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By Neil Savage, contributing writer, June 14, 2010
(CNNMoney.com) -- Forget the so-called paper trail. Wherever you go these days, you're creating a path of digital data, thanks to GPS technology and an ever-expanding network of location-aware smartphones.
What if one company could mine that data alongside other publicly available statistics, pulling out patterns and predictions? How could the results help both consumers and advertisers? When it comes to answering those questions, investors are betting $9.4 million on Sense Networks, a 16-employee startup in New York City.
This spring, Sense Networks launched CabSense, a free smartphone application that's been downloaded by more than 11,000 users so far. In New York, where hailing a cab is a timeless -- and often frustrating -- art, CabSense offers a high-tech strategy for improving your chances of flagging one down. Using GPS and Google Maps, the software marks intersections near you with zero to five stars, indicating the likelihood that you'll find an unoccupied cab there.
"If you're in SoHo around 6 o'clock and trying to catch a taxi, you're much better off walking up Broadway a little bit north of Houston," explains Tony Jebara, the Columbia University computer science professor who cofounded Sense Networks.
How does Jebara know that? By crunching vast amounts of data. CabSense's ratings are based on predictive algorithms, which come from his company's analysis of more 90 million rides taken in some 3,000 taxis over the past year.
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