How deep the rabbit hole goes?
Tuesday, May 8th, 2007So whilst talking with David about his new N95 with built in GPS I commented on an applicaiton I had played with about a year ago. You have your mobile with GPRS enabled, and attach a GPS unit and have some software monitor your position and report your lat and long back to a central server. It was aimed at fleet managers who wanted to know the location of their vehicles.
David did some hunting to see and found RaccoonOnMap. It’s a mash-up of the Raccoon (a webserver that you can install on series 60 phones), GPS and google maps. You can see other people’s location in realtime as the move about. There’s a lot of people in Helsinki (home to nokia, so not that surprising), with one user ‘Follow the white rabbit’ who always seems to be online and on the move. Taxi driver? Delivery Truck?
But wait! Constant speed? No stops? Doesn’t sound like someone navigating early morning traffic to me. It sounds like a conspiracy to me!
So I turn on the trace facility and watch where he goes for a few minutes. Then I get distracted with work and don’t pay any attention to it for a few hours. But look! He’s doing laps, repeating the same route over and over again!
Clearly it’s not a realtime trace, but a replay of a previous one.
Hmmm…. Follow the white rabbit is the advice given to Neo in the Matrix - he follows the girl with the tattoo to a club where Trinity makes contact. On the DVD for The Matrix, there are hidden extras that you can access when the white rabbit appears on the screen.
Lets take a closer look at the trace.
Some shading and rotating later… and we have a result! Kinda. Hmmm not that conculsive, but a good way to fill a few hours when I should be working.
You can just call me Neo from now on.
… Or Adam. That will still work 