Mary Branscombe (marypcb) wrote,
Mary Branscombe
marypcb
  • Mood: geographical

So where are you *now*?

I've always been amused by a Wired article some years back that pointed out that the teens endlessly TXTing back and forth at each other around Helsinki where all just asking each other the endless teen question: so what are you doing *now*? I've got a theory that a lot of communication these days is shallow: hello, how are you, isn't it a nice day, isn't the sky a lovely colour and hasn't it got really noisy here lately. Online communication needn't be shallow, but lots of me too's and witty comments take less time than a real conversation. I have another theory that once you've been having shallow conversations with people for long enough you've lost all chance of really getting to know them because you can't sit down and have that first deep conversation without them wondering why you never took the time to do it two years ago.

But what I actually meant to say was, that I’ve now found three GSM location services that you can sign up with to find out where people are from their mobile phone: Fonetrack, mapAmobile and FollowUs. I seen the days of daft names didn't end with the dotcon boom but it's good to see some of those promised services actually appearing. All 4 mobile networks in the UK now have location information and the very first demo I saw, over in Barcelona, showed a phone in a van parked two streets from our house. It's a small world after all...
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