Getting Past Fast Food

Location-based services for mobile phones, we're told, are inevitable. The proposed services themselves, however, are a little more dubious. Cell phones that alert you to a nearby McDonald's aren't a big improvement over those stilted golden arches that already do pretty much the same thing. And anyone who wants to be signaled every time he passes a fast food joint probably isn't going to live long enough to renew his phone service contract anyway.

Perhaps location-based services can succeed in the same way cell phones already have — by connecting people to ONE ANOTHER rather than to fixed points on a map. Think of it as an AOL for the airwaves. Mitch Lasky of Jamdat Mobile got the ball rolling in Wireless Review's April issue by suggesting citywide games of laser tag. But what about non-gamers?

For starters, how about using location-based services for m-dating? Mobile devices could lead singles to each other on a Saturday night, even showing them brief bios that are as revealing or anonymous as their users choose. For security's sake, participants could use nicknames, and no one's actual phone number would be revealed.

While ordering a drink at the bar, a subscriber's cell phone tells him there's a single woman his age in the bathroom that likes rock-climbing and Seth Green movies — just like him! And because she hasn't blocked him from viewing her profile on his phone, he knows she's open to the idea of meeting him.

Best of all, they can both play it off as though their meeting were completely serendipitous, avoiding the stink of desperation that dating services typically carry (or, um, so I've HEARD). But he notices her bio says she's a cat lover. Cats make him wheeze something awful, so he ends the relationship before it begins, sidestepping heartache and rejection, and heads to the next bar while the night is still young.

As more subscribers use the application, they would develop new uses for it such as person-to-person traffic applications. Say you're on the highway and some guy in the next lane is yammering away on his cell phone. He swerves over without seeing you, cutting you off. Rather than shout unheard obscenities into his exhaust, use your mobile to call him up and say, “Hey, Senator Kennedy! This ain't bumper cars! Watch where you're going!”

Location-based services could give birth to all sorts of imaginative, lucrative applications. Finding French fries just isn't one of them.