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Technology

"Not a Mini-Spy" 78

Posted by michael from the dick-tracy dept.
An Anonymous Coward sent in: "Does a device for audience measurement which "registers what its wearer hears every minute of the day" bother anybody else?" I hope they get paid well for wearing these.
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"Not a Mini-Spy" More

"Not a Mini-Spy"

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  • Re:Useless technology (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Read the mother f&*%ing article. It's not a consumer product, its like the neilsen t.v. ratings box except for radio, a device that monitors what stations are being played around you, used for getting ratings. Actually it's a pretty good idea, provided they make sure that they only prepare an abstract of the information they collect and dispose of the raw data, for improving the accuracy of radio ratings.
  • Kinda sucks for them that I listen to the radio (well, streaming audio over the Net, anyway...sometimes it's radio) all day at work...but I use headphones.

  • Reminds me of a nature show (Score:3)

    by Croaker ( 10633 ) on Sunday May 20, 2001 @05:39AM (#210512)
    Does this strike anyone as being eerily like the way naturalists will shoot a tranq into some hapless animal and saddle them with a bigass ugly collar around their neck containing a radio reciever?

    "Welcome to PBS. Next on Nature, stalking the wild European consumer..."

  • Theres a product similar to this, the Sony Emarker, its like a little keychain with a button. If you hear a song you like, but don't know what its called, hit the button and then later you put the emarker into a USB slot and it'll tell you what the song was. Unfortunately, it only works in America. I suppose it too could be used to track your listening habits. More Info Here [planetminidisc.com]

    ---
  • Presumably it recognizes some humanly inaudible signal sent out by participating stations.

    Perhaps what it picks up is audible to the human ear. I listen to alot of AM radio. Every AM station's dead air sounds different to me.

    It's possible that each participating station will be assigned a carrier frequency to embed into their broadcasts.

    LK
  • I read the story comment, and wondered why anybody would wear a Furby all day, and HOW the Furby would be worn. Then I read the story.

    --

  • Beyond objective observation (Score:3)

    by wirefarm ( 18470 ) <jim@mmdc. n e t> on Sunday May 20, 2001 @07:18AM (#210516) Homepage
    Several people have pointed out that a knowing participant cannot give unbiased, impartial data.
    Since all of us casual observers know this, It must have occurred to the demographics companies ages ago -
    I wonder how many of them have tried intrusive, illegal surveillance of unsuspecting consumers to gather their data.

    First, they'd have to identify their target as being 'average' from all outward appearances. Then they hire an undercover team to monitor every move, every purchase, every magazine ad glanced at for more than a second.

    The more I think about it, the more likely it seems - here you were, worrying about browser cookies, when some guy who looks like Jean Reno (not Janet Reno, but the guy from that Nat Portman flick, "The Professional",) is lurking in your bushes and going through your trash, seeing if you clip coupons for nasal spray, or buy suspicious amounts of hand lotion...

    I suppose there is only one defense - Obfuscate the data! If you think you may be observed, start radically changing your behaviour. If you see an ad for soup on TV, snap into a rain-man-zombie-like state and go directly to the store and buy up 12 cans, all the while chanting "Soup is good food, Soup is good food..." (Better if it's like two in the morning...)
    The next day, react violently to the print version of the same ad - scratch out the eyes of all the people in the ad...

    That should get them to stop following you.

    I'd better go look at ZDNet for a while, to through them off track...

    Cheers,
    Jim, paranoid in Tokyo


    MMDC.NET [mmdc.net]
  • It's used for ratingings (as previously stated) it doesn't record voices, it just identifies what channel you are listening to.

    And second IT'S A WRIGGIN WATCH! Why on earth would you have a bulky watch on your arm when you're having sex? When you go on a top secret meeting you leave it OUTSIDE. I wouldn't trust things to be shut off just becuase they claim to be off. (You can use cell phones as spy devices like this.)
  • alternately, it could scan participating channels until it hits one that matches what you're listening to. In fact, if it has a sufficiently powerful DSP, it could simultaneously digitally tune all (or a large number of) participating channels.
  • Your typical day would be: get up, tune your radio to the most obscure underground station around, drop the watch in front of it, and do whatever you want for the day without the watch. Spoiling the stats for fun and profit.

    Sorry. The watch has a motion sensor and temperature detector, intended to see whether you are awake or asleep, and so it wouldn't register anything if you take it off, except that you had taken it off...

  • Err, they get a free watch. Personally, I haven't worn a watch for the last six months, as a total of three other devices which are always on me have intergrated clocks.

    I agree (and besides, watches give me that strange tan-line on my wrist so I haven't worn one for years)! Putting on my most-Orwellian hat, though, the device they probably want to begin 'harnessing' (in exchange for free airtime?) is going to be the cellphone. Mine is with me most of the time (not quite as connected to me as a watch would be -- so no heartbeat, but usually in the same room or car). The phone, of course, would have the ability to transmit responses in real-time. ["Leno, that last joke kinda sucked, but the average geek laughed pretty-hard at the one before!"]

    Opinions, as always, are my own, and just because I described something doesn't mean I'm advocating it -- for example, my price for the above kind of invasion of privacy would probably be repellant to even the richest companies. Even though I could see the personal uses of bugging myself that you mentioned, bugging in my state (Florida) is a felony (unless you're a well-connected teacher's union political-hack, recording someone else's telephone conversation for later sale to opposing politicians, in which case you get off with a slap on the wrist). Ok, enough ranting...
    JMR
  • First of I suspect this device works by looking for signatures of local radio recievers and recording that. Much like a radar detector but for fm radios.

    Second is that this kind of monitoring has a Heisenberg uncertainty principal effect about it. Anytime you measure something you have a risk of changing it. When people know they are being watched, they will behave diferently. A friend of mine has a bar code scaner that some company gave him to measure his spending habits. They give him free "gifts" for sending in data. He has a well equiped kitchen (that I don't think he uses) because most of the gifts are thigns like fancy mixers and other useless kitchen gear. The problem with this is that the company has messed up data on his purchases of things like tosters because he doens't buy them. He buys other things and scans them and then gets the toster for sending in a few hundred bar codes. He has a reputaiton of being cheap, he will go buy a hundred of something he will never use so he can get the bar codes to get something more expensive that he wants. He also scans stuff he is getting for free from some buy-in refund program. All this will do is measure the listening habbits of people who will do what they are told in exchanges for some shiny bits which I guess is just the people that Nelson and clan care about.

    Third, I'll get flamed for effect vs affect and I don't care.
  • Is it catching an inaudible identifier in the radio signal and making a little electro-note of it?
    Yes, if it's the same device described in this Balitmore City Paper [citypaper.com] story.
    ...The PPM ["Portable People Meter"] works by detecting an inaudible code that can be embedded in any broadcast signal. Fifty-four radio and TV stations in the Philadelphia market are already including such codes in their broadcasts or are capable of doing so, and Arbitron hopes to have more than 70 signed up by the time the test gets under way. By the end of February, there will be 300 meters in use in Wilmington, Del., which Arbitron considers part of the Philly market. That number will be expanded to 1,500 throughout the greater Philadelphia area by the end of the year, company spokesperson Thom Mocarsky says.

    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/

  • That's like analog wireless right?
  • ... since the people refuse to enter the next store immediately after listenig to the adverts (no supermarketmusic recorded). Because of the low "Go Supermarket Rates" the whole radio-advertising thinks of louder and more annoying advertisements before going belly-up.
  • As the article mentions, it identifies the stations itself. I think it's safe to assume that it doesn't have some AI program determining that it probably hears an N'Sync song and that therefore station XYZ is probably on. Presumably it recognizes some humanly inaudible signal sent out by participating stations.

    It does not record all sound and download it to a central every week. Apart from the privacy problems, that design simply wouldn't work.

  • What would keep them from listening to my conversations with friends? Also, it wouldn't work very well when I have my headphones on listening to Internet radio at work.

    --
    Later...
  • Is it catching an inaudible identifier in the radio signal and making a little electro-note of it?

    You really can't rely on this, as many/most commercial radios won't play back inaudible sounds, due to either attenuation in the filter or lack of speaker response.

    I'm curious to know the answer to this question; someone on this thread proposed having a DSP-based radio compare the microphone's output with the participating radio stations- but that would be an incredibly small AND fast DSP- and those aren't exactly common.

  • Um, that really doesn't answer the question- how does the watch determine WHICH station you are listening to at any given moment? This is certainly either a feat of technology, or something incredibly obvious ;)

  • What about bedroom activity? (Score:3)

    by tommck ( 69750 ) on Sunday May 20, 2001 @06:48AM (#210529) Homepage
    So, If I'm putting the stones to some chick.. is this thing going to rate my performance too?
    "Well, she was really moaning loud there... but it sounded kinda fake... We'll give him a 5.5"

  • Read the article... it also measures body temp and will detect if you're wearing it while sleeping.

  • The watch registers what its wearer hears every minute of the day. Its inbuilt computer then identifies from which radio or television program the sound is coming. At week's end, the watch is collected by ACNielsen and its data put into a central computer.


    The sad part is that many people will buy this just because it sounds cool. Just like they buy Sony Memory sticks, WinCE palmtops ... and so on.



  • I don't get it. When it "registers" what its wearer is hearing, what is it doing?

    Is it catching an inaudible identifier in the radio signal and making a little electro-note of it? Is it recording samples of the sound around it for later human matching-with-a-big-ass-pie-chart-or-something? Would it know that right now I've got CNN on mute, though what it "hears" is a Frank Zappa record? Does it like porn? Is it Jesus? (Etc.)

    Anyone got a better link?

  • What is to prevent users of this thing to just take the watch off? Say they don't want people to know they watch the playboy channel every night from 9-12. Whats to stop them from just removing the watch and leaving it in another room? Or what happens if a person just doesn't wear the watch some days? Doesn't seem that much more accurate to me.


  • Presumably, if this device allows folks in the mothership to listen in your audio environment so they can try to figure out what station you're watching/listening to, they are also able to hear anything else that's going on too, like, say, um, your conversations?

    The next generation of the watch will include a voice option, allowing wearers to announce which newspapers or magazines they are reading while watching TV or listening to the radio.

    Then all we need is a decent speech-to-text algorithm, some storage space, and a search engine, and Real Life can be just like Usenet - everything you say, preserved for eternity, no matter how off-the-cuff or stupid it is.

    And just imagine how much the RIAA would salivate over this kind of access - analyze the sounds in your environment, consult your records to see whether your license to hear those sounds is up to date, and send you a bill - or a lawyer - if not.

    Can't wait. Sign me up.

    TomatoMan
  • Many people in radio and television don't really care about how accurate the ratings are any more. Most of the interest is not from the sales department, but from the talent (meaning DJs) who need to make sure they still matter in the world. Sure, it is easier to make a sale if you are pushing the number 1 station, but for the most part, stations manage to boil down the ratings books to the point that they can say they are #1 for some obsecure demographic (everyone who lives at 324 Main St thinks we're the best!).

    Ratings do play a part in setting the prices for national agencies' buys, but that isn't any sort of exact science.

  • is when a device similar to this is used by govt to do say a time-and-motion study for the government statistics department.

    In New Zealand we have the Statistics Act 1975 [knowledge-basket.co.nz] which places a legal requirement on any citizen to answer questions that the statistician requires. Whilst this law is here for a good reason, and the statistics can be used for good purpose, like anything there is the potential for abuse. Think of being legally required to wear a modified device such as this in 10 years time, and through GPS and emitters in buildings (since GPS doesn't work too well indoors) - 'This building is ANZ bank, 123 Main St, Christchurch, New Zealand' would be able to do a comprehensive time-and-motion study on citizens.

    Would that much detail be useful to politicians? Is there potential for the system to be abused? And naturally there would be big fines for screwing up data collection or destoying the collecting device.

    Just a few thoughts... RedIguana

  • Spending $1200 ("plus the costs of technology needed to gather data") to measure one listener's habits seems absurd. Of course, the radio stations' advertisers eat the cost, which are then passed on to consumers.

    Seems like measuring bandwidth from online broadcasts... counting the number of incoming phone calls/email requests, or even installing microphones that sit on the highway easedropping on open car windows would be cheaper. Are they trying to profile the person or the population?

  • yeah I can see my gf loving that

    "no dear you said" : cue watch

    actually her step dad once wired up the whole house with hidden tape recorders to spy on his family when he wasn't around. You can imagine how freaked they were when he presented the "evidence".
    .oO0Oo.
  • If it is missing, the mp3 may be identified

    and then what? When did it decome illegal to listen to the mp3 format?
    .oO0Oo.
  • Is that considered audience participation? ;)
  • You can hear everything I hear for a swatch.

    For a Seiko you can see everything I see, and for a Citizen I'll throw in touch, taste and smell.

  • There are folks who would like to live their whole lives in public, if they could.

    I think I'd go for this. Sure, all the things I regret doing would be public, but I'd have the advantage of no one ever calling me a liar when I'm not, at least with regard to things I say about the past.

    If all my friends agreed to do this too, I'd hesitate even less. I know I do stupid things, but you know what, so does everyone else.

  • All this will do is measure the listening habbits of people who will do what they are told in exchanges for some shiny bits which I guess is just the people that Nelson and clan care about.

    Of course Nielson is much more accurate than that in the long term, since it is a self-fufilling prophesy. Nielson says the show is the top rated, and everyone starts watching it (complaining about how stupid popular television is all the way).

  • Likewise,

    My watch broke earlier this year so I just started using my mobile instead.

    I've never felt so liberated! :P
  • Reality says, they're going to use it to track you whenever you have your cellphone on. No more need for that tedious police work, eh?
    Without the ESN/MIN, "they" can't track a specific person/phone. To get the ESN/MIN and permission to track someone takes a subpoena/court order. Once approval is given, technology different than what will be employed by 911 centers is used. If you're so paranoid about big brother there's a simple option: turn off the phone until you need to use it.
  • Well, the cost of the watch was listed as $1200. So I wouldn't place it out of reach...

    Rate me [picture-rate.com] on picture-rate.com
  • For the people on parole, house arrest, or on bail.

    Instead of one of those leg locators, that just reports location, you can also tell if the bad guy is planning to rub out the witness.

    If a person is on probation, they lose their privacy rights in exchange for the early release which eliminates the privacy problems.

  • Mini PDAs with GPS will be the norm one day, every geek gets tracked.
    That's basically what's going into 3G mobile phones. Lots of bandwidth, PDA-like capabilities in the phone and GPS built in.

    That is, if the mobile companies ever get it working and don't go bust in the process.
  • Reality says, they're going to use it to track you whenever you have your cellphone on. No more need for that tedious police work, eh?
    That's what p-commerce (positioning commerce) is all about.

    Basically it's about your phone/PDA being able to find, for example, the nearest restaurant to you and book a table for you.

    What it's likely to end up as is the shops nearest you spamming your phone.

    A link to a ZDnet article [zdnet.co.uk] about it. Just do a search on GPS and p-commerce to find lots more.
  • 3G phones with built in GPS-

    Go to the fcc site and read up on their e911 plan- it says they're going to use the GPS information to track you to send the EMT's out when you make a 911 call.

    Reality says, they're going to use it to track you whenever you have your cellphone on. No more need for that tedious police work, eh?

    Big Brother won't need to watch, he'll know where you are by your cell phone.

    A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
  • I'd like to agree that a subpoena/court order would be required, but I remain unconvinced that what you say is correct: a police officer was quoted in yesterday's local paper (Raleigh NC News and Observer) as indicating that it's the police' responsiblity to determine what is reasonable and what is not, and whether a technology is something that is legal for use as an investigative tool, up until a court ruling declares that it is. (He was speaking about thermal imaging.) The officer went on to say "I certainly hope that the Supereme Court rules that use of thermal imaging devices is not a search under the Fourth Amendment." If thermal imaging is okay because it's the heat that escapes the home that they're searching, not in the home, then it's an easy leap to getting anything off the airwaves they please.


    A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
  • I think the cartoon says it all.

    Actually, the initial proposed usage is "innocent enough" But it would be interesting to see what it shows.

    Obviously most users of the device would not say that they watch the pron channel, for example. Just a social thing. But this is Australia, where that sort of thing is popular despite the government getting all weirded out about it (such as with internet pron)

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • It's like some twisted tag and release system for people who have time to listen to the radio. How long before I have to fear a tranquilizer dart and the butt and I wake up with one of these things on?

    I wonder what they put those sqelching slapping sounds down as that occur as my heart rate elevates? Will they be listed as "personnal time"?

  • I bet it works something like this (Score:3)

    by scotay ( 195240 ) on Sunday May 20, 2001 @06:10AM (#210554)
    Arbitron has already tested their Personal People Meter in Philly [citypaper.net]. It included a motion detector to make sure you are wearing it and relied on signals embedded in the radio/tv broadcasts to determine what you were 'watching'. Sounds like Neilson's got similar technology in a watch.

  • There have been a couple of semi-ralted articles in the Sydney press in the past few days:

    Consumers with mobiles can't hide [smh.com.au]: about the new services that 3G will bring - mainly push SMS advertising, walk past a department store and get an ad & discount voucher for that store (or it's rival).

    Mobile network trap [smh.com.au]: about the IMEI database, called Find A Phone [findaphone.com.au], now in service in Australia and it's ability to identify stolen mobile phones - even after they have had a change of SIM-card.

    enjoy

  • I wonder where they will hide "The word MINI" -- it can't be hidden in the floorboards or in the grass if it's going to be worn by a person.

  • You forgot to mention: It's voluntary (Score:3)

    by ShaunC ( 203807 ) on Sunday May 20, 2001 @01:06PM (#210557)
    Although the article makes it fairly clear, the blurb here skips by it. These wristwatches aren't some government's new plan to keep tabs on naysayers, and as far as I can tell, they don't even record anything. They're given out by Nielsen to voluntary participants... Just like those crazy thingamajigs that hook up to your cable box, to see which channels you watch and how long you watch them. Nielsen doesn't record-and-store the porno videos you pop in late at night, the dongle just keeps track of which cable channels you're flipping to.

    Even still, I can't envision a whole lot of people who would be willing to wear these, at least not in the US. The article mentions over 22K Swiss folks wear the thing, seems a bit much. IIRC Nielsen doesn't pay you to participate in the cable ratings program; instead you're just supposed to be honored that they've chosen you. The article doesn't mention any compensation for sporting the "listening watch," so I doubt there's money involved.

    Supposedly "Its inbuilt computer then identifies from which radio or television program the sound is coming," but that's a longshot if you ask me. Some stations broadcast their call letters or station name embedded into their programming (if you have a fairly new car stereo, you've probably seen how it displays, say, "ROCK 103" instead of "102.7"). But unless all stations start doing this, I don't see how it's possible for the watch to automagically tie a sound to a station.

    Anyone have a photo of one of these puppies?

    Shaun
  • it's optional to be part of the ratings assessment. I was approached to be one of their lab rats, and was actually unable to participate (ya get free pay tv and stuff so your choices are valid) due to having a difficult roof to install through.

    For those who find this sort of tracking disturbing (and I do understand why) it's a choice, not by force.

    The traditional way of tracking though is filling out sheets, lots of people lie on them, forget to fill them in etc... so results are far less accurate...

    Like most of the rest of you, I'd like to know more about how the detecting happens.

  • Most of the interest is not from the sales department, but from the talent (meaning DJs) who need to make sure they still matter in the world.
    Well, then, the stations can save their money. Talent doesn't matter. With few exceptions, today's air talent is 99.44% scripted, and playing a 100% predetermined playlist. (exceptions would include some "morning crew" shows and the 4 stations not yet owned by Clear Channel)

    My unscientific survey of several bar buddies shows that 92% of the American public doesn't even know the noms de plume of the air talent they "listen" to, unless they're part of a "morning crew" format. Even then, they only know the name of the headliner personality. And all they remember from this morning's show are the penis jokes.

    In the U.S., commercial radio has become a hideous parody of what it once was.

  • This thing "registers what its wearer hears every minute of the day"? I definitely need to get one of these for my wife.

    The next time she tells me "but you told me to [insert something foolish here]", all I have to do is replay the tape.

  • I don't think that most people realize that today, everybody with a GSM phone can be tracked.
    So before you get all freaked out, you better turn off that GSM phone.
    Many(all?) phone companies keeps track of not just what calls you have made, but which antenna you have used to make those calls.
    Very often, these records are stored for many years and have proven usefull in catching criminals, claiming the where not a place where their phone was.
    The new turn on this where I live in Denmark is that now the police wants to be able to get complete records of who was in a area at a given time when a "major"(what ever that is) crime has been committed. This will also help getting statements and interviewing people in that area.

    Ok so is this a good thing only? Well You decide.

    Also on a off topic note, when you are on vacation with your phone, and your phone is out of coverage, people from home that tries to call you get a foreign voice telling you that your phone is unreacable. This is also used for criminals that want to empty your house. The phone is a dead giveaway, telling them that theres a really good chance that you will not be home for some time.

    --------
  • Get the watch, then put it next to a radio and set it to a static channel. Then proceed to go about your business.
    ----------
    "Remember, your friends will stab you in the back for the price of an Extra Value Meal."
  • Seems like this watch is "listening" for encoded sounds within regular programming. What the article does not say is how many broadcasters have signed up to carry these signals. (The signals are probably inaudible or at least too short to be noticed.)


    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    ~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
  • when I get mine is to watch a "time shifted" video tape of last nights news while jerking off!

    The odd measurments, along with not being able to match up the sound would be worth the price of admission!
  • Yah. Read the article before commmenting. It's a ratings gathering tool, loaned to the user if they choose to help ACNeilson.
    My question is, "will this actually improvethe accuracy of music ratings and perhaps allow artists to recieve the residuals they actually deserve?". There is a Vary good article [ram.org] about the music ratings system, used to determine royalties paid to artists based on the frequency of broadcast of their work on the radio. Will ASCAP and/or BMI adopt this sort of a strategy to do their information gathering? It would be vary promising for such an application. A quick summary of the article I mentioned:
    ASCAP tapes over 60,000 hours of radio airplay in order to identify the music played and on that basis, distributes a percentage of the license fees collected from radio stations and other performance venues, to the artists who's music appears most frequently in the sampled material, in the percentages associated with that performance frequency.
    It seems that the neilson system could be applied here to much more cost effectively and accurately measure music performance frequency, and doll out royalty fees more fairly.

    --CTH

    --
  • I hope they get paid well for wearing these.

    Err, they get a free watch. Personally, I haven't worn a watch for the last six months, as a total of three other devices which are always on me have intergrated clocks.

    As a marketing tool, I would be less than enthusiastic about these. However, bugging myself for personal use is a very seductive prospect. If I attended an interesting talk, I would already have a record of it. If I had a debate with someone who then changed their argument, I would have evidence of what had previously been said. To keep a journal, I could just mutter away and then run VR on the whole recording at the end of each day.

    --

  • This sounds like the perfect device for me to finally remember everything my wife tells me.

  • These things will generate data. Lot's of it. To handle lots of data, you need a database. To use a database, you need a computer. To use computers, you someone to make them work first.

    And that, my friends, it just another job opportunity ;)

  • Reminded of Brin's "Earth" (Score:4)

    by localroger ( 258128 ) on Sunday May 20, 2001 @04:17AM (#210569) Homepage
    David Brin constructed a future in his novel Earth wherein nearly everyone wore continuously-recording TV camera/VCR "glasses" all the time, and privacy was considered vaguely obscene. While I can see the usefulness of this device from the standpoint of the ratings biz, it's a bit surprising to see it casually accepted by end-user snoopees.

    I can see the events reconstructed by one of these watches...

    • 7:30 PM radio WRNO (car)
    • 8:15 PM disc jockey at Club Vinyl
    • 8:47 PM conversation with female acquaintance
    • 9:05 PM radio WRNO (car) and conversation
    • 10:15 PM Bolero from CD
    • 10:27 PM watch taken off
    Hmmmm, I wonder if it keeps listening after you take it off too...
  • While it bothers me that governments and corporations are increasingly able to watch our every move, I wonder if the larger threat is the day that we (private citizens) all start watching each other. X10 seems to be doing a pretty brisk business, judging by the number of ads out there, and even data gathered legitimately can be hijacked.

    Any thoughts on this?

  • While I can see the usefulness of this device from the standpoint of the ratings biz, it's a bit surprising to see it casually accepted by end-user snoopees.

    I'm not sure what's so unusual about it. Nielsen families have been letting the company snoop on their viewing/listening habits for years. This simply automates the task and eliminates the need for pesky diaries. It's totally voluntary.

    You've also got to remember that some people don't care that much for privacy. There are folks who would like to live their whole lives in public, if they could.

  • Mini PDAs with GPS will be the norm one day, every geek gets tracked.
  • You get tracked because the government knows that if you don't own either a PDA or a nice digital watch, you never leave your home.
  • What do I get for a Rolex?
  • The RIAA is going to use it to keep tabs on how many illegal mp3s we've been listening to. I can't get one, I'd go to jail. Nerds don't do well in prison.
  • The radio stations that really need this, the ones that need to come up with data to prove their marketshare to advertisers, won't be able to afford it. Also, why would a station that has money and is doing well in paper surveys want to buy this? What do they gain?
  • Well, if they planned on using this for mp3 detection they could record their songs with identifying data in the frequencies that mp3 blocks out, and when a data marker is intentionally left in the mp3 spectrum is detected, the watch searches for it's inaudible counterpart. If it is missing, the mp3 may be identified.

    I presume they are placing sound-data-tags in their radio content to collect the listner data, so the devices are already configured well enough for this task.
  • The RIAA is going to use it to keep tabs on how many illegal mp3s we've been listening to.

    And how exactly is RIAA going to do that on the basis of recorded tapes? Firstly they would have to recognise that you are hearing music in MP3-format (not an impossible task - sound waves get distorted when converted to MP3, but to register that, the bitrate of the recording in the watch would be very high). Secondly - how are they going to prove the MP3s were illegal?
  • Even worse, the radio stations that are most likely to be in public spaces will receive a huge boost. This could create a race to produce the most innocuous stuff imagineable so that it could be used in public spaces without offending too many people. Because of the money involved this would then lead to a race to put even more advertising around us. We've already filled all visible spaces now we just need to fill in the audible parts of our life.
  • From the article:
    ...they may write what they think will show them in a good light, they may forget they switched stations to catch the news, they may try to boost a favourite broadcaster when they haven't actually listened to them.

    People will know that they are being observed and can still do these same sorts of things. Seems like this will only give more accurate readings of bad observations.

    What happens if you wear this into the bathroom. Will the system think that people are listening to Howard Stern?

  • I had one... (Score:4)

    by emn-slashdot ( 322299 ) on Sunday May 20, 2001 @05:11AM (#210581)
    I had one until about a month ago. I was rather disturbed by the fact that several parts on the inside had microdot versions of the DMCA on it, and one chip said property of the NSA...

    but perhaps I'm just being paranoid.


    -EvilMonkeyNinja
    a.k.a. Joseph Nicholas Yarbrough
    Security Grunt by Day
    Programmer by Night
  • ...the watch measures the wearer's motion and body temperature

    That's cool. The ultimate geek love tool. You just give it as a gift to the girl of your dreams, and make statistics relating sounds heard with body temperature. You can develop all sorts of interesting strategies, from that.

  • ...could it have saved the Lone Gunmen? I'm looking forward to these being offered in the US, where wearing two watches in not trendy and people are paranoid enough. I'd lay down money it would fail, but if it succeeds, what then? The taste of a small number of people would heavily represent the rest of us. Isn't this what happens now? Come to think of it, this would have made a good LG episode.
  • Already worked on a PDA app that sends out GPS location based emails to a range ring around a bricks & mortar store. PDA's with the app get the email whenever they are in the mall and get too close to the store.

    dixbert
  • there's already watches with GPS...i think casio has one.

  • I don't get it. When it "registers" what its wearer is hearing, what is it doing?

    The radios signal contains a station ID, and I'd expect it to record this ID once a minute. So you would need about 10 K RAM to store data for a whole week. And if you talk or play a CD without a radio in the background, it just records a "no station" ID.

    The radio stations surely keep databases about their program, so when the watch records "switched channel to competitor at 17:23" they can look it up and find out that you hate Britney.

    Your typical day would be: get up, tune your radio to the most obscure underground station around, drop the watch in front of it, and do whatever you want for the day without the watch. Spoiling the stats for fun and profit.

    If somebody find a link to confirm this, I would like to have one of those devices!

  • The watch has a motion sensor and temperature detector, intended to see whether you are awake or asleep, and so it wouldn't register anything if you take it off, except that you had taken it off...

    Shouldn't be a real problem. Mount it on some moving toy, and put it in the oven or something ;-)

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