Manhattan Story Mashup - a Nokia Experiment

Thanks to Steve Garfield for this tip on an interesting experiment being run this Saturday in Times Square using camera phones called the Manhattan Story Mashup. The group behind this is Sensor Planet, a project of Nokia Research.

Though I can't say that I completely understand all of the rules of this particular game, it is part of an intersting trend for using mobile and web technologies to enable activities in the physical world. I think this is a really positive trend, whether it is geocaching, Dogster letting you find compatible hounds to go for a weekend walk with or connecting with a group for a weekly bike ride using an email list, this is exciting and healthy for our overly screen-glued society.

There's a startup here in Boston that I'm watching that has a service that is catching on with the under 30 crowd called Hey Let's Go (heyletsgo.com). It makes use of bits like the web and mobile technologies but the focus is on doing fun things in the world of atoms.