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The Real Hitchhiker's Guide?

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the glimpses-of-what's-to-come dept.

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."

16 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. Wifi wiki? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    What, you mean wikipedia?

    1. Re:Wifi wiki? by stoborrobots · · Score: 4, Funny
      Simply a handheld device (in the formfactor of the old Sharp Wizard PDAs) with a GPRS connection (remember, the real guide took a little while to DL over the subetha), linked to Wikipedia or that version of the guide on the BBC site (although, Wikipedia makes more sense)...

      Yeah, but could you do it with only two weeks and a $100 budget?
      --
      "Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
    2. Re:Wifi wiki? by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That'd be "the hitchiker's guide to things we consider important enough". The actual galaxy contains things such as hotels, bars, pubs, cafes, elementary schools, malls, shops, streets, and bus stops.

  2. The hardware is not important by Realistic_Dragon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:The hardware is not important by JahToasted · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, the most important thing is that is has the words "DON'T PANIC" written on the cover.

  3. Yes, but ... by ggvaidya · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... 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.

  4. Hmmm... by TheHarker · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...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!!
  5. And in related news... by HugePedlar · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  6. Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    who you are, where you are and what you are looking at.

    Sounds like a less annoying replacement for my social worker.

  7. Don't Panic by DigitalDwarf · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
  8. Here on earth by xenoxaos · · Score: 5, Funny

    If it only works here on Earth....It would be relatively easy to make. Whereever you go, it would just repeat, "Mostly harmless."

  9. Kinda cute ... by threaded · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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

  10. They got things the wrong way round by Spacejock · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
  11. Repeated story by ChunKing · · Score: 3, Informative



    Haven't we had this story two weeks ago:

    http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/ 18/1759259&tid=100&tid=193&tid=218

    Or is today's story that the Daily Telegraph has run a story about this gadget?

    --
    cogito ergo sig...
  12. Hitchhiker's Ad to the Galaxy by Dachannien · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  13. Making this possible by foo23 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I am asking myself the following: It would be really nice if this could be made possible by the following small changes in already existing technology:

    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 ...