Nokias To Report Traffic In California

Here’s a fun new project taking place in Berkeley, California. Students at the University of California at Berkeley will be participating in a project called the Mobile Century experiment to use cellphones to report current traffic conditions. About 100 students will be using Nokia N95s to drive a 10-mile stretch of the I-880 freeway between Fremont and Hayward, CA. Along the way, their GPS-enabled handsets will be reporting speed and location information to a base station wirelessly every 3 seconds. The information will be processed at the base station to determine traffic conditions along the freeway.

This is completely brilliant, using cellphones to report traffic. An interesting part of the report mentions that they’ll be using Nokia Next Generation Location Based Services Platform as part of this project. I wonder what else this platform is being tested for. In any case, if you’re a UC Berkeley student who’s hard up for cash and 21-years old, you can sign up and snag yourself US$250 and a free Bluetooth headset (for safe driving). A lucky 4 participants will get to keep their Nokia N95 handset, as well.