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Mid-Air Messages To Your Mobile
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?"
I can see a system like this turning into location specific Spam.
Just imagine: you're walking down the street, when your handheld beeps to inform you that the local drug store is having a sale on panty liners (or condoms, or whatever). Now, if you're male, you might be a bit irked by this. Or what about the local porn shop having a sale on goatse.cx?
A system like that would make me get rid of any hand held I had, and I definately wouldn't pay for it.
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
h2g2.com anyone? Although I assume these "mid-air" messages and the research behind them are motivated by ad revenue (mid-air location specific spam, I shudder at the thought) I would like to think that the location specific messages will actually be helpful ala hitchhikers guide.
Here's to a new promising technology that will hopefully avoid the pitfalls of spam (ha!)
remembering Douglas Adams
I can see where this can be handy for advertising.
Because of TIA and other information hoarding
initiatives, the merchants know what you like
and don't like.
For example, I run an on line fetish wear business.
I contract with bars in the seedier areas of town
to host one of these transmitters on their premises.
I do the same with the adult theatres and porno
shops.
As you walk past, or into, these businesses,
and I know (via TIA or other info hoarding
schemes) that you like fetish clothing, I can
beam messages to your palmtop about sales of
certain items (that I can customize for you).
Since you are in the mood (being in the seedy
area) this might be just enough to tip you
over to making a purchase.
Mark
Cleara
A big issue to doing something like this, which was pointed out to me by some researchers in a company I interned for, pertained to the amount of information about you that is required for such a system to function but still maintain your privacy.
For example, a mid-air system that delivers messages to you while you're in a certain area can also figure out where you are at what time on what day, simply by aggregating this information in one place. The researchers that I talked to worked around this (they were using GPS) by making the exact co-ordinates fuzzy and increasing the resolution from a few meters to a few miles. Thus you can't exactly tell where a person was at a certain time.
However, in the article, the researchers are using bluetooth, which doesn't leave out much in the way of destroying location information. Which consequently means that the Government, or any company with enough money could come in, aggregate this information and track the devices that are mid-air message enabled. (and if we assume that people aren't going to be swapping cell phones every few minutes, then we can track the people themselves)
Of course, the main one is what the article mentioned...reviews of different things. You could be in an unfamiliar city, walking through trying to find a good restaurant. In front of one, you bring up the service, and it tells you different things people posted ("Don't get the clam chowder!!! It's death in a bowl!", "The fries are great!").
Another thing would be interesting sites or things to look for. For example, you're drinking in an old bar, you bring up the service and can view different messages like "This bar caught fire in 1938. See the charred board behind the bar on the right-hand side? They left that as a reminder." or you're at a scenic turn-off in the mountains you might get "If you look to the north-west, you might be able to see the skyline of [insert city]."
Of course there's the whole advertising thing, but depending on how it's setup, it could be a good thing. Walk into a store, get virtual coupons or something.
Something else that could be kinda fun would be a graffiti board of some type...probably have numerous problems, but c'est la vie.
--mh
Imagine this. You're driving down the highway when your palm pilot beeps to alert you of a major accident up ahead, and suggests you take exit 91 to bypass the traffic.
That would be cool. Especially if you are driving in unfamiliar territory and don't know the local radio stations.
i prefer this to a retina scan in "minority report" the bilboard senses your cell phone getting close and pulls up an appropriet add.
also, this may help eliminate men seeing feminine higene adds
I was at Bristol late last year at an undergrad open day and they had a system very like this - they might have something to do with it. The user had a jacket with a GPS system so things like directions to the nearest station could be done with no location input from the user. The had a cool extra though, a sensor in the arm allowed the system to see where a user pointed. With the location info this could be translated to a landmark et cetera, and informtion on that could be sent to the user. I say it was a "demo" but more description than hardware.
GSM already supports a system called Cell Broadcast. You select a channel on your phone and messages get sent to everyone in the same cell who are "tuned" in.
I worked on this in 1999, so you can assume that it was never a huge success. Most telco's couldn't figure out how to make money from it and so never bought it. There's not enough text space for adverts and people would quickly get sick of SPAM messages.
I realise that it's slightly different to what's being proposed here, but it does sound rather similar.