The Real Hitchhiker's Guide?

An anonymous reader writes "The UK's biggest selling newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, has a news story about a UK company that has developed the real version of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the galaxy. It is a kind of portable media player that allows you to travel the world's surface and receive media tailored to who you are, where you are and what you are looking at."

The hardware is not important

[Realistic_Dragon]

We have had GPS, PDAs and satellite phones for years, they just need to be tied together to make a 'guide'. More important is the *data* and no one company could possibly generate or manage the quantity required.

The closest things to the guide we will ever see have been around for a while already - h2g2, wikipedia and the internet as a whole.

Kinda cute ...

[threaded]

Kinda cute, yet when you leave the Earth you'll be a little stuck as it uses GPS to work out where it is.

Re:Hmmm...

[Zwack]

Stop Redefining the question... The Daily Telegraph has 900,000 subscribers (roughly, but the Sun claims to have nearer 3,000,000. The original comment was that the Telegraph was not the highest selling newspaper. If you don't count the tabloids then you might be right, but the original comment is quite cleearly wrong.

Z.

Re:Hmmm...

[Turn-X Alphonse]

The sun majorly outsells it and guides the average "white van drivers" opinion more then anything else in history. It's porn and news (with a racist-pro Britian-anti Europe biast) in 1.

Hitchhiker's Ad to the Galaxy

[Dachannien]

And as soon as that company gets bought out by Clear Channel:

It is a kind of portable media player that allows you to travel the world's surface and receive advertisements tailored to who you are, where you are and what you are looking at.

I already got a Treo 650

[infonography]

every bit of funtionality and more is present in that. And this is just begining. If it wasn't for the Hitchhiker's Guide ref, would we even be discussing this?

More like a museum walkthrough

[mblase]

On screen, I see myself as a little red dot moving slowly over the grass. Depending on where I wander, an entirely different heritage or cultural story is presented through a combination of pictures, sound effects and narrative, all related to where I'm standing and what I'm looking at.

How, exactly, is this anything like the Hitchhiker's Guide? I mean, it's cool to have a device that will give you interesting information about whatever's near where you're standing now, as long as you're within a certain area. But that's not even close to what Douglas Adams described in his books, or even to what's in the movie.

Re:Wifi wiki?

[anthony_dipierro]

That'd be "the hitchiker's guide to things we consider important enough". The actual galaxy contains things such as hotels, bars, pubs, cafes, elementary schools, malls, shops, streets, and bus stops.