I have finally sorted, tagged, geotagged and uploaded pictures I took last October in Hong Kong when I joined my friend Kallen for a week of holidays there.
Here is the set on flickr
Here are the geotagged pictures on a map.

For the curious ones, here are the tools I used to geotag the photos:
• The little Sony GPS CS1 GPS tracker. Switch on, attach to your bag. It records a time-stamped trail of your location as a text file.
• Import your photos and your GPS track into PhotoGPSeditor (donation-ware). The software is the most complete I have seen for the mac osx people. It will compare the time stamps in your tracks and your pics' and match them. You can then adjust each picture's location perfectly using the embedded Google map widget. The location of each picture is saved in their EXIF tags.
• Then use the excellent 1001 Flickr uploader (donation-ware) to tag, add captions and titles to your pics and upload them to flickr.
• Finally, use Wackylabs' GeoReTagR script to automatically register the geolocation of those photos in Flickr and you're done! (or just set up correctly your Geolocation-related upload options on Flickr... duh!)

NEPRO Japan, following their previous study published in January 2004, have again published the results of a study into people's useage of their mobile phones' GPS function. [via]

What must be said on the number of mobile phones equipped with GPS: as of summer 2006: 90%+ of AU models since 2004, 3-4 models for DoCoMo and Vodafone (rebranded Softbank as of 1st of Oct.) so it's unlikely that more than 50% have a GPS chip in their phone, but DoCoMo and Vodafone do still provide local information using cell-tower signal (400m accuracy at best I think) to roughly identify where you are in Japan and what shops, restaurants, convenience stores, banks, ramen shops etc... are around you.

It seems that compared to January 2004, 2.5x more want a GPS in their phone and that twice as many use theirs.

About the precision of such phones: indeed, simple GPS systems will not work well in the shadows of tall buildings, but the systems available in Japanese mobile phones are of course ready for urban action. The precision is surprising, 5m (the maximum commercially available, I think) even in dense areas, because not only is the phone capable of reading GPS satellites broadcasts on its own, but it is also refining its coordinates helped by the position of the nearby cell towers (using triangulation).
I recommend you to read more on that GPSone chip inside those AU phones.

Reusing the results translated by What Japan Thinks:

Of the 3608 people interviewed.
Female: 58% (previsouly 61%)
Men: 42% (39%)

Age class.
under 10: 2% (9%)
20's: 35% (45%)
30's: 44% (35%)
40's or above: 19% (10%)

Q1: Do you use your mobile phone's GPS functionality?
Yes: 26% (against 13% answering Frequently, Occasionally and Almost Never in Jan 2004)
No, but it has the capability: 25%
No, and it doesn't have the capability: 49% (82%)

Answer #2 seems too high indeed if added to answer #1 and may be due to people confusing GPS functions with the local area info offered by all carriers using cell-tower signals to locate your phone.

Q2: Do you think it's useful that mobile phones have GPS functionality?
Yes, really or a little useful: 75%!! (29%)
No, not really needed or not needed at all: 17% (17%)
Don’t know: 8% (28%)

The following questions are different from 2 years ago. But comparison is still possible.
Q3: For what purposes would you like to use a mobile phone with GPS functionality? (multiple answer)
Navigating towards my goal: 69%
Navigating towards a travel destination: 59%
Locating safety zones or evacuation zones during disasters: 48%
Searching for information on nearby public facilities: 39% like love hotels?
Checking the location or safety of children or old people: 39%
Replace car navigation system: 36% like this?
Searching for nearly car parking: 24%
Work-related navigation functionality: 9%
Other: 7%

Q5: What would you worry about when using mobile phone GPS functionality? (multiple answer)
Battery life: 69% yeah... a bummer...
Transmission or usage fees: 69% On AU phones with flat-rate data fee, no problems. Usage is about 90yen or day or 315/month
Infringements of privacy: 60% Be scared!
Accuracy of positional information: 43% Be scared!
Coverage area: 35% Unfortunately, yes, if the phone is off the network, then, no GPS...
Seems difficult to use: 15% Is pretty easy though!
Other: 5%

UPDATE:
aemkei has released a delicious little bookmarklet that lets you tag any pic onto the nicer Google maps, from within any of your flick photo pages, without the need of an external script or application etc... (and it works with most browsers) and it also lets any person view your pics mapped on a nice Google map when they visit you Flickr pages or even as a standalone version:
here are my geomapped pictures on Google Maps with a delicious interface!

[via]

MOBILE PHONE BASED

The Shroud, by Your World Games.
Location: US, 2006 --NEW
The first location-based role playing game comes to mobile in Winter 2006 – The Shroud. Build a thriving community based on real world locations, defend it by any means necessary and venture out on heroic quests. For the first time, a truly immersive gameplay experience comes to wireless.
+ pics on IGN

RealReplay, by Mopius.
Location: US, 2005 --NEW
GPS racing on your mobile phone. It's one of our inherent necessities to compete with other people and to compare ourselves to them. It would be perfect if we could compete with everyone, without being dependent on their time. No matter if it’s a car race, bike tour, sailing trip or a relaxed hiking tour.
RealReplay offers the solution. You simply choose the track you want to race on, select your opponent and start right away! Your own race will be recorded by an accurate GPS system, which makes it possible to see your own current position and the route your opponent took when he recorded his race. In some games this is known as the “Ghost” mode – now you can race for real!

Treasure Hunt, by Treasure Hunt Mobile.
Location: US, 2004(?)
Treasure Hunt is a location based mobile phone game that uses GPS and internet enabled handhelds. We have hidden an imaginary treasure somewhere in your game zone and you must attempt using the clues we give you to try and find it. All players begin the game with one video or picture clue, and a number of multiple-choice answers, only one of which is the correct answer. Be careful when answering the clues, if you answer the clue incorrectly your next clue won’t be so helpful in your quest for the treasure, instead you might find yourself going in circles.

Songs of North, by The University of Tampere's Game Research Lab
Location: Finland, 2004
Songs of North is a multiplayer game concept, in which the player is a shaman trying to either make the persistent game world a better, or a worse, more chaotic place. The game draws it’s inspiration from the Finnish mythology, especially the epic Kalevala. The background story revolves around the legendary Sampo, a machine that is able to produce anything. Sampo has been destroyed in the battles between the Northmen and the sons of Kaleva, and it’s pieces are scattered around the world. Player, the Shaman, has two options: if she fi nds a piece of the Sampo, she can either keep it and gain some power, or destroy it by sinking it into a swamp, thus returning the energy of the Sampo to the world, making it a better place.

The Journey I&II, by Jakl Andreas Reinhard at Mopius
Location: Austria - 2004?
The Journey is a new and unique adventure game experience for your mobile phone. You are in the role of an infamous detective and have to solve a mysterious case not only by making it through the story, but also by walking to different locations. The game is aware of your movement. Right at the beginning when you, as the detective, have to leave your bureau and go outside, you have to take your mobile and go through the streets of the city you live in.
The game saves the locations (CellTower ID) and in the course of the story you will have to return to your bureau and walk back to the place where you started playing.

GPS::Tron, by Tom Winkler
Location: Austria - 2005
GPS::Tron is an adaption of the classic arcade game Tron, for mobile phones. The players move in real space, they are tracked by GPS and their position influences their position in the game. The communication between the mobile devices is done over GPRS. The players do not have to be geographically close-by. The 2 players do not have to run, they can also play using a car, bike, ship, whatever.
(I remember reading somewhere that Dan Egnor in the US had a similar system running as early as 10/2003)

Frequency 1550, by Waag Society
Location: Amsterdam - 2005
Waag Society has developed a 'mobile learning game' together with IVKO, part of the Montessori comprehensive school in Amsterdam. It's a city game using mobile phones and GPS-technology for students in the age of 11-12. The games examines whether it's possible to provide a technology supported educational location-based experience.
In the Frequency 1550 mobile game, students will be transported to the medieval Amsterdam of 1550 via a medium that's familiar to this age group: the mobile phone. The pilot will take place in 2005 from 7 to 9 February and is supported by KPN Mobile's UMTS network.

Raygun, by Glofun
Location: US - 2005
A cell phone loaded with RayGun software emits “spectral” energy that lets you attract and track ghosts. Unfortunately, the energy also annoys the ghosts, so you’d better “ionize” them before they get to you.
Here's the twist: RayGun is a GPS game, and to play it you have to move through the real world—that is, running around using your real feet.

Conqwest, by area/code and SS+K
Location: Several Cities in the USA - 2004
big game + treasure hunt + phone cam + semacode + giant animal + totems. ConQwest is a high-stakes, team-based treasure hunt in the urban jungle. Five teams race through the city searching for treasure in the form of printed codes that can be captured by phonecam. Each code has a dollar value, and the first team to find $5,000 worth of treasure codes wins the game and earns a $5,000 scholarship for their school.

Swordfish, by Blisterent
Location: Canada - 2004
An exciting new location based fishing game that uses the latest GPS technology. Using your phone's GPS capability and Blister's unique Swordfish finder, you can locate schools of fish that are close to you, move to them and land the BIG ONE!

Final Fantasy VII: Before Crisis (mobile phone version), by Square Enix
Location: Tokyo, Japan - since 2004
[GameSpy] The most interesting twist in Before Crisis is how it utilizes the properties of a mobile phone. Materia is an integral part of the game and players will need to use the F900's camera and phone features to make the most out of it. To activate the various types of material, you must take a picture of an object of a similar color. However, each phone can only have a finite amount of material; the only way to get more is to interact with other users. (It's almost as devilishly clever as needing another player to catch all the Pokemon.) Players can also call each other for help when they're stuck or tag along in an adventure, though not in an MMORPG sense as the creators want the game to be more random.

Undercover, by YDreams
Location: Hong Kong / Portugal - since 2003
[SmartMobs] YDreams and Hong Kong mobile telecom operator Sunday last week launched Undercover, a massively multiplayer, persistent game for mobile phone users in Hong Kong. In the game, the players' real location is the main tool in a quest for justice and survival. Undercover has been available nationwide in Portugal since July 2003. Sunday Hong Kong customers are the first players outside Portugal to join the game - trial versions are planned for over 14 countries.

Mogi, by NewtGames
Location: Tokyo, Japan - since 2003
[IN-duce] For a month now, I have been playing a java mobile phone game called Mogi, Item hunt from French company Newt Games. It uses the GPS functions of the KDDI AU phones and allows you to pick up virtual items spread on the whole of Japan. Let the game know where you are and it will tell you what items are around you; if you get closer than 400m to an object, you can pick it up and try to complete your collections, you can also trade with other players. The objects vary in frequency and value and the aim is to get the maximum amount of points.

GunSlingers, Mikoishi Studios
Location: Singapore - 2003
Gunslingers is a multi-player network game where players move around, track and engage enemies within their vicinity. All this, just using just an ordinary handphone. You walk around Singapore, you locate the nearest opponent around you and then you blow the crap out of each other. The game uses network positioning technology to help you find the nearest enemy. It is similar to GPS or Global Positioning System, except that you do not need a special phone with GPS capabilities. We use Cell-ID-Network-Positioning-Technology.

TreasureMachine, BattleMachine, Girlfriend, Take-It, CrowdMachine, CreatorMachine, by Unwiredfactory
Location: Germany, Denmark

BotFighters, by It's Alive
Location: Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Russia - since 2000
BotFighters is the world's first location based mobile game that takes advantage of mobile positioning and let's the users play against others in their vicinity by using a standard GSM phone. It's a fast-paced game mixing action- and roleplay ingredients.

HANDHELD BASED (mobile phones may be used during game play)

Environmental Detectives, by MIT
Location: US - since 2002 --NEW
As groups launch their PDAs, they are presented a unique cover story, custom-tailored to their role. Environmentalists learn that a local watershed has become polluted with mercury after a class of students reports some bizarre readings during a routine examination of a local watershed. Later, the EPA learns of increased levels of mercuric chloride through routine inspection of a major river in the area. As fish begin washing ashore, a hostile press learns of this catastrophe, and immediately implicates a textile facility further down the river. As concerned parents start checking kids into a local hospital, the stakes are raised further.

Mystery at the museum, by MIT Teacher Education Program
Location: US - since 2003 --NEW
First indoor Augmented Reality simulation created by the program. In this game, teams consisting of a Biologist, a Technologist and a Detective must work together to solve a crime. The infamous band of Flamingo Thieves has struck again and stole a priceless object from the Museum of Science, but players must figure out what they have stolen, how they did it, and catch the thieves before they get away.

Vienen Por Ellas (They come for them), by Telefonica
Location: Chile - 2004
[WMMNA] Mixes the real world with the game world. Aliens are planing to conquer the Earth. They will capture all the women to fill the planet with "hybrid creatures."
Users become part of an anti-alien organisation called Plan-EVA which tries to save the human race by solving quiz, answering questions, finding the clues, etc. Users play via SMS, voice messages, Web sites, WAP, moblogs, MMS, ringtones, etc. For example, by calling the 321 (called "intercomunicador 321"), the player can listen to his present mission, get clues to solve the riddles, etc. Forums were also created for players to share and comment their experience.
So far, the game is a success, with more than 300,000 users (mainly between 12 and 30 years old) registered.

I Like Frank in Adelaide, by Blast Theory
Location: Adelaide, Australia - 2004
This project takes place online and on the streets using 3G phones. Players in the real city can chat with players in the virtual city as they search for the elusive Frank. Whether braving the 40-degree heat of a South Australian summer or logging from around the world, the players will build relationships, swap information and test the possibilities of a new hybrid space.

CitiTag, by HP Labs, the Open University's Knowledge Media Institute (KMi)
Location: Bristol, UK - 2004
CitiTag is a wireless location-based multiplayer game, designed to enhance spontaneous social interaction and novel experiences in city environments by integrating virtual presence with physical. In the first version of CitiTag you roam the city with a GPS- and WiFi-enabled iPaq PocketPC in search for players of the opposite team that you can ‘tag’. You can also get tagged yourself if one of them gets close to you. Then you need to find a friend to free you. Urban space becomes a playground and everyone is a suspect.

Uncle Roy All Around You, by Blast Theory
Location: London, UK - 2003
Uncle Roy All Around You is where the console game breaks out onto the streets; a game that pitches Online Players around the world alongside players on the real streets of the city.
Street Players use handheld computers to search for Uncle Roy, using the map and incoming messages to move through the city. Online Players cruise through a virtual map of the same area, searching for Street Players to help them find a secret destination.
Using web cams, audio and text messages players must work together. They have 60 minutes and the clock is ticking...

Urban Challenge, by Verizon Wireless
Location: Several Cities in USA - since 2002
The object of Verizon Wireless Urban Challenge is to visit twelve checkpoints in correct order and return to event headquarters. The first team back wins.

The Go Game, by Wink Back, Inc.
Location: San Francisco, USA - since 2001
The Go Game is an all-out urban adventure game, a technology-fueled, reality-based experience that encourages hard play and a keen eye for the weird, the beautiful, or the faintly out-of-the-ordinary. The "rule book" is reality, the "board" is San Francisco, and the "pieces" are the players -- you and your team.

MobileHunt, by HIPnTASTY
Location: USA and Canada - since 2001
So you've played other people's games, but have they ever played yours? It's time for MobileHunt™ ... the ultimate scavenger hunt game engine!

Cutlass - Treasure Hunt, by DCA Productions, Steve Bull (CEO)
Location: Times Square, NYC, USA - since 2001
No cellphone tic-tac-toe, Cutlass requires players to use digital phones, wireless PDAs, the net--even ordinary phones--and lots of real time footwork to find a treasure hidden nearby.

Seamful Game, by University of Glasgow, UK
Location: Glasgow, 2004
A fully featured multiplayer team game, which has been accused of being fun to play. Players must develop an understanding of the network coverage and the effect of signal strength in order to successfully play the game. In this way we are turning the patchy network coverage, which is usually seen as a problem to be overcome, or worse ignored, into a feature (indeed possibly the main feature) of the game.

Backseat Playground, by John Paul Bichard & the Interactive Institute
Location: Stockholm, 2005
Backseat Playground is a mobile gaming research project that will enable kids to
play with the world outside their window from the back seat of a car.
There are 4 core areas: Episodic Narratives, Real World Game Engine, De-focusing technology, Fuzzy Learning.

Savannah, by NESTA Futurelab
Location: Bristol, UK, 2004
Savannah is a strategy-based adventure game where a virtual space is mapped directly onto a real space. Children ‘play’ at being lions in a savannah, navigating the augmented environments with a mobile handheld device. By using aspects of game play, Savannah challenges children to explore and survive in the augmented space. To do this they must successfully adopt strategies used by lions.

CatchBob!, by Nicolas Nova and Fabien Girardin
Location: Switzerland - 2004
CatchBob! is an experimental platform in the form of a mobile game for running psychological experiments. It is designed to elicit collaborative behavior of people working together on a mobile activity.

NetAttack, by Fraunhofer FIT
Location: Germany, 2004
NetAttack "is a new type of indoor/outdoor Augmented Reality game that makes the actual physical environment an inherent part of the game itself." In this game, two teams are fighting to destroy the central database of a virtual big company. Both teams have indoor players, who control the game from their laptop computers, and outdoor players, equipped with GPS receivers, trackers, sensors and video cameras.

Can you see me now?, by Blast Theory
Location: Europe - since 2002
Can You See Me Now? is a game that happens simultaneously online and on the streets. Players from anywhere in the world can play online in a virtual city against members of Blast Theory. Tracked by satellites, Blast Theory's runners appear online next to your player on a map of the city. On the streets, handheld computers showing the positions of online players guide the runners in tracking you down.

NodeRunner, by Yury Gitman, Carlos J. Gomez de Llarena
Location: NYC, USA - since 2002
A competitive game, Node Runner fuses the streets with wireless networks to convert the city into a playing board. Two teams racing against time must log into as many nodes as they can and upload photographic proof to the server, documenting their progress.

Navigate the Streets, by Level 28 Brands
Location: Several Cities in Canada - 2004
'Navigate The Streets' is an experiment in modern city exploration, in which teams of two compete using wireless gadgets and public transportation to race through nine different Canadian cities, solving riddles to discover their next checkpoint. While use of technology isn't required, various WiFi hotspot vendors will be sponsoring the race, providing free access to participants throughout.

Demor - Audiogame, by Utrecht School of the Arts students
Location: The Netherlands - 2004
Demor is a location based 3D audio shooter. This highly innovative game was developed by a multi-disciplinary team of seven EMMA-students for the Bartimeus Institute for the Blind. Demor does not only focus on the entertainment aspect of computer gaming, but also attempts to contribute to the emancipation of the blind and visually impaired people in order to enhance their integration with the ‘sighted’ world. It is a proof of concept developed on the basis of theoretical and practical research.

Human Pacman, by Mixed Reality Lab of National University of Singapore
Location: Singapore - 2004
The game has several novel aspects: Firstly, the players immerse in role-playing of the characters Pacmen and Ghosts by physically enacting the roles. Players physically move around in a wide-area setting, performing tasks to reach their goals. Secondly, Human Pacman also explores novel tangible aspects of human physical movement, senses and perception, both on the player's environment and on the interaction with the digital world. Thirdly, users enjoy unrestricted movement outdoor and indoor while maintaining their social contacts with each other. Players interact both face-to-face with other players when in proximity (physically) or indirectly via the wireless local area network (LAN).

Pirates!, by PLAY research studio, Interactive Institute
Location: HUC conference in Bristol, UK - August 2000
A collaboration between the Nokia Research Center and the PLAY Research Studio.A PDA-based context-sensitive game were the players' physical location and social interaction in a gaming area influences the events in the game.

Mad Countdown, by Playbe
Location: Switzerland - 2001/02
One of the first mixed/hybrid reality pervasive game using a physical building as a game board on top of which players, actors, physical artefacts, and diverse media (such as automated phone calls) communicate with the player's PDAs & positions to track down a bomb in time to prevent a group of art haters from blowing up the University for Art Media and Design Zurich (where the game takes place).

OTHERS

Monopoly Live, by Hasbro
Location: London, UK - 2005 --NEW
Monopolylive.com let you play Monopoly in the real London with 18 real cabs fitted with GPS systems as your movers.
We pitted your cabbie against 5 others for 24 hours, and you could make millions by buying properties and placing apartments and hotels. There were some amazing prizes up for grabs, including your mortgage or rent paid for a year.

Digital Street Game, by Intel Corporation
Location: Manhattan, New York, USA - 2004
Crap name, Fun game. Digital Street Game is a hybrid game of misadventure set on the streets of New York. It's a battle for turf, a contest of wills in short an excuse to explore the city. Players compete for turf by performing and documenting stunts on the physical streets of New York in order to claim territory on a virtual map. Stunts are comprised of a random combination of 3 elements: 1) an object commonly found in the city (e.g. bodega) 2) a street game (e.g. stickball) and 3) a wildcard/urban situation (e.g. happy hour). Players interpret these elements as they wish, then stage and photograph their stunt in order to claim a spot on the map. The more stunts players perform the more turf they claim. But of course some players may want to compete for the same territory. In order to hold on to territory, players stunts must score high with the rest of the game community.

Pac-Manhattan by Dennis Crowley, Frank Lantz (instructor) and others
Location: Manhattan, New York, USA - 2004
PacManhattan is a live-action version of PacMan, played around Washington Square Park, in which people in Pac Man and ghost suits chase each other through the streets, seeking out power-pellets.

Operation Urban Terrain, by Opensorcery.net
Location: NYC, USA - 2004
Two women in gear are on the ground. One with a laptop and the other with a projector pointing onto building walls in key locations in the city. They are connected through a mobile wireless bicycle to an online team of five game players located around the world. They intervene on servers in a popular online military simulation game with performance actions carried out by the whole team.The live projections in the city can also be viewed through web cams on the OUT website.

Geocaching/GPS Stash Hunt, by Groundspeak
Location: anywhere!!
A GPS device and a hunger for adventure are all you need for high tech treasure hunting. Here you can find the latest caches in this fun and exciting sport.

Most KDDI AU and the recent NTT DoCoMo FOMA 900i and 901i series mobile phones have a GPS chip embedded in them that insert GPS coordinates in the photos' EXIF headers that are then extracted and used by DuoSnap to map the picture where it belongs.
more links... on similar projects... here... and there... too.

- The first such service in the world
- The pictures are high-res, low-altitude pictures (rather than satellite)
- Service covers 90% of the population
- Traffic jam information can also be displayed, live, on the maps.
- Maps can be scrolled, zoomed in and rotated like the vector maps.
- Service is intended for FOMA phones with Unlimited data packet transfer plans (called Pake-Houdai).
- Only available for NTT DoCoMo FOMA 900i and 901i series mobile phones at the moment, while it is likely that the service will be propagated to the other carriers in the future. For info, AU were the first ones to make use of the NaviWalk technology of Navitime since most of their phones come with a GPS chip. By contrast, only recent FOMA 3G phones have GPS chips embedded in them.
- Service costs between 210 and 315yen a month.

Let base the game here in Tokyo, where we have GPS mobile phones and an already very successful MM GPS game.

I want to retain some of the great achievements of Mogi...
- ability to play on the move, for as little as a few minutes to as long as you want,
- makes you actively go out of your routine way to discover the city,
- dynamically links the real world with its virtual overlayed layer in space and time too (some object are only available in certain regions or during certain times of the day, phase of the moon or season.
- is not a battle.
- encourages community building.

...while avoiding developing too complicated a gameplay as a result of too many possibilities. As much as I think that Mogi is an amazing technology display and game, the gameplay has become way too dense and time-demanding for me. I wish the game had become 2 or 3 games rather than putting it all inside one.

Onto the game itself:
What?
A collaborative city-embellishment game.

Goal
A community of players working together to compensate the real pollution and eyesores of a city by planting and taking care of virtual flowers and other plants on a virtual data layer superimposed on the city.

Means
Seeds; each player gets given a batch at sign-up.

Tools
- A radar giving precise info on the location of the player and its surroundings (plants, pollution and eyesore details).
- A pollution console that monitors the city in which the game takes place.
- A communication interface to link players together.
- virtual tools to take care of the plants found or added to an area.

Gameplay details
Infos:
- The game monitors real-life rain, sun and wind indexes and reflects the results in the game in real time.
- Dynamic and real time updates of pollution indexes and ugly areas of the city. from official sources (city hall or relevant service) or players suggestions ("Oh, they started construction work near Almonds in Roppongi, let's act", "OK, let's take care of the whole area then... ;-) ").
- Pollution or eyesore alerts broadcasted by players or game admins calling for immediate action. Players responding should be rewarded in some way.

Actions:
- players get seeds at sign-up time. Possibilities to buy (exchange?) rare flower/plant seeds from shops. Have to figure out how to pay... or how to actually get other plants... Nurseries...
- Players check their radar to see the pollution index and decide where to plant their seeds. (when standing near Roppongi Crossing, a player will probably plant seeds against both pollution and the eysores.)
- once a plant has been added to an area (many can be added to a same area), it must be taken care of, to allow for its normal growth from seed to fully developed plant. It will require daily or weekly attention (like would a real plant) to make sure it has received enough water, sun light, etc... The care part is a collective effort.
- From the game radar, the player can plant a seed, water it, give it a sun light complement (when it has not received enough sun light), fertilize an area, repair plants damaged by high winds or natural disasters (a real earthquake in Tokyo would have an influence in the game, plants around high building would probably need more attention as wind created by the high buildings would damage the plants on a contimuous basis).
- Wind has negative effects (damaging the plants) but positive ones as it could help with cross-pollinisation. Some of the plants in the game would appear in this natural way. If not enough wind blows, then players can hang around fields or planted areas for a few minutes while "virtually blowing" some of the seeds. They can also virtually walk through a field to make their clothe pick up some seeds that will automatically be disseminated throughout the city much like in real life. Once those plants grow, if they are in low pollution areas, players can pick them up and relocate them within a given number of days.
- some plants are more resistant to wind or rain or need less watering or sunlight but seeds are harder to obtain.
- virtual disasters (like flowers planted near a construction site damaged by an unloading truck driver.)
- 4 seasons make for different flowers and plants and techniques to protect what has been planted so that it doesn't die. Tools and tricks will be available.
- The pollution radar allows for targeted action, giving landmarks, subway station names etc...

Evolutions (making the game too complicated or maybe too real):
- Some areas of the city or area surrounding the city could provide fresh plants and flowers to load and transplant.
- how to fight weeds and parasitic insects.
- while keeping the protecting insects much like in real life (spiders, ladybirds...)
- give colour to flowers by taking pics of that colour with the phone camera.
- possibilities to leave flowery Gifts for other players in given spots.
- can play god and genetically alter the DNA of some seeds to combine or create new flower/plant varieties with better resistance to wind etc...
- can choose a Home ground where you live, where you can grow some plants to be replanted somewhere else (home nursery).
- Only real life plants or imaginary ones? Carnivorous plants?

Special mention:
- As much as the game is influenced by the real-life weather and other indexes, I would very much like the game to have an influence on the real world... participating in tree planting programs to leverage city pollution might be an idea... Using some of the subscription fees... or sponsors...
- graphics will be important in this game. We need nice plant graphics, nice flowers, wooms, details on the nutrition needs of the plant etc...
- There would be no winner and if there must be a player classification, it would be calculated on a ration of the number of plants it has added to the city, the care it has brought to his and others plants, his response time when going on assignements, etc... (I was upset at how truckers and delivery people in Mogi were always the best people - to be honest, there were also addicted students doing a lot of talented tradings)

Any thoughts?

[RFID in Japan] An elementary school girl was kidnapped in the Japanese city of Nara yesterday. The girl had a GPS-enabled mobile phone. At 5PM, the girl called her mom and hanged up immediately. The mother knew that she could get a map indicating where her daughter was if the daughter's cell phone was turned on. She fetched a map and found that the girl was located in a park near her house.

Later on, the kidnapper used the girl's phone to send a photo SMS message to her mother -- it said "I got your girl." That was at around 8PM. According to GPS data, the message was sent from a residential area that was 6 kilometers away from her house. Since then, it was impossible to access GPS data, which probably meant that the phone's battery run out or the phone was turned off by someone. 4 hours later, the girl was found dead near the the area indicated by the last GPS data.
This tragedy raises a question about usefulness of new tracking technologies including GPS and active RFID. Do they do anything beyond providing parents with small peace of mind? From a child's perspective, if GPS and/or active RFID tags don't make his/her life safer, what's the point in carrying them around? Makes me feel like something is missing.

Interesting to note how the English version of the original article on the Asahi website fails to mention all references to the GPS system the girl was carrying...