Dial M For Multimedia New Cellphone Applications Arrange Blind Dates, Find
Restaurants, Check Movie Times, Exchange
Photos
August 19,
2004 By NATALIE HOPE
MCDONALD, Special to The Courant
When Kit
Halstead, a 34-year-old systems administrator in New York,
wants to hook up with friends, all she has to do is tag them.
Halstead uses Dodgeball, a text-message application she
downloaded to her Verizon phone to instantly connect with
other Dodgeball members.
"The idea that someone sitting
two seats away from me at a bar is getting a text message
telling them that I'm there appeals to my twisted sense of
humor," said Halstead. "Aside from that, I'm waiting for the
service to hit a sort of critical mass where it will become
more useful to me."
Halstead is one of a few thousand
phone users equipped with the latest wireless technology,
whether it's being used to reach friends, make a blind date or
find a restaurant.
According to Jason Devitt, CEO for
Vindigo Studios (www.vindigostudios.com), another company that
specializes in location finders and streaming news, "The
average American replaces their mobile phone every 18 months.
Most new models support the technology behind our products. As
a result, these applications are quickly becoming
commonplace."
Similar to Dodgeball (www.dodgeball.com),
Vindigo relies on a wireless connection to secure content on
phones.
"UPOC [www.upoc.com], powered by Vindigo, can
help you to meet new people with similar interests," Devitt
said. "We can help you to express yourself with cool wallpaper
from GuyStuff. And we can make it easy for you to find all the
services you need in your area, using Vindigo city guide or
Mapquest Mobile."
Coming not long after GPS navigation,
a satellite technology built into new cellphones and vehicles
to track coordinates on digital maps, Vindigo and Dodgeball
are starting to find favor among younger adults who are
familiar with the wireless technology and more open to
considering this alternative form of
communication.
"Unlike mini-browsers on phones, our
products use smart caching to speed delivery of information to
consumers and to minimize the numbers of calls to the server,"
said Devitt. "More importantly, we build our interfaces so the
information is easy to find."
Finding people and places
is at the heart of these applications. Dodgeball, available in
15 cities but not yet in Hartford, specifically uses lessons
learned from Friendster (www.friendster.com), the
meet-and-greet website that was launched to connect people by
six degrees of separation.
"A friend asked me to join
and I liked the idea of being able to notify large groups of
friends about my location without making lots of calls,"
Halstead said.
She acknowledged she's among the first
of her friends to use the application. Only about four others
have the sophisticated phones that meet system
requirements.
"At this point, I just use it to allow my
friends to track me over the course of an evening, letting
them know where I am in case they're bored and want to join
me," she said.
Adam Lee, 24, an electronic musician and
computer programmer in Chicago, is another Dodgeball
user.
"I do a lot of my coordinating with friends over
text messaging and I like gadgets, so I thought it would be a
cool combination of the two," he said. "On top of that, it's
nice to have it just to do something simple like look up an
address."
Lee has been using the application since
April, starting when he was living in New York. The
metropolitan areas where the program is available have
expanded nationwide.
"I mostly connect with people I
already know, but I've had a few people come up to me and say
that they got my message, because Dodgeball sends a message to
a friend of a friend if they're within 10 blocks of you," he
said. And while dating is also a built-in option to the
service, Lee hasn't tried it.
Devitt said that quite a
few users are trying out other types of services wirelessly.
"As mobile phones continue to evolve and have faster
processors, more memory and better screens," he said, "the
market for information and entertainment services will expand
tremendously - even to the exclusion of other media
channels."
Lee said that wireless communications is
also efficient. "Young people are using their cellphones more
and more as a way to communicate. These days, if a party is
good, it's going to be packed a half an hour later and the
converse is also true. You always see people calling their
friends and telling them to come if a place is good or asking
them where they should go if it isn't, so this will just tie
in naturally to that," he said.
David Behar, a Web
developer and Vindigo user in New York, acknowledged that he
uses the application to track down locations, but considers
himself a unique user.
"It may catch on; however, not
everyone has a phone that is capable of displaying what my
phone can," he said. "It would appeal to mostly the Internet
crowd. I cannot see elderly folks using it. Mostly teenagers
and young adults would benefit from this."
Using
Vindigo, Behar and other users can track down the closest ATMs
or restaurants, check movie showtimes and get
maps.
"These technologies are available on every major
wireless carrier," said Devitt. "There is something available
for everyone on every phone, whether it be Hollywood news with
CelebrityNow or family photos through FotoShare."
Behar said, "The coolest part is getting the visual
map to see where you are and in relation to a highway. This
will not replace a map, but is very useful in the absence of
one."
Halstead said that overall her experience with
phone-based applications has been positive, with the exception
of one incident.
"One of my co-workers mentioned seeing
me on the news," said Halstead. "Turned out a local news show
had done a story on Dodgeball, and he had seen my picture on
their footage of the home page. Not such a bad thing
necessarily, but I'm not really sure I want my co-workers to
know how often I go to bars or which ones to find me
in."
Natalie Hope McDonald is senior editor of
E-Gear magazine.
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New Cellphone Applications Arrange Blind Dates, Find
Restaurants, Check Movie Times, Exchange
Photos
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