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"
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.
... 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
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
"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
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
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.
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"...
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!
This bring a whole new twist to graffiti. Virtual markings on buildings.