Mobile Phones – Interpretation & Marketing

There has been talk for sometime of using mobile phones, Wi-Fi and GPS technology for interpretation and marketing. The new iPhone has a WhosHere function and it could be used for marketing or interpretation. You could send messages or call any mobile phone user passing by � but the technology is highly intrusive.

Mathew Honan has written a very disturbing piece in Wired Magazine I Am Here: One Man's Experiment with the Location-Aware Lifestyle

�The location-aware future�good, bad, and sleazy�is here. Thanks to the iPhone 3G and, to a lesser extent, Google's Android phone, millions of people are now walking around with a gizmo in their pocket that not only knows where they are but also plugs into the Internet to share that info, merge it with online databases, and find out what�and who�is in the immediate vicinity. That old saw about how someday you'll walk past a Starbucks and your phone will receive a digital coupon for half off on a Frappuccino? Yeah, that can happen now.
Simply put, location changes everything. This one input�our coordinates�has the potential to change all the outputs. Where we shop, who we talk to, what we read, what we search for, where we go�they all change once we merge location and the Web.�
Think more than twice about this technology � read his piece at
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/wireless/magazine/17-02/lp_guineapig