YANA: Visualising the re:publica Community
The data visualisation project YANA uses its real-time 3D rendering to create a picture of where users are visiting our website from. This is visualised on a 3D globe in the YANA mobile app (for iPhone and iPad); a desktop version is in the works and should be made available in the next days. The app displays a light beam every time a user visits our website www.re-publica.de. There’s also the option of watching a time-lapsed flashback and the indication of other users in one’s immediate vicinity.
The idea behind this project by the evrbit company is to generate a vibrant, pulsating data visualization which illustrates the flow of visitors and the congregation at the re:publica.
Anyone registered can also network with other people on-site and exchange contacts. It’s as easy as holding your smartphones next to each other. News for the community or personal contacts can be left at any location on the 3D globe. The app was realized with the help of the Unity game engine.
About the Issue of Data Protection
As the visualisation is generated via localisation, the YANA project is based on the disclosure of the website users’ IP addresses and the GPS data from the mobile application. A tracker is currently implemented on www.re-publica.de to enable this. This is why we would like to make clear: it goes without saying that the project completely anonymously saves the location of the users. To be more exact, evrbit takes the users’ IP addresses and converts them into a Geolocation. Only this Geolocation is transmitted to the evrbit system – without any further data (no IPs). This location stays active for five minutes and is then moved to the history.
If you would prefer for your IPs not to be disclosed over our website, you can install the Privacy Badger plugin from the EFF for the Firefox und Chrome browsers, to prevent this. If you are generally looking for more privacy online, then we recommend you use the free proxy app TOR.
Photo credit: Screenshot of Yana app at iTunes store