With the manhunt on mobile phone.

One runs, the others try to find a Bremer start-up company, this ancient game with modern technology and linked to the hunting game invented the Game Boy generation. Already the first preliminary version has found hundreds of fans.

 

Paul Zachos, co-founder of the Bremer urban start-up team, is on the run. He runs off, passing a building, then through a meadow. Wild flit his pupils to and fro, alternately examine the environment and the cellphone in his left hand. The "radar" that shows different sized concentric circles, the radius of the largest is in reality one kilometers flies. Zachos is because the black-orange cross, which is swiftly away from the center. Indeed, there lurks a red, one blue and one green ball. "In a few seconds are swarming them," says Zachos.

The 32-year-old scientist is testing the product of urban team, the game "FastFoot Challenge". It combines the idea of "robber and policeman" with communication and navigation technology. Player is a mobile phone. If there is no GPS receiver, it must be on the Bluetooth wireless standard to be responsive. For the detection is then a so-called GPS-mouse, as they Zachos in his breast pocket bears. In the role of "X" sees his position, distance and direction of motion of his three pursuers constantly, but this it on their "mobile radars" only once every six minutes. Creates a to Zachos within 25 minutes at least 50 meters to approach, he is the winner, does not it Zachos.

FOUND IN ...

Technology Review

The M.I.T. - Magazine of Innovation

April 2009 Issue

Contents
Current Issue Order
Home Technology Review

What sounds simple, makes a lot of fun here in Bremen and also in Barcelona. It rewarded the jury of the International Mobile Gaming Award the concept with the first place and $ 5000.

"FastFoot-Challenge, the Football for the Game Boy generation's," says founder Tom Nicolai the vision together. The game should create a community which, as Nicolai, on the Internet at
www.fastfoot.mobi true. 600 players have registered and still available for free beta version of the game downloaded. The stage will offer the free program Google Earth, fed with data from the Internet. If the players agree to viewers on virtual aerial photographs the game live or on a later date follow.

Nicolai PhD currently at Technology Center computer science and Information Technology (TZI). The idea for Fast Foot Challenge came to him in 2006, but only in April 2008 he ergatterten, Zachos and two other colleagues, the one-year limited state Exist founder scholarship. To dare the spin-off from the TZI.

For Nicolai, it is the sophisticated simplicity of the game so attractive. The view on a trackable surface of the game follows a simple menu navigation. To the battery of the mobile phone to spare, renewed the show only four times per second. The positions of the other player moves to the cell phone from a central server, which also serves as the interface to the Internet platform and the live system is used, the motion information to Google Earth-compliant playback formats processed.

Urban Nicolai and his team hope that the spread of mobile Internet, the opening of so-called application stores and the provision of programming tools for mobile phones to benefit. In the spring should FastFoot Challenge Google's Android mobile platform to buy, in the summer, then turn the iPhone. Nicolai calculated with a price five to ten euros per license. In addition, he hopes on advertising revenue through its own offerings on the Internet platform.

Competition from other start-ups, the scientists have not yet true, dare to telecommunications companies after its rating has not yet approach the subject. That's why he wants to team with the lead urban use. For next year, he announced more games, and alone with FastFoot challenge he wants in the next four years to reach millions of players.

©
Technology Review, Heise Zeitschriften Verlag, Hannover