SmartPhlow cellphone app tracks traffic

Microsoft's Adaptive Systems & Interaction (ASI) reseach group has cooked up a little app called SmartPhlow that tries to make masses of traffic data usable on a cellphone (see the bottom of page two of the link below). SmartPhlow currently gets data from the Washington State Department of Transportation and breaks it up into into more manageable chunks of information that can be viewed on a cellphone display. To make it usable, the app maps a 3-by-3 grid onto the traffic map, corresponding with your cellphone's keypad. Press 3 and you'll zoom in on that section; pressing 0 gives you a niftly flyover. It's not commercially available yet (no surprise there) but it has recently been licenced to Seattle-based tech start-up Inrix.

[Via Pasta and Vinegar]