Monday, October 14, 2002

Petrol Stations...Again...and remote printing Already posted earlier about the cell masts hidden in petrol forecourt signs and I just had to follow-up with other thoughts on garages, as I seem to have them quite often. I mean, everyone uses them so they are places of potential interest to people on the move, so ideas are always popping in my head whenever I visit one (other than the idea to get rid of my v.thirsty Ford Exporer). First off, I just had to point out (and I wanted to write to garages about this) that those guards they put on pump handles to indicate out-of-action are pathetic and annoying. I mean, you have to pull up near the pump usually before you notice. In a crowded station (e.g. M4 during the rush) it can be a right pain to have to back up and find another pump. Chaos usually ensues. So why don't they put a simple traffic light system on each pump so you can see green lights for go and red lights for stop (out of action)? Seems simple. Any garage forecourt designers reading this (unlikely), please take note. One of my ideas a while back when working on a product to access Microsoft Exchange via SMS, was to enable forwarding of attachments to some kind of print vending machine in the garage. Simply forward the attachment to the garage network, get an SMS serial number back, pop to the nearest outlet (that would have been notified in the SMS using location sensing) and after inserting a credit-card and the serial number, get the print-out. That just set me thinking about remote printing and my earlier post about remote file storage via mobile phones with a USB cable. Another variation is to enable the handset to dump a file straight to a printer, ideally with Bluetooth, but also via a printer-cable adaptor straight from the phone port again. That may necessitate having a printer driver on the phone, but not necessarily. The printer-driver could be anywhere on the network and spew out its data stream back to the phone over a 3G pipe and transparently pushed by the phone onto the adaptor. That way, you could plug into any printer you like, wherever you happened to be. I know the idea of printing via fax needs also to be added to the thought process here. Obviously you could forward to a fax to get a print out, but that assumes you have the fax software on your PC or network and that just uglifies it for me. I mean what if you don't have a fax setup like that? I guess you could always forward the file to the remote storage area where your handset could access it via its packet data connection whilst simultaneously spewing it out in fax format to the nearest fax machine via its "switched" telephony connection. Most go make some coffee..... 10:36:27 AM     Going to the toilet Hear the one this week about IBM dropping their patent 6,329,919  "System and method for providing reservations for restroom [toilet] use"? Of course, sounded ridiculous at first, but turns out to be quite sensible when you read the patent that conveys the intent was to make it easy to visit the tiny toilet on the airplane without having to queue (hazardously) in the aisle. Deceptively simple (and silly as a patent) - the passenger with a tense feeling in their bladder simply presses the button to "reserve" the next toilet slot (hey - "bog slotting"). Seems like a good idea to me. It got me thinking about seats and remote control - via wireless of course (what else do you expect from me?). Maybe you could reserve toilets via SMS in a theatre and so forth. But more attractive is being able to order snacks via SMS from a cinema seat to avoid that huge tension that builds up whilst deciding whether desire for snacks warrants missing a part of the movie, or which part of the movie is sufficiently devoid of information that it can be missed for a snack-trip. Of course, you could have an interactive SMS menu designed using Xsonic DataNow (shameless plug). But what about WAP? [Yes - I know that's something we all ask in wireless, but I don't mean "whatever happened to WAP", as I say in my course - "WAP is back, not WAP is cr*p" (WAP2.0 that is).] An interactive snack-menu from the seat via WAP? Maybe. This is where you would need a context-sensitive menu that kicks in when you enter the cinema. Well, that would be easy if there was a pico cellsite in the complex to detect accurately your location and push out a WAP-push message, but given that they go out of their way to stop phone usage in cinemas, perhaps that's unlikely. Then again, maybe they haven't thought this through. Maybe they should promote phone usage in cinemas, especially during the trailers for new movies. How about being able to book tickets from the phone whilst watching the trailer? What about getting picture-messaging ads for the next films with a link for booking? What about getting discount coupons (free coke or whatever) sent to your phone? It would probably be even better to sync up things happening on the phone in real-time to each trailer allowing ample opportunities to get bookings, merchandise sales and so on. But this would require something more elaborate than what is currently on offer via GPRS devices. Getting the hook between the user and the movie screen could be done manually (without location-sensing etc.) if the user has already subscribed to the service (incentives could be used of course) and their viewing schedule is known by the backend system. Timebase synchronisation should be fairly straightforward (though not sure what cinema projection kit encompasses). [Note: I am pondering about the use of WiFi in this and again thinking that WiFi may be inevitable in future consumer devices irrespective of their wide area 3G capabilities.] [NNote: What about live film reviews from the audience?] [NNNote - reviews could be left as "Air graffiti" of course.] Well, too many ideas are buzzing through my head on this one, so I'll let you fill the gaps with your own imagination as I have to get on with drinking my tea (bonus cup from breakfast) and updating my course (something I was doing already for the next run, but I just thought to include this example). But this kind of interactive experience seems a possible way to capture interest in new generation wireless services. 9:56:21 AM

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