Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mid-Air Messages To Your Mobile

Posted by timothy on from the where-are-you dept.

wilfie writes "Mid-air messages are content for delivery to handheld devices which is relevant to the user's current location. A serious trial of a system for delivering mid-air messages is to be financed by the UK government in the City of Bristol, according to an article on the BBC website. The article refers to the Annotate Space project doing something similar in New York. The Bristol scheme looks like being a guide for tourists, but what other kinds of content would we welcome, and what would we not? Would we even be willing to pay for it?"

2 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Worldboard & IBM by joelparker · · Score: 4, Informative
    How about Worldboard and IBM research?

    "What if we could put information in places? What if we could associate relevant information with a place and perceive the information as if it were really there?"

    Cheers,
    Joel

  2. Discover article by madgeorge · · Score: 3, Informative

    There was an excellent article on this same topic in Discover recently. The possibilities are nice... leaving "personal notes" for your friends at a specific spot in the world. I think the best quote from the article was this one: "When you can stand where others have stood and learn how it affected them, and then share your own impressions in return, public space becomes more deeply public than it was before." It reminds me of a nice book on Native American religious tradition by Vine Deloria, Jr. The idea of bringing technology back to the "primitive" notion of public spaces is appealing to the hippie inside me.

    Also of note in the Discover article is a brief introduction to geo-caching. Unrelated, but sounds like fun. :)

    --madgeorge