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TagandScan labels real world objects
Innovative personal location-based service promises
to extend senses with a geographical layer of information
14 January 2004
An innovative location-based service has become
commercially available, which promises to extend people’s
senses with a new geographical layer of information. TagandScan
gives mobile users a ‘sixth sense’ of information
about their environment through their GPRS Java-enabled mobile
phones. The service is available on any of the UK’s major
mobile networks: Vodafone, Orange, O2 and T-Mobile.
Subscribers have access to public ‘grids’
of information visible to all TagandScan subscribers or an unlimited
number of private grids that only the individual can see. Public
grids enable users to see history, explanations, events, reviews
and opinions of anything located in the physical world, which
become available to users when they ‘scan’ for tags
by proximity and keyword, then displaying the results on a map.
To leave their own mark on the virtual world, users
‘tag’ a location with their mobile phone, creating
a digital record of the location, time, their thoughts and opinions,
and even a picture - effectively leaving ‘digital Post-Its’
or ‘digital graffiti’ in the world around you. TagandScan
users subsequently ‘scan’ to recall the information
left by themselves or others at the touch of a button.
Significant benefits of the service include:
- Improving spatial memory: Whilst many people can forget how
to get to a great bar, shop or restaurant that they have been
to, TagandScan users can tag it, forget it and know they will
always find it when they want. Users can build up a complete
picture of the places they love best in the world around them
- Community development: Users can tag locations, anything from
bars and shops through to national monuments, with a message,
time and even a picture which they can then leave behind for
the community - effectively creating the worlds first peer-to-peer
guide book
- Public expression: Whilst graffiti is illegal, ‘digital
graffiti’ is not - so users can freely express their opinions
about anything about the world around them. And when words are
not enough, because TagandScan public grids are a visual medium,
they can become virtual art galleries filled with images of
users’ art and expressions
Inventor of TagandScan Ryan Janssen commented: “I initially
created this because I was always finding interesting places around
my city, then never finding them again. I wanted some way of supplementing
my own spatial memory so I could interact a bit more intelligently
with my environment.”
TagandScan works over existing GPRS networks and users can register
for free at www.tagandscan.com.
Pre-purchased tags will sell at 25p each in £5 bundles or
20p in £20 bundles.
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