors can also be used in 'serious' markets such as healthcare. For example, the paper suggests that collaborative rehabilitation is possible using sensor-enabled portable devices:

"More and more portable devices are supporting sensor-based interactions, from peripherals (Nike+iPod) to integrated sensors (the original iPhone made good use of its accelerometer, while the latest iPhone 3G has added various proximity and light sensors). We can make use of the Social Web and Sensor Networks to create collaborative applications for portable devices to encourage exercise, à la the Wii. As an example of how this could be done, we could begin by finding contacts on the social network with similar interests or by GPS location (e.g. using FireEagle). This social network of friends can then be used to power collaborative applications (CAPTCHAs, the ESP game, quizzes) where progress can be made by the group when a certain level of exercise has been achieved. Then, as a final step, the resulting sensor data is sent to physicians for analysis."

The conclusion of the W3C paper is that "the integration of sensor networks with social networks leads to applications that can sense the context of a user in much better ways and thus provides more personalized and detailed solutions." The paper also outlines how the Semantic Web can be used to manage the interoperability between sensor networks and social networks.

Real-Time Data is Actually Useful Now

These kinds of sensor-enabled social networking applications are still far from being widespread. Citysense, after all, is limited to just one U.S. city right now (although a New York version is coming soon). But we can see how this could become the future of social networking, in a couple of ways. Firstly, for the younger generation, mobile phones will be the primary way they access and make use of their social networks. Just as kids today use Facebook and AIM and the like to organize their social activities, imagine being able to find out in an instant where all the "young and edgy" kids are hanging out in your local town on a particular Saturday afternoon by using a mobile app like Citysense or Brightkite (our pick last December for Most Promising App for 2009). Secondly, these apps hold equal promise for most other demographics, in areas such as healthcare and enterprise.

In the Web 2.0 era, real-time data has mostly been used to power fancy visualizations. It hasn't been used extensively yet to change peoples behavior or their environment. Indeed, a current criticism of Wikicity is that it doesn't do much more than provide nice looking charts; and hence, it's been labeled "info porn" by some. But with the next era of web apps, we will move beyond just data being 'visualized' and have it start to affect peoples decisions and actions. Hopefully, this will be in a positive way by improving peoples ability to connect with like-minded folks. There are still significant technical, social, and privacy challenges to overcome though, before apps like Citysense and Brightkite go mainstream.

What’s coming is life profound. Put billions of sensors in cell phones - regardless of hardware, operating system, or carrier - and affect the way we understand traffic or the weather.

With continued advances in chipsets, accelerometers, compasses, we can change the way we interact virtually with the physical world around us. We can turn monthly cell phone bills, which are difficult to use beyond paying, into living information integrated into our working and personal lives and social networks.

“We’re just getting started,” said Bob iannucci, Nokia’s chief technology officer.

Iannucci, a computer industry veteran, feels like “I am kind of watching the same movie” as the mobile industry transforms itself from early hardware and software into technology deeply ingrained into our lives and the world around us.

In one example Iannucci discussed adding mobile sensors in cell phones that can detect any number of things — location and movement, barometric pressure and the weather around us, even our own personal health. What we will have in the near future are near-field communication, indoor positioning, and environmental analysis.

Iannucci mentioned a recent project involving Nokia, the world’s leading handset maker, and students from UC Berkeley. Nokia planted 100 N95 smartphones into 100 cars used by 150 students. These cell phone “probes” were able to measure real-time traffic.

Imagine if tens of thousands of data points from motorists in an area were collected, anonymized, uploaded to servers for aggregation and analysis, then pushed back to individual users. The phone, which already knows your route to work and your daily schedule, will be able to tell you that a traffic snarl is forming on the 405 and that you’ll never make your 9:30 meeting with a client in time — so here’s an alternate route.

In another example Iannucci noted that barometric sensors could be placed in cell phones — you can already buy sports watches from Suunto with weather sensors — that will monitor the environment around you. Include your data point with billions across the U.S. and the science of weather prediction undergoes a profound change.

“The ability to move information changes societies and livelihoods,” Iannucci said.

Cell phones can also impact the world around us in ways we cannot see, at least physically. Dean Terry, the director of the Mobile Lab at the University of Texas at Dallas, demonstrated the use of mobile devices in augmented reality, or the ability of people to leave behind virtual artifacts like text, photos, video, avatars, and game clues for people to discover with their phones.

As an example, you can enter a building, view the lobby through your cell phone, and see messages and art pieces left behind by others for you to see and enjoy. Or, if you’re at a conference downtown, you can view a restaurant or bar through a mobile device and see comments made by other diners and patrons on food, service, atmosphere, anything they want to leave behind.

“Imagine what it would look like at the Washington Monument if people left behind their comments,” Terry said.

In a more practical, immediate example, Jason Devitt of Skydeck showed an example of data generated by your cell phone — the calls you make, to whom, when, how long — and how this information can be mixed with your address book and social network to become more dynamic.

See also: ReadWriteWeb's interview with Skydeck's Jason Devitt

“You can see who you talk to most frequently, who is most important to you, and you can drop out the noise,” Devitt said. “All friends are not equal. Some are more important than others.”

This post is syndicated from last100, our digital lifestyle blog covering Internet TV, digital music, Mobile Web and more. You can subscribe to last100 here.

Top image taken from Augmented Reality: My Mobile Pet; Flickr video by Dean Terry