The point and click interface for the world is here

TC writes up the new Google Android phone as competing with the iPhone merely by adding a keyboard and a compass and concludes "that's it?...I'm afraid so".

Let's talk about what's wrong with that assessment for a moment. The Android comes with a compass. TC on the compass:

"...it’s got one built in (in addition to the accelerometer and the GPS), so that when you look at StreetView on Google Maps and swing the phone around it shows you a picture of what you are facing. Some developer is going to write a cool hiking app that taps into the compass, I’m sure."

What a compass adds to a mobile phone (with GPS, web access and accelerometer) is a point&click interface for everything in the world. A way of pointing your phone at a thing - any thing - and asking it "what's that?" Asking it, for example, not just "is that a restaurant and what's on the menu and are there any tables free right now?" to "is that house for sale and who's selling it for how much?"

A compass isn't "it" - it's everything that makes the mobile phone a seamless way of interacting with a world of digital information about everything around us. Point the G1 at things and ask it (ask Wikipedia, ask property websites, ask restaurant booking sites, ask maps) "what's that?" That's huge.

And that's before we even get onto what the GPS/compass/acceleromter combo means for mobile, locative, multi-player gaming. A post for another day.     

Comments

[Bobby McDonald]

I really like the idea of pointing your phone at something (a building for example) and asking your phone what it is. That alone would be an amazing feat of technology.

[max]

Wrong.
You need a rangefinder as well.

Man, I'll tell you, that would be the damn best thing!
Been chasing goats in the hills near Welly. Hit 4 from one face over the gully on the other one. That's no brainer. Now go find them there in the gorse when all you see is another damn clump of thorns pushing in your face.

If I had that Android with a GPS and a rangefinder I'd just point at where the beasties rolled to and walk over guided by G.Maps with Sat. view taking photos along the way for Panoramio.com
How's that for a change?

Hope their 2035 version will have a remote game retriever module for me just to sit ma old bones in the warm sun and watch how the smarty drags the meat out for me. I'll be just old enough for that kind of stuff :-)

[Seamus McCauley]

Hey Max
Good point, it does need a range finder. But those things realtors use for measuring room sizes might already do the job.

[max]

I was wrong. It doesn't need a rangefinder! :-)

In urban environment there are only 2 sides of the street. If you are standing at point A pointing in a direction B it always happens on a horizontal line that hits a wall somewhere. They are cool without a rangefinder, but I'll buy that Android thing as soon as they embed one :-)