The olympics in Beijing in 2008 drive many new initiatives in and around the city.
Activities like cleaning up and restoring major tourist areas as the forbidden city, the summer palace, numerous temples and of course increasing security measures around tianmen square to protect the visitors.
A very interesting initiative is a WAN deployment in the Chongwen district in Beijing.
On top of that a city information portal will be deployed. The portal will be providing information like maps, events, travel information etc. The cool bit is that this will be accesible online with PDA's, mobile phone, basically any device with WIFI.
I would be curious to see if only the portal can be accessed or the generic internet as well. THat would be a good challenge for blogging regulations etc I would say.
Cooperation takes place with a number of companies that build up experience with a similar excercise in Heidelberg Germany. The network there is called Heidelberg Mobil
Other companies involved are www.eml-development.com, www.capinfo.com.cn, and www.cwi.gov.cn
Now other then being absolutely cool for users I do see some ideas on linking virtual and the real world. How about the forbidden city in a 2nd life kind of environment?
Location based marketing and advertising for Mr Ho his noodlejoint.....a yellow pages site that in combination with google earth tells you where your company is and how to get there.
In short a very interesting development!
Posting inspired by an article in De Ingenieur, 25 May 2007.
