Building a new location-aware infrastructure for calendaring and scheduling
1. Building a new location-aware infrastructure
for calendaring and scheduling
Peter Batty, Spatial Networking
GeoWeb 2009
Where and when
will you be close to
your friends?
whereyougonnabe.com!
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
7. Benefits
• Meet friends / business contacts more often
and more easily
• Make better use of time
• Save travel costs
• Environmental benefits
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
8. Key Challenges
• Modeling (fine grained) future space-time
• Obtaining data on future plans
• Notification & Visualization
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
10. Coarse grained future location
Where is “close” to
San Jose in Dopplr?
Novato
75 miles, 2+ hours in traffic
= “CLOSE”
“Proximity” is based
on closest “big” city
Los Gatos
10 miles, 15 minutes
= “NOT CLOSE”
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
11. Fine grained
future location
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
12. Overlapping activities!
Lunch (Bella Mia Drinks (Splash Bar
Restaurant)! & Grill)!
Time!
Repeating activities!
Work!
Time!
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
13. Maybe? Probably? Either ... or? Uncertainty and
alternatives
Linear activities
Road trips
Train journeys
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
14. Obtaining data on future plans
Direct input Calendar
Other location
systems
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
15. Obtaining data on future plans
Travel bookings Restaurant Invitations &
reservations Events
Tickets
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
16. Outlook add-in
Email whereyougonnabe
Calendar
Full automation
The implicit web
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
17. Multiple
data sources
Departing at Denver Airport
Jul 22, 9:06am to 11:06am
Flying Denver to Vancouver
Jul 22, 11:06am to 1:15pm
Arriving Vancouver Airport
Jul 22, 1:15pm to 2:15pm
Driving Vancouver to Whistler
Jul 22, 2:15pm to 4:30pm
Mountain biking vacation at Fairmont
Whistler
Jul 22 4:30pm to Jul 25 10:51am
Driving Whistler to Vancouver
Jul 25 10:51am to 1:06pm
Departing at Vancouver Airport
Jul 25 1:06pm to 3:06pm
Flying Vancouver to Denver
Jul 25 3:06pm to 6:55pm
Arriving at Denver Airport
Jul 25, 6:55pm to 7:55pm
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
19. Factors in
“interestingness”
Geographical
Distance apart
Temporal
Distance
Length of activity
from home
Distance Availability
from home Nature of activity
Adjacent activities
Distance between homes Personal
Preferences re this person
When did you last meet?
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
37. Hosting options
Running in the cloud
Physical hosting
Virtual hosting
Elastic hosting (Amazon)
Application hosting (Google App Engine)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/glennharper/36001149/
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
38. Running your company
in the cloud
Source control (cvsdude.com)
Documentation (various wikis)
Development management (e.g. rallydev.com)
Project management (e.g. basecamp)
Email, calendar etc (Google apps)
Finances (QuickBooks online, vcfo)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/glennharper/36001149/
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
39. Performance
Testing
210,245 users
(5 per zip code)
21MB data, 17MB index
33,579,939
friend relationships
(30-300 per user)
1286MB data, 631MB index
1,198,639 activities
(5-10 per user, 1 week period)
111MB data, 95MB index
Used free zip code data to generate database
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
40. Performance findings
• Very impressed with PostGIS
• 2D or 3D indexing? 2D for now
• Partition tables by time? No
• Segment geographically? No
• Specific SQL can have a big impact
• Mix of explicit storage and dynamic calculation
Confident we can scale to millions of users
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
46. Graphic on “freezing”
flickr.com/photos/jeremybarwick/3536348957/
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
47. We will bounce back!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/timusan/507493823/
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
48. Summary
• Continue to believe there is a big
opportunity in the future location space
• Location aware calendar
• People
• Events
• Looking at options going forward
Wednesday, July 29, 2009