This is pretty awesome: Nike invented a game in London that turned the city in to a board game for runners, but instead of checking in with a mobile phone (which most people might already have, but might not take with them on their runs,) runners log their activities with the city’s pay phones.
Is there a North American geocoded list of pay phones out there? Is that even possible with all the private phones that have gotten into the wild? Is the caller ID on our outgoing calls consistent, or does it get blocked or randomized through some of them?
I guess a non-payphone alternative could be video billboards with changing authentication numbers (like the RSA SecurID tokens) that you’d have to be on site to key into your smart phone, and while that would open up all kinds of secondary advertising opportunities and increase awareness of the game in general, it’s just not as cool to me right now as pay phones.
It’s been many years since I bought a cell phone specifically because I couldn’t find a pay phone (long enough ago that it was because my pager was going off,) so I’m not sure what the area coverage is anymore, especially outside of city cores, but I can almost see a business model involving higher-priced calls for alternate reality games. If it’s still possible to receive a call on a pay phone (I’d heard that was shut off for all kinds of reasons,) being able to track people (oddly, through their GPS-enabled smart phones) and make the nearby pay phone ring would be all kinds of nifty. Or at least an amazing prank.
In the meantime, my mind’s going to wander every time I see a phone box for the next while. Toronto’s Santa Claus Parade has an iPhone app this year complete with “Santa Tracker” but how much more fun would it have been if each neighbourhood had a designated child who had to phone in Santa’s checkin when he passed that part of the route?
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