While we are used to digital guides, GPS devices, directing us along the shortest, most optimal and fastest routes, Yahoo researchers have recently expanded their perception of maps, so that they can now also take us along the "most beautiful", "calm" and "lively" routes. The technology is currently limited to walking, but it won't be long before other forms of transport will adopt it.
Sometimes it is travel more important than the goal, and we rarely realize this. But with a new algorithm for GPS a device that is the fruit of researchers from Barcelona Yahoo Labs, this can change. No new 'subalgorithm' is behind it, but people. Degree attractiveness of locations they obtained through a survey questionnaire. A pilot project were carried out in London, for which Yahoo's via Google's He looks at the streets chose the most striking points, uploaded them to Urbangems and asked people if they thought she was "beautiful", "peaceful" or "happy". The collected data were entered into an existing algorithm, the performance of which was then tested 30 people.
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The result of the resulting routes was somewhat surprising, as they were more 'fun' on average only by 12% longer from the shortest and more 'dry' versions. This means that the cool route will not take up as much time as the uncool one, and it will throw some 'spices' into the 'street minestrone' as a sign of 'thanks' and concretely improve its 'taste'. The results that were the basis for an additional three-stage classification London areas were 'swept' with metadata namely the reactions of 30-something people to 3.7 million of selected local photos on To Flicker. Among other things, this led the researchers to the realization that in the future they should eliminate survey determination and determine the best with help geo-tagged photos on Flicker, as they have already successfully done in the example Boston.
