Writing Messages In Empty Space With GPS

meiocyte writes: "This New Scientist story about leaving messages in empty space seems very cool. You upload a message (or perhaps a picture, audio clip, etc.), it gets tagged with your GPS coordinates, and then anyone else who goes there gets to see/hear it. Every GPS-resolvable parcel of empty space will have its own web site!" Combine this with user-forums, and restaurant ratings could take on a whole new dimension. Update: 01/20 23:28 GMT by T : Oops -- looks like I duped Michael. Sorry.

Comments

I don't like it...

[JanneM]

Great - we can get spammed on GPS as well... Just imagine someone like a soda manufacturer buying a stretch of highway for a month, for example. If you use GPS navigation in your car, you'll get incessant harping about how thirsty you are, and how that particular brand of soda apparently makes your life better in one way or another.

/Janne

Re:I don't like it...

[H310iSe]

Why be so negative, I've been waiting for this since I first heard the idea (it was somehow related to Douglas Adam's website, I think he was talking about actually making a hitchhiker's guide to the earth w/ this type of technology)

The solution to your objection is simple, you create competing services - a BLOG-style service will leave personal notes ("I was looking up right here when I notice the tree limb above me was 1/2 sawed through. you might want to hurry along"), adverts (I really do want to know where the nearest beer is sometimes), etc. You'd 'subscribe' to the sites that interest you.

I can't WAIT to write impressions, all the weird things I see when I walk through my day and read what other people are thinking about/seeing standing wherever I am. Architecture and history tutorials / commentary (think if the guy from the movie "cruising" got one of these, I'd *subscribe* to his channel!). And truely helpful tourist tips, imagine Lonely Planet's offerings?!?

Come on, this is Amazing Technology We Want, don't dismiss it as another method for delivering advirtisements.

This will never happen

[JoeShmoe]

You think the web is already litigious? Wait until you see companies claiming they "own" the rights to certain property.

Like Disneyowning all comment space in/around/driving to Disneyland and using that to squelch any warnings about, say, a child getting his foot caught in a ride.

And food-lovers could post messages outside a restaurant door, giving subsequent visitors an instant endorsement-or a warning to take their custom elsewhere.

Does anyone really think this has a chance? Or isn't it more likely the restaurant owner will sue anyone who posts disparaging messages for libel and slander while at the same time posting 1000 comments extolling the virtues of the food.

The FBI will scream bloody murder about terrorists arranging targets or drug dealers arranding drop off points.

As useful as this idea is, I can't see any possiblility of it existing in the US of A. After all, the Internet is non-coporial and there are still giant bitch-slap fights over companies thinking that some completely unrelated (but similarly named) website in on their turf, when the Internet is actually linked with turf it'll open up Pandora's legal retainer.

- JoeShmoe

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Re:This will never happen

[markov_chain]

The reason I don't buy your argument is that this is a very decentralized idea. For example, why couldn't Slashdot include lat/long metadata along its users' comments, and let you show discussions in a certain region? I think the likelihood of getting legal trouble is as great as with the curent, possibly incriminating anonymous posts.

A greater problem with this is that it's very hard to prevent posters from spoofing their geographic location. Thus, any fool with an Internet connection could appear to be posting from the local Starbucks, which would dillute the value of the comments similar to spam in usenet newsgroups. I wonder if some sort of moderation would be useful :)

Re:This will never happen

[lcorc79]

As for the cop, I agree, but I'd bet that those states which currently ban radar detectors would probably also want to go after this.

I'd highly doubt this. Radar detectors have no 'excuse' or legitimate use -- they are purely designed to detect the law enforcement's radar guns. What this article is talking about obviously has a million potential uses -- legislating anything to prevent people from reporting speedtraps would be extremely difficult / unpopular. They can't ban headlights simply because we can flash them to alert other drivers of a speedtrap, and they can't ban the entire internet because someone could put up a site listing common speedtrap locations. The closest they'd ever come is *possibly* a law about the USAGE of the devices to warn of speedtraps, but again, I doubt it.

No problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure that you'd be able to surf any point in this geospace from anywhere for most purposes. Exceptions might be "geocache" treasure hunts where the promoters actually want you to do real travel.

Re:pirates!

[Transient0]

That would be really cool, if the technology worked that way. Unfortunately, that would suggest that some way to actually turn empty space into a computer storage mechanism had been discovered(aside from placing a hard drive in the previously empty space). What's actually going to happen is that any "spacial data" which you store will be uploaded to a GPS-Server. Then, anyone accessing the server with the same position codes would access the same information. The information on that server however, would be readable from anywhere by anyone with a powerful enough legal document.

This could theoretically serve huge practical purposes but, like every other new media, it will quickly be co-opted for advertising nd porn. Like the internet, there will still be valuable stuff there, but you'll have to learn to ignore whatever new equivalent of banner ads and pop-ups.

Re:Here's hoping they make a nice API for this!

[protonman]

If you'd use ints we'd all be very lucky.

That would be one post every quite a lot kilometers... Some karma whore -> do the math.

GPS grafitti!

[ergo98]

People aren't "writing messages" into the GPS system (I'm still astounded at how many people totally misunderstand GPS. Almost everyone who sees my GPS asks me what the `subscription' to it costs, or if I'm concerned that they're "tracking" me: People don't understand that GPS, as a base technology, is completely passive and is just the triangulation [What is it called when it's among 12 points?] of a ping from 12 points). Basically you could do something like this by making a website that took longitude/latitude, and you find the closest record to their point and send it as the response: It's neither brilliant, nor amazing, but it is an obvious merging of technologies, and it's localizing the net (which is a fantastic thing not only for the user experience, but also truly for advertising).

What planet are you on?

[Performer Guy]

That should be:

for(lat = -90; lat 90; lat++) {

I'll excuse the longitude, although I'd suggest -180 to 180.

Re:Accuracy of GPS

[Tazzy531]

Who said that any one spot could only contain one message? It could contain multiple messages. In other words, these circles could overlap.