(keitai-l) Re: location based gaming

From: Ryan Shaw <ryanshaw_at_SIMS.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 04/07/04
Message-ID: <407379E9.8090205@sims.berkeley.edu>
Sam Joseph wrote:

> Just following up on myself after getting some help from the javahz list.
> The Docomo i-area service is conceivably being used in the train app, 
> although it seems this can't be accesssed directly from a 3rd party java 
> app, since it requires access to a docomo server which is not the one 
> that the appli was downloaded from.  Although I think official Docomo 
> developers can get permission to access other web servers - so it might 
> be possible to combine all these things in an official appli.
> 
> So it looks like it's easy to build imode sites that use iarea, but not 
> so easy with iappli ...

It is possible to read the current cell ID from Java? If so, it may be 
possible to build a collaborative tool for linking cell IDs to 
meaningful place names (like stations or neighborhoods) along the lines 
of what the folks at cellspotting[1] have done.

In my opinion, this sort of open effort to consolidate location data is 
the only way location-based services will become truly ubiquitous. As 
long as the service providers are hoarding the data they're going to 
make developers pay through the nose.

Ryan

[1] http://cellspotting.com/
Received on Wed Apr 7 06:49:14 2004