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Using Location-Aware Gadgets
As many of you may already know, I’m a gadget geek and I love technology, hence the blog and the job with Wells Fargo Financial technology. One of my favorite gadgets, and one that I never leave home without, is my iPhone. I’m one of “those” that got one day 1 over well over a year ago. I use it for all kind of things in addition to making and receiving phone calls. In since this blog is about Downtown, I wanted to share a few ways that I use my iPhone around downtown as well as talk about some of the exciting things other cities around the country are creating for “location-aware” devices, primarily the iPhone.
To begin with, let me share with you one of the most innovative ideas I’ve seen a city come up with to promote their city and to provide free tools to their residents. The city I’m speaking of is Washington, DC. Their Mayor and the cities’ Chief Technology Officer (I’m not sure if the City of Des Moines even has this position?) developed an innovation contest and gave away up to $20,000 worth of cash prizes to take the cities’ data and build applications that use that data to benefit residents and tourist of the DC area. Wow! What a great way to get creative tools built. Can you image if Des Moines sponsored a contest like this? The Des Moines area is full of creative technology folks and with all the technology jobs here in our area, we would be sure to have some great innovations submitted.
So what has been submitted thus far:
DC Location-Aware Realtime Alerts – iPhone users can download this free app from the App Store to see the location and type of crimes that have been committed near them in near realtime. They can also see the nearest metro station based on their current location, including the next two inbound trains in each direction.
More applications… Read the rest of this entry »
Posted under Living Downtown
Tags: Maps | Video
