Location Based Gaming

[CharlyBr0wn]

Hello there!

 

A friend of mine, suggested me to write in this forum. I hope that tip was a good one.

 

I am atm engaged in a project about location based services at the Vienna University of BA (im a student myself), which has the actual goal to conduct a workshop where we bring together people that find themselves confronted with unsatisfying solutions in the mobile market and have ideas or innovated on their own already. Jut a simple example: I've met someone who would like to have google maps show him not only a route by car, but by car AND pedestrian navigation combined. So he wrote some code and is now trying to get it working. Or another guy told me he'd like to have his phone tell him, a restaurant that other people liked, who have been to the same restaurant as he was and liked it too – kind of people who are having the same taste, an application that assists people in decision-making. Another one told me, I want to see on my phone what mountain is in front of me, how high it is, etc. he wrote an application for android that does exactly that now – it's really amazing (ive seen it live on the google phone – it is called wikitude)! Or the guy that wants to know if his friends are nearby so he can easily meet them (friendfinder)…

 

There are numerous examples of people that want something improved in the mobile service sector, especially with location based information.

I am therefore interested in identifying such people, and bring them together to our workshop, which will offer co-operations, get to know like-minded people (from all over the world) and develop new cool ideas.

 

I hope I could attract some interest and maybe find some people through this group, and maybe if you aren't a person like I described above, maybe you do know someone that might be interesting for me.

 

We are espacially interessted in the innovation process itself for doing further research on our institute.

 

Please don't hesitate to contact me – Id be very thankful for every hint you could give me.

 

Yours,

 

Andi

[+Renegade Knight]

I'd love to have my GPS use 3G (with a reasonable fee) or WiFi (Free) to tell me what caches are near where I am, or near where I want to be, and let me avoid ever having to mess with other less elegant solutions again.

[+wavector]

I'd love to have my GPS use 3G (with a reasonable fee) or WiFi (Free) to tell me what caches are near where I am, or near where I want to be, and let me avoid ever having to mess with other less elegant solutions again.

 

Here here. I hate using/taking my Blackberry out on the trail.

 

My camera is about the same size as my GPS, they should be a single unit.

My Blackberry could fit in the same space as well, all three devices could all share the same screen.

 

A 3G Blackberry/Nikon/Oregon Coolpix Smartphone GPS, I'd buy that.

[+5 Caching Campers]

I'd love to have my GPS use 3G (with a reasonable fee) or WiFi (Free) to tell me what caches are near where I am, or near where I want to be, and let me avoid ever having to mess with other less elegant solutions again.

 

Here here. I hate using/taking my Blackberry out on the trail.

 

My camera is about the same size as my GPS, they should be a single unit.

My Blackberry could fit in the same space as well, all three devices could all share the same screen.

 

A 3G Blackberry/Nikon/Oregon Coolpix Smartphone GPS, I'd buy that.

 

My BlackBerry pearl (Sprint) has a GPS and a camera built in. Neither one is as good as the stand-alone unit. There's also an application I could subscribe to (Geocache Navigator) on my BlackBerry that, in theory at least, would tell me what caches were closest to my current location without me having to do any prior work (Right now I load up CacheBerry with a GPX file for the area I plan to cache in and have it tell me what's nearby... but it requires running a PQ before I head out for that area).

[+trainlove]

<choke>Magellan</choke> has a GPS in the Explorist line that has a camera built in, it can do paperless like the Garmin Oregon & Colorado or Delorme PN-40.

 

I think it has WiFi and/or BlueTooth, but am not sure.

 

But it's a Magellan so just don't get it.

Edited December 10, 2008 by trainlove

[+wavector]

My BlackBerry pearl (Sprint) has a GPS and a camera built in. Neither one is as good as the stand-alone unit.

 

I have an 8830 World Phone (Telus) with the GPS but it is a really really bad GPS, I have to stop and get out of my truck before it is able to acquire, it is so useless that I have never even dreamed about trying to geocache with it. My other phone is a Samsung Upstage and it has a pretty good camera but nowhere near as good as my standalone camera. All of these device are very small and if someone put them in one package I would buy it, even if it was a bit bulky.

What I don't want is a bad GPS, a bad camera and a bad Crackberry all in one thin/small package.

 

That said I often used my Blackberry on the trail, I would run Opera and log in to read clues or old logs. I have stopped doing that since I got a new Oregon but I still have to carry my phones and camera. Whoever puts the good stuff together in one bulky package will probably discover that a lot of people would carry a larger device (within reason) if it actually performed the various duties well. IMO Adding substandard devices is just a waste of my money. I recently tried to buy a DECT 6.0 phone without a digital answering machine, it appears that the companies making these phones live in countries where they have never heard of voice mail.

 

It would be nice to have Opera on my Oregon.