The Global Venture

In my previous post I discussed about a WiFi application I worked on before and how we can turn this model into something "more 2.0".

To put it short, that application could be defined as a WiFi location based multimedia tourist guide. Tourist in a certain area could get multimedia information according to their location but they could not create any content.

Imagine you could create location based content. Imagine you can leave a multimedia message on a specific place so that other people can read it when they pass by. Imagine you can add text, images, video and other widgets just like in any blog / mobblog / twitter. It would be like a multimedia post-it you can leave anywhere.

You could, for example:

• Label places that have been important in your life by leaving a note (this is the place where I had my first kiss, this is the place where I earn my first dollar, this is the company where I first worked
• Write a review about a restaurant and leave your review at the entrance of the restaurant
• Attaching tourist / cultural information to places resulting in a world-wide tourist guide
• Create a notice-board in your neighborhood, company, school

I would like to make some preliminary comments about some aspects I consider critical:

• Spam: there is a clear risk of spam. It is extremely necessary to enable a content policy and control mechanism. This control mechanism might make uses of expiration delays for content, approval and rejection procedures, voting procedures (like digg or meneame)
• Simplicity: this system should be above all focused on mobile users (Smartphone, blackberry). There will also be PC users but the focused should be on handhelds. As a result, the service should be extremely simple to use.
• Localization radio: when a message is associated to place it should be possible to specify how close the reader should approach that place to have access to the post-it. The larger the covered area the more strict should be the anti-spam policy.
• Post it ranking / searching / filtering: the system should be able to handle large volumes of messages. When a user is located in an area where there are hundreds of messages, it is necessary to help him / her get access to more relevant messages. This might be achieved by ranking, techniques, searching engines or filtering according to tags or user profile.
• Private versus public information: some posts may be addressed to everybody. Some other posts may be addressed to a restricted group of people and may require security mechanisms.

This idea is going to be the first one that we are going to explore and develop into detail in this blog.

During my previous work experience in France, I got to know an interesting application. 

The most comprehensive way to describe it is "a WiFi platform of general services". These services were based on different functional modules including:

• WiFi localization (which determines to which WiFi access point you are connected)
• Multicast communications
• Unicast communications
• Seamless mobility among WiFi access points
• And many other minor components

This said, a great number of services for PC and PDAs (at that time smart phone were rare in France) could be built on the top of this platform. Some of the services that were prototyped were:

• Video streaming services
• Location based notices boards (or post-it)
• Location based content on demand (like for example having a video, article or image from an element in the area you are)
• Multicast delivery services like broadcasting of stock exchange results, news, etc.

At the end of the R&D cycle, a location based tourist guide was built on the top of this Wifi platform. A beta trial with real users (under the name of Vezelay Interactive) was conducted in the very beautiful French city of Vezelay. 5 Wifi access points covered most of the downtown.

The following video is only in French (Sorry). It was on the regional news (France 3) in France in summer 2005

From my experience in WiFi applications like this one, I would say:

• WiFi is not designed for mobility. Moving from one WiFi cell to another takes too long.
• The infrastructure of this platform is expensive: 5 WiFi access points and 5 dedicated servers needed to be installed in the downtown. If you want to cover a much wider area, investment will be considerable.
• A business model could not be found for this application

Why do I tell you about this location based application?

Well, in fact this application was based on a 1.0 model rather than on a 2.0 model. How can we get a 2.0 model out of this?

• Change "Wifi" for "any available mobile network",
• change "Wifi localization" for "GPS",
• change "PDA" for "Smartphone" 
• and change "tourist guide" for "location based blog, or location based post-it"

... and you will get closer to an excellent web 2.0 business idea. 

My next post will be about this idea