Technology: Ask Your Phone Where the Party Is

There are very few things the modern cell phone can’t do. It can email, text, send pictures, be your GPS, play games, surf the web and play music. Sometimes you can even use it to actually talk to people. The next cell phone application for nightlife could be considered a reverse GPS. It won’t tell you where you are, but it will tell you where everyone else is.

Sense Networks is planning to release a mobile app for IPhones and Blackberrys that will allow users to find out what part of New York is attracting large crowds in real time. By gathering GPS data from other users and taxi cabs equipped with GPS it will show the most popular parts of town down to the individual city block. Since it tracks GPS, it should be able to tell where people are, even if they are inside a club.

From a nightlife standpoint, this concept has a few issues. First, if you are familiar with New York nightlife, you know what parts of town are going to be packed at night; Midtown West, the Lower East Side, The Village, Union Square, Flatiron, etc. You don’t need your phone to tell you that, although it could be helpful to show which clubs are in full swing when you're ready to go out.

Second, it can only tell you where a lot of IPhones and Blackberry’s are located. It seems that phones without GPS systems are invisible. Unless you make general assumptions about the type of people who own those things, it won’t tell you the kind of people who make up the crowd. So how will you know that you want to go there?

This kind of tech might help businesses decide where to set up a store, bar or restaurant based on consumer congestion, but maybe you should just stick to using your phone for texting...

(CBC News)