SXSW live: Geocaching in web 2.0
Geocaching is like letterboxing, but with GPS. Clues take you tophyical location for treasures.
Mob zombies: a simple game that you use on your phone, where your physical location counts in the game space.
Using accelerometers and GPS, it facilitates wandering. Kids just start playing. Its all relative to the home server?
V1 is the new smaller standalone hardware that you add with Bluetooth to your phone. Simple games that use your location to interact with the game.
Relative positioning vs. absolute positioning. Game objects can be placed in real locations, put there by other people to be found by other gamers.
Solcialight. Geotagging for friends using virtual sticky notes. But were not going to talk about that. Were talking about conqwest.
Conquest is about using 2d codes on real world objects, ads etc. Kids really got into it, running around tuscon, taking pictures of these codes and getting SMS feedback.
Kids loved it. Their teams became highly organized.
Magic box in Japan was another big hit. Take a picture of yourself in a photobooth, stick your picture around town, and when people take a picture of your picture you get points to try and become a superstar.
Dodgeball.com. Packmanhattan. The first example of a big metropolitan geolocative game.
More area code work. Plundr. Search for wifi hotspots, that creates an island, each island contains "goods" that you can trade between physical locations. Also designed for other devices like Nintendo DS.
They want you to know: this stuff is tough to make, but phones are the future.
Crossroads: live othello. You have to flip over chips in physical location, in the game.
Nike+. They love this. Always gratifying when people on panels are excited about the same stuff you just wrote about. Graphing runs. Uploading runs. Why can’t runs have power-ups or points in them? Yes – why not?! Where’s that Nike+ SDK?
iPhone sdk doesn’t solve these problems.
As devices get smarter, this stuff will get easier to latch onto.
We take a poll by show of hands. I’m a member of the geocurious crowd.
What about this new iPhone sdk?
Waiting for next gen with gps. Wi-fi positioning is interesting.
More location based casual gaming? Yes– for games where you’re checking in on locations.
Its all about the game. Location really just enhances that experience. You’ve got to stay user centered. Fuzzy location will be big. Regions of action instead of specific physical marks.
Faking the games that mark locations without advanced technology– like taking pictures of codes where these systems already know the location of that code.
These games have to work as easily as a board game, where you can jump in and out.
Just create the platform at this point, and allow the users to create something from it.
You have to be patient for the critical mass to gain accessibility before the platform takes off.
You can also use checking points to change the parameters of the game itself. They’re all just events that functions can react to.
The illusive bounty is invisible spots that ping you when you walk by. Passive, immersive games that you don’t need to be actively participating in. There just isn’t enough consistent technology in phones to make it happen.
Lessons learned:
Social issues. Looking at your phone without looking up. Its dangerous. Creating vibrations for when its time to look at your phone.
Finding the balance between being absorbed in the virtual layer and the real physical layer.
Make it super simple and brain dead easy.
Be prepared to hand out devices. There’s a lot of inconsistency and troubleshooting.
Q: discovery channel — you talked about urban adventures, but what about larger scale, Global applications and data sources that are available.
Panel likes this idea, but haven’t really gotten there. Much more about sharing personal experience.
Q: UC Berkley — journalists. How can the field use geotagging in their story.
They all say that these companies want it, but haven’t adopted standards.
Georss where you add a tag that takes content and adds lat/long.
Another is everyblock.com
Q: johnnygoldstein.com — how much can be affected by regulation? Is it just tech. Lag?
Mostly technical standards. Some carriers are holding this back.
Q: sloppy guy who’s a cto– asking about geohash
Just different ways of mapping locations. Tagging web base mapping.
Q: wondering how city planners or resort owners would design good location action?
Sharon: RFID is probably the next big geolocating hit. Put these tags anywhere and respond to them. Inside, outside. Also cities can put more signals out there. Opening cell networks can help.
Interesting city areas to interact with.
Resources
Whereigo.com
lowkey.com
areacodeinc.com
wherecamp at Google
Related posts:
