They will know you by your shoes

In last Thursday’s IS 6100 class, I men­tioned that some grad­u­ate stu­dents at the Uni­ver­sity of Wash­ing­ton who had tested an exploit to track Nike+ devices. Wired men­tioned that exploit on Novem­ber 30. Nike+ devices are small bean sized sen­sors that can be placed inside or on a shoe. As the wearer walks or runs, the devices relay speed and dis­tance data to a wire­less sen­sor that the user snaps onto an Apple iPod Nano. The stu­dents set up a net­work of wire­less receivers that can track and record data from any Nike+ device within range.

The UW hack was easy to imple­ment because Nike+ devices trans­mit unen­crypted data. Sev­eral web sites have popped up to dis­cuss how users can hack the data recorded by their Nike+ device, includ­ing Runome­ter, a web mashup site that com­bines Nike+ and GPS data with Google maps. The site was men­tioned by Engad­get last month.

The Nike+ device is just an RFID device that uses a wire­less con­nec­tion to relay data from the shoe to an iPod. After the run, the user can upload the data to a slow, Flash-based Nike web site for fur­ther analy­sis. This site is a good exam­ple of how cus­tomers can extract more value from a prod­uct or service.

Kelli Kennedy of the AP reports that a com­pany will mar­ket GPS-equipped sneak­ers. Isaac Daniel devel­oped the shoes after his son was report­ing miss­ing for a few hours.

The Com­pass Global shoe has two but­tons — one to acti­vate the GPS trans­mit­ter in the sole, and one to can­cel. The can­cel but­ton is impor­tant, as the GPS device is meant for use in an emer­gency. One the acti­vate but­ton is pressed, the shoe will find its posi­tion using up to 4 GPS satel­lites, and then trans­mit the loca­tion and other data to a mon­i­tor­ing service. The bea­con will run about 6 hoursQuan­tum Satel­lite Tech­nol­ogy charges a US$20 monthly sub­scrip­tion fee for the track­ing service. 

Like any GPS device, the shoe requires a clear view of the sky in order to find the GPS satel­lites. The shoe can tell when a per­son has entered a build­ing or a tun­nel, but won’t know where that per­son is in that structure.

Men’s and women’s sizes are avail­able. The shoes look like ordi­nary US$350 shoes. A children’s line is com­ing this sum­mer, includ­ing non-GPS shoes that can com­mu­ni­cate with video game con­soles. There are mil­i­tary appli­ca­tions, of course, and the com­pany is already putting the devices in mil­i­tary boots for poten­tial sales to Ecuador and Colombia.

Tagged as: Apple, Google, GPS, hardware, iPod, map, mashup, mobile, Nike, RFID