GPS can work stand-alone (Re: Advertising/hype)

[David Pottage]

On Tue, July 3, 2007 2:33 pm, Niels L. Ellegaard wrote:

> On a related note I think that Slashdot once had a story about a
> (bluetooth based??) Japanese dating gadget that worked in a similar
> fashion. They had to buy the gadget, encode their preferences, and
> then wait for the unexpected buzz of finding a perfect match. They
> must have used some kind of encoding to prevent abuse, but I am not
> sure how it worked.

Nokia have software to do that with their S60 smartphones. I don't think
it has a large enough user base to be useful. (even though there are ~100
million compatible phones out there).

http://europe.nokia.com/A4144923

> On an even less related note it could be fun to keep a log-file of the
> wifi phones that stay in your vicinity for more than an hour (ignoring
> public transport). Then your phone can tell you whether or not you
> have met a given person before. Perhaps you can use data from the log
> file to query friends for further information or a vcard. This idea
> might require a lot of storage and a way to filter out routers, but it
> could lead to some fun.

I think if you are going to do that, you would be better off doing it with
Bluetooth, as there are many more BT devices out there, and most people
leave BT switched on, as it does not drain the battery much.

-- 
David Pottage

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