I need to start writing my business proposal for Google so I'll take my answering of Cow Bay as a quick rough draft for that effort. For everyone else, on one hand I hesitate to make such a long post, but it may prove useful to some of you...
It would appear Cow Bay hasn't travelled much or been to a museum lately. With that in mind, I'll start from the basic & current usage of location-aware audio and move from there. Audio guides are commonly used throughout major cities (& increasingly minor ones), museums, art galleries, state & national parks, historic landmarks, and on & on. All of these uses have occurred even though the content must be pre-loaded using old fixed-location technology (originally as tape & CD players). Even with these current limitations, these audio guides are used across a wide demographic from 7-8 years olds up to senior citizens in every industrialized nation. Some may say though: "but only nerds use this audio tour technology". The current use of Wikipedia would argue then that we are either a massive planet of nerds or else geeks are not the only ones seeking information. Wikipedia instead highlights the reality that useful, well-structured information is not something simply for intellectuals. Wikipedia is the 3rd most traffic'd website only after MySpace & Facebook. Even so...Wikipedia is limited to text and is not easily adapted to organizing & categorizing the large amounts of audio & video footage....let alone associating those files to the numerous & various locations where they would be most useful. But we've got to get beyond the limited information that can be captured by words. The information capacity of audio & video goes without saying, but I'll do it anyway since you asked: "if a pictures worth a thousand words, then what can a video be worth?" Now as Google and Wikipedia show, information is most useful when it is structured. And what better way to structure some information than by associating it with the very location upon which it is based. As stated in my leading paragraphs, even location-based information using decades old technology has proven its massive value. Now Pocket Journey will be delivering that same information & MUCH MORE to the device in your pocket. There's so much more to say, but let me stop here and quickly address Cow Bay's questions. Our business model is not based in terms of hours used as that valuation model has yet to be proven a sound business practice. E.g. Twitter, Friendster, Facebook, MySpace, ... have yet to make any $$$ for their investors. As for service contracts, we'll leave that money on the table for the cell phone providers. They'll need it as cell phone minutes become a commodity with slim margins. Our business model rests on the fact that information is valuable. I can't go into more detail than that. I will only instead recommend that anybody curious about our vision behind Pocket Journey or its projected widespread adoption & usage (and why we believe it was selected in the top 50) to read this book: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. www.amazon.com/Long-Tail-Future-Business-Selling/dp/1401302378/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1 Best of luck to all of you, Anthony --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Challenge" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-challenge?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
