Podcast: Play in new window | Download (13.5MB)
 Today’s Headlines Include… |
|
|
Prefer a Direct Download ? (mp3)
| Today’s Artist |
| REAL the Band: Lost in Emotion [4:35] |
| Comments |
Geo Location and Mobile Phones
by Andrew McCaskey
Slashdot Review Podcast
If you are looking for a cool site and disruptive application in the mobile phone space, you need look no further than GeoVector
For the past month or two, you may have heard of initiatives to put MEMS accelerometers in the coming versions of mobile handset, and then couple that to GPS information. Simply by sensing azimuth of the handset or azimuth and velocity, then combining it with geographic information, you have a powerful set of potential applications on top of the mobile phone platform.
That brings about a scenario where you ride the escalator up out of the metro,on the way to your next appointment. As you hit street level, you wave your mobile phone in the general direction of the first large office building. The screen tells you that your 9:15 appointment is in the building to the left, not the one you pointed at. Since it is 9:10 and is your phone is “schedule aware” of your 9:15 appointment, your mobile phone preloads your appointment phone number for the “running a few minutes late” courtesy call.
This is all expertly illustrated at a web site from a San Francisco and New Zealand based company “GeoVector”. Their “Point and Buy” adds geo information to ticket times for movies, SMS invites to friends, and a rotating arrow display on your mobile to lead you down the garden path. A second demo points to “Property Hound” that ties to the MLS database in a given city, “Trading Card Warriors” for coupons or a realtime version of Doom, played in Realspace.
The downside ? Well, it’s available in Japan. So why not Europe and the US ? The Director of New Media at Geo Vector, Peter Ellenby, blames it on the vertically integrated business model of the operators which prevents applications and services like Geo Vector from being made available on US devices.
More details at Telco 2.0 blog
There are opportunities abounding in the mobile phone arena – where there are 700 million units worldwide, replaced every two years or so.
In the podcasting space, you need look no further than our distribution partner, Melodeo Mobilcast for similar creative use of the mobile environment. Melodeo.com allows you to subscribe to podcasts, listen at your desk, then place the player on hold and resume where you left off from your mobile phone.
Combine that with the ScanR item from a few days ago, and the Mobile Edition of the Opera browser that’a available for download now, and you’ll be getting a glimpse of the technology of potential applications coming online in the next year or two. If some handset manufacturers are on the ball, they will loosen up the GPS-SMS link and allow you to send a quick geolocation message of your own – to your own application- and then tap into the creativity of hundreds or thousands of application developers. It’s going to be fun. And just like politics, some of the best information is local.
Save $10 on any order of $50 or more at GoDaddy.com!
Be sure to sign up for our upcoming roundtable. We will be using GoToMeeting. Also, be sure to check out GoToMeeting. Why? Because you can hold meetings right over the Net — from anywhere. Plus, you can hold all the meetings you want for one flat rate. To get your free 30-day trial , visit www.gotomeeting.com/techroundtable.
- Take 10% off any order at GoDaddy.com! Code SLASH
- Take $5 off any $30 order at GoDaddy.com! Code SLASH2
- .com Domains $6.95 at GoDaddy.com! Code SLASH3
- More blogs about SlashdotReview…
- Slashdot Review by Email – Sign up here:
