Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Scott Lundgren" <s_l AT mindspring.com>]

http://www.thefeature.com/article?articleid=100301

An article on a mobile service that's recently relaunched called
dodgeball.com. It's only in NYC, but its some novel uses of existing
technologies. In essence it's three different services:

"Guide" uses a database of user-created reviews to direct you to different
places around town. For example, if you can't remember the location of a
certain bar you want to go to, just send a text message to
nyc AT dodgeball.com, along with the name of the place you want to go to.
Dodgeball will send you the place's address and cross street.

"Circles," lets you tell a circle of friends where you are. All you have to
do is send a message to Dodgeball with your current location, and all the
people who have agreed to be in your Circle list will get a message along
the lines of "Mark @ Bowery Bar (358 Bowery Fourth Ave) at 9:37pm "

Scout, is the most intriguing. To use it, you send a text message to
Dodgeball telling it where you are, such as "bowery bar." Then Dodgeball
will tell you about things happening around you, like shows and events. You
can also let other Dodgeball users within a 10-block radius find out what
you have discovered.

Since the technology itself isn't hard (a web server & email account to
recieve SMS/emails, parse the message & commands, query, send a response to
the originating message) it would be interesting to see a local nightlife
content provider like zspotlight.com do such a thing like Scout or use
Circles as an opt-in process for fun (commercial experinmentation in flash
mobs) and profit (higher advertising rates for features like being able to
broadcast to a demographic "Show this message to the bartender for $3
shots")

- SL