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I'm growing increasingly convinced that the first iphone tracker desktop app reduced precision not so much to "protect privacy", but to cover up exactly how off

I'm growing increasingly convinced that the first iphone tracker desktop app reduced precision not so much to "protect privacy", but to cover up exactly how off the data was. I think selling it as though it were your location rather than tower location backs this up. Looking at it in Google Earth it seems to only be accurate when I was on I-95 in New Jersey. I figured the data would be kind of rough, but for a month of my data in NYC it is just off. Apparently I spent most of my time in Bed Stuy and no time in my apartment in Park Slope. It also got Charlottesville, VA confused with Las Vegas. If that actually happened, there must be some great party stories that I haven't been told about yet.

markolson 15y ago
Interestingly, that was my first thought too. I'm the guy who hacked together the javascript which passably reads the database file in-browser for this, and two things stood out to me as I was working: How much data there was, and how not-quite-that-accurate it was. I think the initial app's way of presenting the data has merit because it does hide the swarm of identical points, but it also does make it 'feel' more accurate when you look at it because 'Yes! I live in that circle.' There's sure to be a happy middle ground somewhere.