Slashdot Mirror
Net Sticky Notes All Over London
An anonymous reader writeswith a link to a BBC story which mentions in passing the Urban Tapestries project for distributed, collaborative location-based note-taking, excerpting "In practice this means giving people a specially-equipped mobile phone that allows them to wander around central London and leave virtual notes for other people to read by writing them on the phone and then 'sticking' them to a building. It works because the position of each phone is constantly tracked so when a note is written the place can be noted - when someone else goes to the same place, they can read the note."
first virtual note you will see:
"call jenny for a good time: 555-0634"
just keeps getting worse...
"It works because the position of each phone is constantly tracked so when a note is written the place can be noted - when someone else goes to the same place, they can read the note." "Big Brother is watching"
Here, give us your exact location so we know where you are and what your doing at every moment of the day
It's FUN!!!!!
Also if you want to read the NY Times, get a passport, bank, shop, buy things or in fact breath, you will need to give someone complete access at all times to every facet of your live so that you may be served better. Remember it's not data rape if you consent.
May the Maths Be with you!
...scavenger hunts?
Nifty
Let me guess - viewing each note = text message, or at least bunch of GPRS data transfer. And if you think that's free...
1. Make location-based 'text note' service
2. Add stupid people (supply: near infinite)
3. PROFIT!!!!
imagine this:
-I urinated on that corner last night, use other side of street.
-Lonely? looking for sex? inquire within.
-Missing dog...50 pound reward.
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
This could make for some truly kick ass scavenger hunts.
First, unwanted calls from marketeers,
then unwanted sms'es,
then unwanted NOTES!
What's next?
Why do get the idea that this will be bathroom grafitti all over again?
A city could use this to their advtantage, by leaveing electrnoic notes near landmarks with information about the landmark... could boost tourism.
Isn't this similar to geocaching? Previous /. stories here, here and here.
The official Geocaching website.
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
- Don't go in - I had my phone stolen here
- Lost - One mobile...
- No WMD in here...
... is a cunt"
:-D I just need to get one of these, write a script to post 'dave is a cunt' every 30 seconds, and spend a day on my pushbike!
/. post without being automatically burnt to death? I may well find out!
Can now be written absolutely ANYWHERE in central london
I wonder how it will work on elevators! "floor 2: Dave is a cunt" "floor 3: Davis is still a cunt"
Can you say 'cunt' half a dozen times in a
However, the big problem lies in the possibilities for misuse, if accountability is not there. The liabilities that the tapestries information provides might be a privacy concern too, especially when it infringes someone else's privacy.
For this to work, one way is to have some kind of moderation and meta-moderation capability on the quality of the information pasted to the buildings. ;)
Hey, that's my password you are typing
Good idea, have moderators give 'karma' points to the users. So if its' an informative note, then they get +5, informative. If they are trolling the streets then.. well you get the rest. hehe :)
before someone sticks a note like "this resturant sucks", which initiates some slander suit of some sort - ugh.
Stop looking at your phone... you just stepped in dog shit.
flinging poop since 1969
Well I guess the whole idea of personal privacy will go out the window with this.. Posted on every house will be the phone number, SSN of the people living there, CC numbers and any other info someone who hates you wants to post!! Can;t wait for the day someone posts "WILL BE GONE FOR THE NEXT WEEK, LINDA (some poor guys sister), LEFT THE KEY IN THE FLOWER POT, PLEASE FEED THE DOGS" comes home and place has been robed a few times!! GREAT IDEA (for Cops, Murderers, Robbers, Rapests, Identity Theft.. etc...)
-=Linsys=-
http://www.intrusionsec.com
We had somethhing like this at my school, UC San Diego. We were given PDAs that were able to access the wireless network on campus. One of the applicatoins that came preloaded allowed us to post messages that everyone could read, or post private notes that people on a short list could read. It was really fun for about three days, and then school started and we stopped using it.
I think the tourist guides are soon going to go outa of business
Slashdot Article about HP and This Very Same Idea Posted in 2001. Although It is pretty cool that instead of being just an idea it is now in the wild. I think that this could could be very usefull and fun - it would be nice to be able to pull up reviews of a restraunt or its menu as you walk past it - or leave strange messages for someone to stumble upon. Although the thought of constantly being tracked is distasteful to some, so would constantly having messages pop up on your phone. You would think they could have it so the GPS coordinates would only be sent when you wanted to send or get location-based messages ... otherwise I don't see this catching on.
Owner not home from 8:30AM to 6:30PM, please rob.
Smash my windows!
I'm watching you, pervert!
There's plenty of scope for use and abuse of this. You could tag a person's house as belonging to a paedophile, or claim they are a rapist, all without any sort of screening. Not good.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
My first reaction to this was that it sounded really interesting because I couldn't think of an easy real-world analog. It's not like graffiti, because the notes aren't seen by everybody, you have to look for them. More like guestbooks. But not like guestbooks either, because you have to look for them too or you don't know they are there.
Its really more like Usenet, except you have to physically go to where each newsgroup is instead of them coming to you. And like Usenet, if this type of thing ever became truly public I bet it would be vandalized by spammers and idiots and rendered practically unusable.
Could be useful, like digital warchalking if you will. Just get one of those PDA's with a built-in phone, and go at it.
42
There is (was?) a project at KTH/SiCS in stockholm with a similar concept called GeoNotes. This link is unfortunately not working right now, here is a description of the concept.
Hmm, this looks a lot like the Location Linked Information work done at MIT by Matt Mankins. The Urban Tapestries site mentions that they eventually want a distributed server system for Urban Tapestries. Everybody could set up their own server. The Location Linked Information project already has this in its architecture. It is based on Jabber, and the server side component, as well as a lot of details (both technical and 'marketing') can be found on the site mentioned above.
The railway bridge that crosses the North Circular road in London between Crouch End and East Finchley will soon have the message "M. KAHN IS BENT" attached to it.
So now I can walk around and as well as being bombarded by ads, aggressive beggars (this is London, right), and suchlike traditional annoyances, I can ALSO read all the pathetic, repetitive thoughts of the erstwhile world capital's smug Nathan Barleys. I wonder how long before I get to the first "I am soooo stoned... hehehe" message. Probably about 20 seconds.
Luckily, it'll only take about 20 more seconds before the whole system is taken over by drug dealers and prostitutes!
Silver lining!
PS I am not a bitter, misanthropic loner. I just really think it'll be that annoying.
PPS Ok, I _am_ a bitter, misanthropic loner. You got me
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Unfortunately it got canned early on for several reasons, one was that locations were rather broad which meant that often the note made no sense as it covered a wide area and secondly because it was abused chronically.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Wonder what it would effect the resturants ...
You probably would find a note Nice food or Stay away from the curry on your resturant in coming times ...
if you walk in front of goverment building and you see the note saying that, "explosion" that would scare the hell out of everyone.
I think it's fairly easy to argue that the notes are published, and it's therefore libel rather than slander.
wtf? What keeps getting worse? Am I really missing something or are you complaining that a voluntary system for exchanging notes is an exchange of privacy?
s/exchange/invasion
/me wakes up
This is a simple idea, and a useful, community editable database of geographically linked information for London already exists in The Open Guide to London. And it's licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license which allows commercial usage. So all you'd need to do is implement some way of searching by OS co-ordinates (most nodes in the Guide have this information) which should be pretty trivial, and you're away.
Imagine giving tourists a cell phone with this system and specfic detail of an area in the database. You step close to some historic moment and you get a phone note with info about it. Meddle with the phone and place it back to the graffiti channel, and you'll get more info than you bargained for.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
This would be good for house hunting. See a for sale sign and instead of having to call the real-estate representative or talk to the owners, you can hear a note that gives more information about the house. Then only if you are still interested in the house you can make a call to the representative. This wouldl save you and the real-estate representatives time.
'If you can read this a pigeon is shitting on your head'
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
At first glance this looks like a great idea. I had visions of a sort of geographical wiki - a resource for users by users and with the potential to knit communities together with local information. East Enders is fiction - in London most of us barely even speak to our next door neighbours.
I imagined it could help with directions to the nearest tube stop, police station or whatever. Lost tourists would be shepherded to safety. Public-spirited Londoners would post interesting and informative nuggets of local culture.
Fun uses could include placing a string of notes by pubs to mark out a pub crawl or helping commuters hook up with that girl they see each day on the opposite platform and never get a chance to talk to.
Then I snapped out of it.
Without any sort of regulation or structure, this is just going to become a blizzard of virtual flyposting. We already see enough junk posters pasted up around the city. When you can do the equivalent digitally just by walking through a neighbourhood, when you know that the section of the population viewing that content will be a target market (young professionals, gadget-hungry kids) the opportunity to spam will just be way too hard to resist. Any worthwhile content will be buried amongst acres of worthless junk. At least with email you know that (apart from a relatively small number of spammers) most people with your address are people you would want to have your address. Even then, spam is still a huge problem.
When every kid with a mobile can post inane junk and every 'guerilla marketer' can post repeatedly about their latest product, the signal to noise ratio quickly drops to unusable levels. The only advantage is that you don't see it unless you look for it.
Very good idea, having a wiki page for every geographic location. Just yesterday night, my research team had this idea and we are now patenting it. The patent should be filed by the end of week.
Yours truly,
Bill Gates
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
"You Stand Before the Museum of Natural History... Before you is a magnificently architected building, containing many marvels of the world. In front of it is a clear fountain, around which students sit and chatter. Beneath your feet is a manhole.
A policeman (white aura) stands here, looking around in search of troublemakers.
Visible exits are north, west, east, (down)."
now my anoyying neighbor will put one in front of my house that says "plays loud music at 9pm" o and what about notes in another languages?
http://london.openguides.org
Yep, it's another wiki (though one with a shedload of metadata bolted on)
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
Massive Multiplayer Real Live Role playing Game!!
You could bring Leisure Suit Larry to the streets. Imagine walking around in London and getting "item" notes that can trigger access to "door" notes.
I seem to remember this idea was originated by Douglas Adams quite a while back - as a pretty cool addon to H2G2. Switch on your guide and tadaaa.. instant information about where you are!!
... so sad.
Unfortunately as many posts point out - we have an infinite supply of stupid people
Hello World!
>
Or otherwise, such as in this case, some form of 'communicative art' for people with apparently too much time on their hands. Who would like to leave messages to random strangers, no less? And how reliable will this info be? Is this what we want to invest in? Let alone privacy issues (apparently, a system tracks your whereabouts), legal issues (are you held responsible for the contents of your notes?), etc.
This being said, I admit it is a nice way to test pervasive communications, but imho, if we want to bring people closer together, and share a collective memory, maybe it would be better to do it in a non-electronic way...
Z
The new era of SPAM is awaits, be sure to enter it first! ^_^
This is just the same - you'd probably join just a few channels that interest you and that you trust (whatever that means). You could certainly imagine a hierarchical categorization like usenet groups, with some of those channels being moderated or closed to members only.
Yay! Do you see all the add possibilities I do?
errera hunamum ets
Imagine the view through my fantasy driving HUD. Some wanker dangerously overtakes me. Do I swear loudly and upset my kids? No, I simply tag him with a big glowing sticker saying "This guy drives like a c*nt"), perhaps adding to the few he already has. He can't get rid of them, they don't belong to him, they are just tracking the [RFID/GPS/?] transciever in his car. He might not care, but he'll find that next time he gets booked by the cops for speeding they are less lenient, or he's not allowed on the toll-road, or his insurance premiums go up.
Bring it on.
They've invented virtual graffiti; the possibilities are endless.
Imagine the digital scavenger hunts, finding the virtual phone number on the wall (no longer do I have to visit those nasty public restrooms and jot down numbers).
This could be fun!
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
...
by dogs (as in K9)...
walk around, leave "notes" for others to read and read their notes...we think they "mark" territory but nay - they are living "stickies"...
There aren't any CCTV cameras where I live. It would be nice if there were, then I could find who vandalised my car a while back.
This would really help on those nights me and my friend go war-driving... Instead of marking it on his GPS, we could just leave a sticky note to mark the location so others can get in on the fun too. I can see it now:
**begin phone convo**
Girl: Hi honey what are you doing?
Guy: Oh not much, I-
**guy gets post it saying WiFi in the area**
Guy: Uh honey, I'll call you back in a minute, I don't have very good reception here
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
"call jenny for a good time: 555-0634"
Isn't that 867-5309?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
When I was little, my brothers, some friends, and I would play a game we called, "Wild Goose Chase." One would hide a series of notes, each note giving a clue to find the next.
Some clues would be in a code the others had to crack, sometimes they would be pictures, maps, hints about landmarks, or riddles. Sometimes just straight-forward directions to the next note. It was just as much fun trying to come up with clues for the notes as it was to be the ones trying to follow the notes. It was like a non-stop treasure hunt.
We had a blast playing it! There was no prize at the end, no points -- though we occasionally took time into account. You had to think fast! There were a couple of times when one group would be looking for the notes while the hider was still actually hiding the notes. As competitive as we were, it's interesting to note that no one ever cheated playing this game.
At times, it could become a fairly sophisticated game -- especially considering we were all under 10 years old at the time.
I can easily see how these phones could be used to play this game all over again! Of course, at the end, rather than a note saying "You Win," it could be dinner and beer for everyone who reaches the end -- last one in buys!
Whew! This water sure is cold!
man, I should go home... this job is killing me
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
A neat novelty for about 5 seconds.
Who really cares about some dumb notes strangers left?! Who in their right might would go around reading them? Who will be walking around with their head down looking at their phone?? (Imagine all the unnecessary traffic deaths).
This is "neat", as in a cool little novelty idea, but in practice? This is "stupid".
AC had sex here :p
Im sure these notes would be private, as in you have to leave the phone number for the person that you want to read it. But then that would become redundant, why not just call them? or better yet text message them? damn consumer whores....
Perhaps some sort of distributed note rating system would be in order--locations with multiple notes posted on it would show the highest-rated notes first, perhaps with priority given also to high-rated posters. Trolls and spammers would be modded down out of visibility, and would also receive negative karma that would limit their future note posting. Sound kind of familiar?
Is this life imitating art again? Wasn't this the idea behind the chest in that old DnD cartoon.. where they placed it they would get a different message or portal to another world?
My smartphone (Treo 600) has E911, so it's got a GPS receiver inside. Sure, it's imprecise, but if it knows where it is, within 5 blocks, why not give me a tappable map of the surrounding area from which I can select a note I see hanging in the air? Then I can use GeoCaching and NetStickies in a simple GUI that I already carry.
--
make install -not war
Or we could filter in notes from (nth-degree) Friend of a Friend, as per our address books.
--
make install -not war
It will be interesting to see if the younger generation of people, who have grown up with decentralized, DIY global publishing, develop a more critical sense of "authority" and "authorship". Libel is in the mind of the credulous receiver, when outrageous claims are unsupported. Traditional broadcast media, including newspapers and pamphlets, cultivated an "official" status, ultimately even pretending to be "objective", a common misconception in the 20th Century. Once access to publishing is democratized with cheap and easy "presses", like mobile phones, people will have to judge the messages for themselves. Younger people, without the baggage of past media homogeneity, will have a chance to think for themselves like never before. Let's hope they make the most of it.
--
make install -not war
What would be the point of misusing something nobody's going to read?
i'll just stick to toothing. :)
It would make for pretty good scavenger hunting accessories - but what if someone accidently lands on a spot and recevies the message without working for it? Would that give away the prize?
Humans have such a good sense of humor!
This bring a whole new twist to graffiti. Virtual markings on buildings.
I think this has some great potential. Great potential for abuse too, of course. but there are ways around that.
I see all these people complaining about how it's going to be used for spam and trolling. You know what? People said the same thing about everything user-contributable on the 'net, but Slashdot, Wikipedia and even Usenet are still going strong. There are technological solutions to the problems that will arise; something as simple as a killfile could do the trick.
I'm discouraged that you folks are so quick to write it off, Slashdot of all places should be most open to new ideas.
The sticky note virus! Terrorists have been known to drive up next to important buildings and leaving a truckload of sticky notes. Do not open these notes, for they are most definitely eTerrorism hallmarks!
"Ignore that man in the bushes." or imagine getting a link to goat.cx on your phone...
Please flee in terror in an orderly manner.
M Khan is gay.
type "me" if you know what "yvan eht nioj" means and where it comes from. (just testing your geek-factor - i'm just a curious party) BTW nice Post laserbeak.