pPod combines text, spoken word audio, and music to deliver a guide to London’s public loos – truly a convenience for iPod users on the move! Entertaining audio reviews and even accompanying sound tracks such as Handel’s ‘Water Music’ and ‘Cosmic Winds’ will help users locate their nearest (and lovliest!) loos.
What more can I say.
Now iPod users don’t even need to disconnect to ask where the closest toilets are.
…another way to think about navigating the city.
July 30th, 2004
Who knew there were so many projects going on.
(Thanks to Eric for the list).
Location: Manhattan, New York, USA – 2004
Pac-Manhattan by Dennis Crowley, Frank Lantz (instructor) and others
Navigate the Streets, by Level 28 Brands
Location: Several Cities in Canada – 2004
I Like Frank in Adelaide, by Blast Theory
Location: Adelaide, Australia – 2004
Pirates!, by PLAY research studio, Interactive Institute
Location: HUC conference in Bristol, UK – August 2000
CitiTag, by HP Labs, the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute (KMi)
Location: Bristol, UK – 2004
Undercover, by YDreams
Location: Hong Kong / Portugal – since 2003
Uncle Roy All Around You, by Blast Theory
Location: London, UK – 2003
Can You See Me Now?, by Blast Theory
Location: Rotterdam, Netherlands, March – 2003
Mogi, Newt Games, by Amy Hung
Location: Tokyo, Japan – since 2003
Urban Challenge, by Verizon Wireless
Location: Several Cities in USA – since 2002
NodeRunner, by Yury Gitman, Carlos J. Gomez de Llarena
Location: NYC, USA – since 2002
The Go Game, by Wink Back, Inc.
Location: San Francisco, USA – since 2001
MobileHunt, by HIPnTASTY
Location: USA and Canada – since 2001
Cutlass – Treasure Hunt, by DCA Productions, Steve Bull (CEO)
Location: Times Square, NYC, USA – since 2001
GunSlingers, Mikoishi Studios
Location: Singapore – 2003
TreasureMachine, Unwiredfactory
BattleMachine / Zonemaster, by Unwiredfactory
Battlemachine
Zonemaster
BotFighters, by It’s Alive
Location: Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Russia – since 2000
Geocaching/GPS Stash Hunt, by Groundspeak
Outdoor Mixed-reality Games
NetAttack
Human Pacman
Demor
July 29th, 2004
The bus website (73urbanjourneys.com) will be down, off line, away for a few days as I change my service provider. All very boring and complicated. I should have it sorted by early next week and the address should be the same.
July 15th, 2004
Further thinking on the bus as a mobile technology is stimulated by my discovery of this innovative project about a bus that connects remote villages to the internet. In 2002 the Indian Government in collaboration with MIT Cambridge started to install wireless Internet transceivers on buses criss-crossing rural India. Built around Wi-Fi the project, called Postnet, is analogous to the postal system aiming to provide the internet to locals (when the bus in their area) at least a few times a day at a nominal cost.
I heard about it today in one of Genevieve’s Inside Asia presentations and I am keen to conduct more searches about other developments in the area like this and also First Mile Solutions who have devised a system in which computer strapped to the back of a motorcycle can connect a remote village to the internet, simply by riding slowly past the local school.
I’ll try to look for any evaluative papers written on them, given they have been running for a few years.
July 2nd, 2004
My task today is to find a mobile phone, a pay-as-you-go version. I have been here two weeks now without one and although I am never that far from email, I am missing the more immediate, spontaneous messaging that texting offers. I chose not to bring my UK mobile so as not to be bankrupt by September and now know I am looking for a prepaid cell rather than as pay-as-you-go mobile – which is a good start.
There are some deals online but very few talk about texting so I can’t compare price or predictive text capacity. Though it’s worth mentioning one that boasted about having two way texting – being able to send and recieve texts – a fact that entertained me for a while. Apparently there are mobiles that recieve but can’t send texts. I had to seek an American perspective on this but I still have questions. How do you create a dialogue in this way? How is it used, misused, reappropriated? Does the user (without texting capacity) return a message via flashing – ringing once or twice in a shared code – or simply call back? I know texting is not very popular over here but this half way service is very curious.
June 27th, 2004
I was recently sent this link for Urban Challenge (thanks Eric) which is a public transport ‘treasure hunt’ in the city using a camera phone – LG VX6000. It’s on from May to November in cities all over the U.S and there is $50,000 prize money up for grabs. Each team of two has to follow a series of clues, then race to the specified location and photograph themselves at each checkpoint. It’s a pretty simple idea with no other wireless location based application systems in place but I like the idea of participants having to race on foot or on public transport through the city.
June 21st, 2004