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The Real Hitchhiker's Guide?
An anonymous reader writes "The UK's biggest selling newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, has a news story about a UK company that has developed the real version of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the galaxy. It is a kind of portable media player that allows you to travel the world's surface and receive media tailored to who you are, where you are and what you are looking at."
What, you mean wikipedia?
We have had GPS, PDAs and satellite phones for years, they just need to be tied together to make a 'guide'. More important is the *data* and no one company could possibly generate or manage the quantity required.
The closest things to the guide we will ever see have been around for a while already - h2g2, wikipedia and the internet as a whole.
Beep beep.
... can it collapse possibilities in alternate universes, destroying the world in every parallel universe simulatenously and preventing the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything from being discovered?
What do you mean, it's just a portable media player? Pish. I'm waiting for version 2.0.
...First off, I don't think the Telegraph is even the biggest selling conservative/rightwing paper in the UK (never mind the UK as a whole). I think someone's PR machine is trying to be resourceful.
Secondly, Mr Adams and the BBC had already started an earth version of h2g2 quite a while back.
How many times do I have to press refresh!!
Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon 6, is filing for bankruptcy after facing a tax audit for 25% of her last financial year's earnings.
Argh.
who you are, where you are and what you are looking at.
Sounds like a less annoying replacement for my social worker.
Does it say "Don't Panic" In Bright Friendly Letters on the back?
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. -Albert Einstein
I find this amusing, seeing as Douglas Adams had the idea for "The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy" as he was hitchiking through Europe - accompanied by a book called "The Hitchiker's Guide to Europe."
--Ender
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
If it only works here on Earth....It would be relatively easy to make. Whereever you go, it would just repeat, "Mostly harmless."
I'm sure that you could make a real HHGG substitute with a Palm LifeDrive (or indeed anything with a few gigabytes of storage, a screen, and input) and a dump of Wikipedia. It could even have a conduit to synchronise your offline changes with the master on the internet.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
Kinda cute, yet when you leave the Earth you'll be a little stuck as it uses GPS to work out where it is.
threadeds blog
You mean something like Alan Kay's Dynabook?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
1) Explore the galaxy
2) Get overwhelmed by it
3) Write a guide to it
4) Post a story to Slashdot publicising this amazing guide.
How can you publicise step 4, when you've yet to cover steps 1-3? Don't these people read Slashdot?
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Who you are, where you are and when you last had lunch with Zaphod Beeblebrox?
I've already got a h2g2: basically my palmpilot loaded with stuff coupled with my cellphone. Hell, actually my cellphone is more of a h2g2 all by itself, seeing as I do google searches on it.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
C'mon, the fictional guide didn't even provide detailed information throughout the milky way. Quote:
... and then they built the supercollider.
Haven't we had this story two weeks ago:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07
Or is today's story that the Daily Telegraph has run a story about this gadget?
cogito ergo sig...
And as soon as that company gets bought out by Clear Channel:
It is a kind of portable media player that allows you to travel the world's surface and receive advertisements tailored to who you are, where you are and what you are looking at.
1) Make wikipedia entries searcheable by proximity to global coordinates. The data is probably very quickly entered by the community and the search function does not sound difficult to me.
2) Owners of private wireless access points make them open for everyone ... but all unknown or unidentified users/MAC addresses will _only_ be able to access wikipedia. Nothing else, everything is redirected. This is naturally the more difficult point.
Has anybody experience with configurations like this? I am interested ...
Sure, we don't have a "Sub-etha-net" yet, but if the world ever gets to the point where some kind of wireless is possible no matter where you are, then this kind of device coupled with something like Wikipedia could easily lead to at least a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Earth".
It seems to me that, a good chunk of this for the part most could be done today given enough volunteers to fill in the data. If we ever get to the point where satellite recievers/transmitters will fit into a small enough device, then it will work pretty much anywhere (in the world) at any time.
Now, if I could just figure out how to pick up 15 years of back-pay for writing the words "Mostly Harmless". The first one took the most time, but the second one came to me over lunch. ;D
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
every bit of funtionality and more is present in that. And this is just begining. If it wasn't for the Hitchhiker's Guide ref, would we even be discussing this?
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
On screen, I see myself as a little red dot moving slowly over the grass. Depending on where I wander, an entirely different heritage or cultural story is presented through a combination of pictures, sound effects and narrative, all related to where I'm standing and what I'm looking at.
How, exactly, is this anything like the Hitchhiker's Guide? I mean, it's cool to have a device that will give you interesting information about whatever's near where you're standing now, as long as you're within a certain area. But that's not even close to what Douglas Adams described in his books, or even to what's in the movie.
Strange that this article should end up on Slashdot: it was a Slashdot inspired story in the first place. I pointed out the original Slashdot article about the device to my father (Nicholas Roe), knowing that as a travel journalist he would be interested. And here we are, a fortnight later, and it's on Slashdot itself. the strange circular world of online journalism.