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