Tech Watch: The Geek Beacon spawns third party apps market!
By Tom Foremski - October 1, 2004
The Geek Beacon, the use of a Treo or cell phone with a bright screen to hail taxis, is really taking off. And I’m already hearing about plans for third party applications around the Geek Beacon concept (I’m not kidding...)
I spoke with a software developer on Thursday who wants to produce what could be a killer application, one that would take the Geek Beacon concept a whole stage further! I’m under NDA but, I promise that you, my loyal readers, will be the first to hear all the details when it is ready.
By Tom Foremski - October 1, 2004 | Permalink | Comment
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Comments (2)
How about a gizmo for your phone that flashes letters the size of the screen to spell words like TAXI or HERE or something when you wave your phone in the air? So when you want to hail a taxi, the driver can read it! There were those clocks in the 80s which looked like a long thin vertical stick with a few LEDs at the top, which when you hit it would swing from left to right spelling out the time with the flashing LEDs.
Posted: October 1, 2004 3:34 AM
You mean like this: http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2004/05/31/wave_messaging.html
I'm sure appropriately bright LED's could provide a coherent message for those taxi drivers that could read it from a few hundred meters away, but scale of the message rapidlybecomes an issue, and the LEDs can only spell something as tall as the phone, and as long as the sweep of your arm, dot-matrix style.
A singular bright light or panel seems to be far more effective, and you won't have to flap your arm back and forth.
Posted: October 5, 2004 2:40 PM