Clever location-based navigation guide in Japan, for the rainy day

Its raining cats and dogs right now here in Hong Kong, a classic tropical downpour. And as I take pity on my shoes as I'm about to head out to a meeting soon, I just received a message from our friend Christopher Billich with Infinita in Japan. He tells of Navitime, a location-based mapping and navigation service for mobile phones that has been operational for years in Japan. It has all the normal location-based stuff, maps, where am I, how to get where I need to go, real-time info and updates, etc. Blah-blah-blah, regular readers of our blog know that I totally do not believe in mass market LBS services.

But Navitime has a cool feature they launched in May of 2007, and yes, this kind of niche application could well be successful. It is the "as many roofs as possible" route. On a rainy day like today - even with an umbrella, I'd prefer to take a route, that keeps me indoors, underground, overground, and under awnings and overhanging roofs, to avoid the rain. Navitime has this feature! You can ask it to program the route for you, that gives you maximum roofs and cover from the rain (or sun etc). Clever.. Oh, and if you hate walking up stairs, you can also have it program the route with least steps, ie using escallators, lifts/elevators, and other ways to avoid walking up stairs (and I'd guess you could also ask for maximum stairs, if you want to do a bit of a workout while walking in town..)  This is what Alan Moore says we need for new services to be life enabling, life simplifying, and navigational. Christopher writes about it at the Infinita site. Great service idea.

Comments

[Alan Moore]

Now I can see that working!

Alan

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Alan

Yeah.. And if you actually start to use it, then yes, why not variants. Get me the route that gives maximum time inside airconditioned spaces - if we're doing a tourist tour of Hong Kong for example, and its always hot and humid here, so I know where I want to go, what places I want to show, and part of the time it makes sense to walk outside, but give me the route with the chances to step inside department stores and shopping malls to get air conditioned, between stages walking out in the open and heat..

The same idea we also have in things like pub-finders, where are the pubs with Guinness beer for example, so want to do an evening bar-hopping tour, but want to be sure you always have access to your fave beer, etc.

I can see lots of these kinds of variants. But then, you have to become familiar with the mapping and guiding feature on your phone (some people can't read maps, others refuse to read maps, ha-ha) and of course remember to use it when this "need" arises..

But yes, I agree, this is evolving and they are trying real hard in Japan to make something out of mostly nothing, in this LBS space. I'll do a blog about LBS, in particular as the new iPhone 3G is GPS enabled. to help some developers perhaps save some cash and not waste it on the pipe-dreams..

Tomi :-)