Microsoft Patents ‘Avoid Ghetto’ Feature For GPS Devices

[alp227]

Microsoft has been granted a patent for its “avoid ghetto” feature for GPS devices.

A GPS device is used to find shortcuts and avoid traffic, but Microsoft’s patent states that a route can be plotted for pedestrians to avoid an “unsafe neighborhood or being in an open area that is subject to harsh temperatures.”

Created for mobile phones, the technology uses the latest crime statistics and weather data and includes them when calculating a route.

http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2012/01/06/microsoft-patents-avoid-ghetto-feature-for-gps-devices/

[itsrobert]

1. Do you have an opinion?

Looks to be a popular app.

[hunter]

2. It could have an inverse function too...

... so users can find drugs and prostitutes.

Right?

[Gman]

3. Don't know that this is a bad thing

I've wandered into some areas that've made me nervous in cities including Memphis (after a Mike Tyson fight), LA, (not East) St. Louis, and Miami among others. I went bar hopping knowingly in East St. Louis once. That was certainly an experience.

[Jazzgirl]

7. Anything in East St. Louis is an experience.

I always avoided it like the plague and had family that lived there. I would never go visit. I did go to a couple of clubs a couple of times but always sat closed to the entrance.

[Speck Tater]

4. Around 1970 or so I got a flat tire, at night, in the wrong neighborhood in downtown L.A.

It was a very bad experience, especially when I discovered my spare was flat too.

Liberal dreams of lions lying down with lambs aside, in this world, as it really is, there are places you really don't want to go.

[ddeclue]

5. are you witnessing all this plight kids? (National Lampoon's Vacation)... n/t

[limpyhobbler]

6. Maybe somebody can patent a car with a facial profiling camera that will automatically lock its door

Maybe somebody can patent a car with a facial profiling camera that will automatically lock its doors if it sees a black man?



:just kidding:
:just kidding:

[TheWraith]

8. An inflammatory and hideously inaccurate title.

The reality is that there ARE unsafe neighborhoods, and most people would like to be able to avoid them if possible. It's a smart use of technology.

[ddeclue]

10. Yeah well I've lived in downtown Atlanta when it was the murder capital of America and..

crime is tremendously overhyped. This will stigmatize poor and non-white areas of cities without any real validity to it. It is Microsoft endorsed red-lining.

[dionysus]

9. i could have used that once when i got lost in a bad section of buffalo...