That's pretty cool. I love the idea of scraping real-world information.
I did something similar using a GoPro and computer vision when I lived next to one of the 101 off-ramps in SF. I got it to work for most daylight hours (headlights screwed it up hardcore) before our landlord raised our rent by $1000/mo and we moved.
I figured it could have been a way to calculate ad impressions for billboards, but I also figured Clear Channel probably already knows those numbers.
I wouldn't be so sure that Clear Channel knows those numbers. You'd be surprised how little data big companies know. Do you have a github or blog post on your experiment?
Unfortunately I do not have experience in billboard advertising. However, I do have experience in massive companies (they suck) as a Software Engineer and I've realized how little they actually know about their own products and the data associated with it. You could probably contact Clear Channel trying to advertise with them and just ask for simple data like expected eye balls/views and population etc. If they have absolutely no idea then you have your answer that there might be a market for this. Your market might not even been the billboard company but rather someone trying to advertise. If I were to advertise I would want some data behind the advertising platform along with some way to track its effectiveness. I assume you are the same @bduerst?
Fascinating, so I wonder how hard it would be just to put a GPS bug on the trains. These things are magnetic, you can get them to send SMS messages to a number, throw it up on top of the train car when it stops at the station :-). Of course Caltrain could do this official like but I think that would be to efficient for them.
Heh, the author of this post's twitter says he works at Matasano, which appears to be downstairs from you. I guess working next to the tracks has that affect on people!
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We've been working on the solution to this issue since our office is overlooking the tracks. You can read more here: http://svds.com/post/listening-caltrain and here: http://svds.com/post/railroad-modeling-hadoop-scale-hadoop-s...
That's pretty cool. I love the idea of scraping real-world information.
I did something similar using a GoPro and computer vision when I lived next to one of the 101 off-ramps in SF. I got it to work for most daylight hours (headlights screwed it up hardcore) before our landlord raised our rent by $1000/mo and we moved.
I figured it could have been a way to calculate ad impressions for billboards, but I also figured Clear Channel probably already knows those numbers.
I wouldn't be so sure that Clear Channel knows those numbers. You'd be surprised how little data big companies know. Do you have a github or blog post on your experiment?
Sadly I don't, and it was a self-project I was doing to learn OCR (to scrape price tags in grocery stores) and thus I never backed it up on github.
Do you have industry experience with billboard advertising? I might rebuild it if there is an actual demand for it.
Unfortunately I do not have experience in billboard advertising. However, I do have experience in massive companies (they suck) as a Software Engineer and I've realized how little they actually know about their own products and the data associated with it. You could probably contact Clear Channel trying to advertise with them and just ask for simple data like expected eye balls/views and population etc. If they have absolutely no idea then you have your answer that there might be a market for this. Your market might not even been the billboard company but rather someone trying to advertise. If I were to advertise I would want some data behind the advertising platform along with some way to track its effectiveness. I assume you are the same @bduerst?
Fascinating, so I wonder how hard it would be just to put a GPS bug on the trains. These things are magnetic, you can get them to send SMS messages to a number, throw it up on top of the train car when it stops at the station :-). Of course Caltrain could do this official like but I think that would be to efficient for them.
Hide one inside the power outlets upstairs and you need not worry about batteries... Just gps reception and cell signals.
Even better :-) GPS is nominally a pain on metal roofed train cars but it probably is doable.
Heh, the author of this post's twitter says he works at Matasano, which appears to be downstairs from you. I guess working next to the tracks has that affect on people!