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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: foundation who wrote (29143)	11/19/2002 9:49:39 PM
From: foundation	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 196645

Confusion a la mMode Lynnette Luna Wireless Review, Nov 1, 2002 AT&T Wireless' Find Friends location service left me feeling a little…well, lost. While it's only meant to be a fun tool for locating friends who also use the service — although just try finding friends who actually do — along with hunting down liquor stores, ATM machines, restaurants and the like, I wish it could do more. Despite warnings from AT&T Wireless that the service only provides an approximate location reading, I want pinpoint accuracy. That frustration was most evident during a trip last month to Las Vegas for CTIA's annual Wireless IT event. Because some analyst friends also received AT&T Wireless mMode phones to try out, we were able to track each other's movements throughout Sin City. Still, because the service only showed the cross streets, I was clueless as to their exact whereabouts. My eyes glazed over — I needed a map of Las Vegas to figure out how close we were to each other. It would have been more compelling for AT&T Wireless to simply send me an SMS telling me my friends were just a block away. After a long day spent walking the show floor in designer shoes, I was in no mood to travel far to find a good place to eat, so I suggested to my companions that we let mMode track the nearest restaurant. After several minutes passed, they became a bit impatient standing in the hotel lobby as I nervously tried to navigate through the series of screens required to find the answer we needed. It turned out the nearest restaurant was almost a mile away, and the directions to get there were even more confusing. Because the location data the service generates is just approximate — wherever the closest AT&T Wireless base station is, basically — it gave us directions to the restaurant that started several blocks away. So first we had to figure out where we were in relation to the starting point of the directions just to determine where the service was sending us. We quickly abandoned the project and kindly asked the concierge where the nearest restaurants were. As I retired to my hotel room, I thought I'd give the service one more chance and check to see where the nearest hotel was. Certainly it would detect that The Venetian — where I was at that very moment, after all — was closest to me. Wrong. It came up with names of places I had never heard of. Strike three. Still, AT&T Wireless executives said at last month's show that some parents are buying mMode service for themselves and for their teenagers to track the latter's whereabouts. That seems like a pretty compelling application — a two-mile difference in accuracy doesn't matter when your kid isn't where he says he is. And once I returned home, I did discover an ethnic grocery store that I had no idea was so close to my house. Too bad I was routed through Brazil to get there. wirelessreview.com ========== LOL! Can't do E911... can't do retail... can't do nuthun...