I have a new post up at MediaShift today on the innovations in sensors for mobile devices and what they might mean for the future of digital magazines. I thought “sensor publishing” was a particularly fascinating concept:
Users of sensor-equipped mobile devices could serve as passive authors of projects that gather, analyze and present data from these sensors. Esposito calls this “sensor publishing” to distinguish it from crowdsourcing because it doesn’t require participants’ active involvement.
Digital magazines and other media applications could collect sensor data — such as location, temperature, ambient light or other readings — and find ways to incorporate the data into stories, or to make them stories in themselves.
Check out the rest of the story at MediaShift.
Also, an observation: that’s my ”Health” apps folder from my iPhone in one of the screenshots with the story. It seemed oddly personal to use that, somehow. They’re just apps, after all. But evidently I’m not the only one who feels like the phone is such a personal object, given some of the discussion I’ve seen of how smartphones are perceived as quite intimate objects by many of their users. I guess that does include me after all.
An lovely picture by RTMoynihan on Flickr, taken at Euston Station in London, where I'm headed next week as part of my trip to the Mapping the Magazine conference in Cardiff.