Future Visions
From the Voda phone r&D lab - including an emergency service which sounds an alarm or calls the authorities based on understanding of your emotional state
Posted Thursday, February 19, 2004 Permalink

On the Spot:
From tigers leap...Last night, I was walking through Piccadilly Circus after having been to the cinema. The night was cold (good build up here!), so a black cab was in order. I thought it best to keep walking in the general direction towards my flat, and called Zingo to order a black cab. Using GPRS, the service locates the nearest Zingo registered black cab and pinpoints your position. Within five minutes, a black cab is guaranteed to stop and pick you up. Nice! But, as I walked along, listening to the instructions of the recorded service, the call was interrupted by a service representative. She instructed me to stop walking along the road, as one does when hailing cabs, as they were having difficulty locating my precise position. So I did. But it spooked me a littlethey were tracking me!, even though I wanted them to...

A similar ability to track movements of people through mobile phones has been launched. Mapminder and 192.com both pinpoint and reveal the location of others using mobile phones. Via a street map on their web sites, subscribers, who pay £5 a month and a fee every time, can see where their consenting peers are, and even access information over the phone.

Oh big brother, where art though!!"
Posted Monday, February 16, 2004 Permalink

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