Time for a Beer?

i am fartacus writes: "Good news for thirsty beer lovers in a strange town, this will help you find the nearest pub... hmmm beer .... and help you stay on time. " The gist of this is that it's a watch with a GPS transmitter that can show you the distance and direction to the 4 nearest pubs. Ingenious!

Comments

An invention clearly ahead of its time

[pheph]

Ofcourse we'd need a watch with a GPS to track where the 4 nearest bathrooms are

Not ready for prime time.

[CarbonJackson]

In my opinion the watch needs two key features before it can be succesful.

1. The ability to track my house so I can find my way back home.

2. An ugly girl detector, so the previous feature doesn't allow me to make it home with the wrong girl.

Figure it out Mr. Scietists and sign me up!

Re:Not ready for prime time.

[Aceticon]

The ability to track my house so I can find my way back home

For a find home system i recommed a donkey or a mule. They can always take you home no mater how drunk you are. Sure, they're a bit out of fashion nowadays, and it's a bit hard to get them in Chrome-blue or Fire-red colors but:
- They're 100% environment friendly
- You can fuel them up by just leaving them in a grassy field for some hours
- They come in a wide variety of grey/brown shades
- You can fit two of them in a garage

Furthermore, they have a long proven track record at taking drunk people home

Just a nit picking thing

[ergo98]

It's a GPS receiver, not a transmitter. GPS works passively by listening to the timing differences of time-encoded signals from up to 12 satellites at once (there are 24, but generally the most you'll be able to "hear" at once are 12). Here's the dummies guide to it.

It is funny though how GPS is a basic technology, but every application of it is treated as some new discovery: i.e. I'm going to make a piece of software that has a database of all movie theatres, and when you have a GPS on your PDA it'll point you to the nearest theatre: Whoopee, I've developed a new theatre detector! Blah. As a sidenote: MapPoint 2002 is a very nice product. The breadth of information in it is astounding.

Exportation...

[mirko]

There are obviously countries in which this product won't be possibily exported : These are the countries which somehow forbid the consumption of alcohol or just its advertising.
For example, in France, you can't just advertise for Health-hazardous stuff, so you see, this is not only a matter of talibanism.
But if they added the possibility to just find whatever with this, I'd be interested, especially for

• gas stations (which'd seriously help people driving to their tank limits),
• garbage or ashtrays to incitate people to keep their environment clean
• hairdresser (if coupled with a camera and face-recognition software : "Mirror, am I the most beautiful ?")
• coffeee shops or brothels, for the Amsterdam tourists (don't mod if you've not been there)
• surprise option for the tourist (takes at random a monument, a museum or a pub)
• CowboyNeal... oups.. it is not a /. poll but it could actually help to be able to point towards other similarly featured devices to quickly find somebody lost in a crowd... But wait. I don't want this to become a new kind of digital id / (aka tracking / spying / bug)...
  So, let's just do it the old fashioned way : ask people, you may even make friends :-)

Some situations where it might be useful

[Ryu2]

For instance: If you're pubbing, and you've just heard that the Earth will be destroyed by aliens in 12 minutes to make way for a new space highway...

but it would make for killer....

[gladbach]

pub crawls.... just imagine.

"follow me guys, this thingy says the next pud is THAT way!!!" *walks headlong into a wall*

: D

Re:but it would make for killer....

[Marcus Brody]

Yes. A friend once dragged me out on a pub crawl after a trekky convention. I was the only one not dressed as a Klingon, StarFleet, Data (3 of them) or Vulcan.

Furthermore, one of them constantly had out his tricorder:

"High levels of antonioum-C indicate that a licensed establishment is somewhere in the vicinity. The phase-inducer indicates that there could be a "wine-bar" 200 yards south-east and a "public-bar" further to the north. Captain, what do you suggest?"

And that was before they got drunk.......

oh boy.

Vindigo already does this

[MrRagu]

If you have a handheld (Pocket PC, Palm, and certain internet enabled cell phones) and live in a major city, this has been available for months from a free app called Vindigo. Its even better in that it tells you directions to the nearest bars, restaurants, stores, and movies and it doesn't even need GPS as long as you know what block you're on. It also has reviews for everything -- which is extemely useful.

I don't want to sound like a marketing guy, but IMHO Vindigo is indispensible if you live near a place like NYC and often have trouble finding places.

Downsides: It is currently only offered in 18 cities and has ads but I bet that watch doesn't work all over the place either. The upsides are tremendous, though. Having a bar finder in a watch is all well and good, but if you already have a Palm you might as well get all the other useful info as well. You'll never have to wander around the Village looking for the Original Ray's Famous Pizza again.

Invasion of Privacy!

[Alsee]

GPS devices are pretty cool, but the last thing I want to be carrying arround is a GPS transmitter broadcasting my location! Maybe we can hack this thing so it's just a GPS receiver?

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Almost good enough

[r_j_prahad]

Nice idea, but personally I'm going to hold out on buying one of these until they've developed a nudie-bar add-on.