The Emerging World of Real-Time Cellphone Data. At ReadWriteWeb we've been following with interest the projects of the MIT SENSEeable City Lab, which is producing some excellent analysis and visualizations of cellphone data in urban centers.
MIT refers to this data as "digital footprints," because it essentially tracks the movement and sometimes actions of people in an environment. Our most recent post looked at what cellphone data revealed about who attended the Obama Inauguration in January. Technology Review: Mapping a City's Rhythm. Over the course of any day, people congregate around different parts of a city.
In the morning hours, workers commute downtown, while at lunchtime and in the evening, people disperse to eateries and bars. While this sort of behavior is common knowledge, it hasn’t been visible to the average person.