HERE Maps (née Nokia Maps) has been given a little special analytical treatment here, in the Living Cities experiment. Essentially, Nokia Maps/HERE Maps-connected smartphones were tracked (anonymously) in five world cities (London, Rome, Chicago, Helsinki and Mumbai) over a 24 hour period. The resulting interactive animations are fascinating to watch. My only question is why, given already connected devices across the world, this data couldn't be analysed for any town or city in any country?

Here's the set-up, explained graphically:

So essentially anybody using HERE Maps/Drive to navigate is invisibly also sending back data points to Nokia (only position is logged, nothing personal is kept, according to Nokia) and all it then takes is a little clever software and some graphical skills to come up with fancy animations like the one below. Here's London coming alive in the morning - it's a static screenshot, so you'll have to click through to the HTML5 animation on the Living Cities site to see the full thing:

You can zoom in by using the controls given or by clicking on an icon - see if you can spot roads and junctions that you know well!

Right, Nokia, now roll this out for data from your systems across the world, please.