Too-Much-TV

ITU -- case study on mobile in Japan

Couple of very good reports from the ITU prepared for their the future of mobile workshop to be held in Seoul, March 4-5, Shaping the future mobile information society.

A case study of Japan, and a background paper "Social and Human Considerations for a More Mobile World".

Lara Srivastava, the author/co-author of the two papers, and ITU staff leading the Future of Mobile project, spoke at an event we held during the WSIS Summit in Geneva last December. All the presentations from that event are on the WSIS Online site Cultural and social impacts of mobile technologies.

I will soon have some notes or transcripts from the session online.

Mobile phone check-in

Caught a report on the news last night about using your mobile phone to check-in at the airport. Vague, missed half the item. New service at Narita, part of what seems to be called "e-Aiport". Follows that the service will be "e-Checkin".

Present a barcode capable mobile to an ATM-like machine. The barcode generated by the phone is read by the machine which retrieves a previously made reservation. Passport is inserted (same way as a bankbook is read in an typical bank ATM, in Japan at least) and once the passport and reservation are matched a boarding pass is issued. At the gate, the boarding pass is read and pulls up a picture of the traveller for the staff at the gate to match with the person in front of them.

Will check the facts on this and update.

Horrible privacy and surveillance/tracking potential. Secure and simple. Mobiles for identity, purchase. etc. No end to what they'll do (might use them for telephone calls, occasionally, too.)