Sunday, May 20, 2007

411 Problem

In Sept 2005 I traveled to beautiful Shasta Lake for long weekend. We rented a boat there and three days of non stop fun. One incidence i remember at that time was we were searching for Denny's at 9 or 10 in night at Reddigs, CA. I tried to call 411 and they could not tell me which one is near they just told me there 4 of them in Reddings area. I had no clue which one could be near since I just had normal map and finding streets was impossible (at least for me) in that map. I tried to use Google on my phone to find out the data but it was stupid of me. Basically every information provider out there has required data but missing piece was where am I. I can not just get out and get zip code. I know that GPS was the answer, but hey what If I don't want to pay $10 every month just because i need Denny's once every 3 months at some place I don't know of. The real answer is triangulation data availability. This is very great area and so little has been done here. We have one missing piece of data and if we can get that then ton of data is available rest of the way. I thought getting this data could be a feature but we really want it to be free of cost. I believe this is real mobile advertising based on physical location. So far, after Sept 2005, I know of 10-15 different companies who tried to create 411 solutions. Each one of them on average raised about $10 million. None attempted the solution on this track. If anyone knows about a company which gets triangulation , then please let me know. Update: Reason I remembered this is because i am going there again next weekend. Will post pics soon (this time for sure).

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