WeareData: Live-map of London shows public feeds from Twitter, Instagram and Flickr
Created by Ubisoft to publicise their upcoming title Watch Dogs, the map also includes publicly available data from public transport and council statistics
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Your support makes all the difference.Games developers Ubisoft have released a website inspired by their upcoming title Watch Dogs. Called ‘WeareData’, the site offers interactive maps of London, Berlin and Paris, showing geo-tagged updates from social media networks, as well as local information on average salaries, unemployment and crime rates.
All the data displayed in the maps is freely-accessible and includes updates from Twitter, Flickr and Instagram. The movement of underground trains is also shown in real time as well as different mobile networks, bike stations and other public transport.
The maps mimics the central mechanic of Watch Dogs, the Central Operating System (CTOS) – a system that players can hack into; switching off CCTV, altering traffic patterns, and snooping on nearby mobiles in order to achieve their aims.
“This is not a fiction anymore,” says Ubisoft, “Smart cities are real, it’s happening now. A huge amount of data is collected and managed every day in our modern cities, and those data are available for everybody.”
“Watch_Dogs WeareData is the first website to geather publicy available data about Paris, London and Berlin, in one location. Each of the three towns is recreated on a 3D map, allowing the user to discover the data that organizes and runs modern cities today, in real time.”
According to gaming site Digital Spy, the site itself has been created by combining a number of different platforms: “Socket.IO and node.js for real-time navigation data, OpenStreetMap for road, river and transport locations and Away3D for extruding buildings.”
As Ubisoft point out, every city now has its own ‘digital shadow’ and for those that like to keep their social media public, finding yourself on the map might come as a bit of a nasty surprise.
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