The mobile phone as your tour guide

Today, most people wandering streets in search of something ask someone passing by. If you have a particular store in mind and your mobile phone is Web data-enabled, you can use the Internet and an online map. But if you do not know exactly what you want, there is no real guide.

A mobile phone application that offers information useful to someone roaming an unfamiliar city--such as event and establishment listings based on the user's current location--has been developed by the Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC--the Xerox subsidiary that was the birthplace of the computer mouse, the graphical user interface and Ethernet--has developed a mobile application that offers up information that would be useful to a wanderer--things like shops, restaurants and event listings based on your location (via the GPS device in the phone) and the time of day, as well as your preferences and past behavior.

The software, code-named Magitti, "predicts the likely activity,". The more a user interacts with the application the more familiar it becomes with the user's personal preferences, which is reflected in its suggestions. The interface is easy to understand, with large touch-screen "buttons" that you stroke with your thumb to navigate. The experience is similar to that of the Apple iPhone. Another difference is that you can use one hand to operate this system, something many people say you can not do with the iPhone.

The leisure city guide system will be commercialized by Dai Nippon Printing (DNP) in Japan, with trials scheduled to start in the spring and general availability in that country in spring 2009.