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."

Comments

More Spams

[Anonymous Coward]

First, unwanted calls from marketeers,
then unwanted sms'es,
then unwanted NOTES!
What's next?

Privacy??

[linsys]

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...)

I've seen this before

[Number_1_Bigg$]

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.

Location Linked Information

[ralphm]

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.

House Hunting

[Allanon01]

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.

Great just great

[thegoogler]

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?

MMRLRPG

[bramez]

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.

Didn't Douglas Adams propose this

[zarniwhoop]

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!!

Unfortunately as many posts point out - we have an infinite supply of stupid people ... so sad.

Solution in search of problem

[elgatozorbas]

Why is it that every time new technology emerges, initial ideas focus on musea ('virtual guide') and libraries ('virtual book'), when these places usually are short of cash, and their audience is mostly more interested in content, rather than technology?

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

Sounds Like Fun!

[Frightened_Turtle]

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!