[CeBIT] Compass2008 - Bejing's Digital Travel Guide

    Walking through the Samsung or O2 booths at CeBIT is a bit like cutting your way through a jungle. These over-sized retail stores offer a glimpse at the latest handsets. If you can get to them. Push past the gadget hungry crowds and armies of conscripted sales reps and you'll find the reason we came. Future Parc is the ugly duckling of CeBIT. Conveniently located at the absolute end of the conference grounds, Future Park casts aside the glitz and glamour of the main halls for real innovation (not the kind written on 500 foot banner ads).

    Perhaps the most relevant to Vancouver's mobile scene, Compass2008 is a digital travel guide to Beijing developed by the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology in conjunction with a number of other partners. Compass is essentially a pocket translator, built to allow for basic tourist conversation (where is? how much? etc) while providing some helpful cultural hints along the way.

    Our stranded tourist begins by selecting a phrase in their native language (currently supported are English and German). The device then speaks the equivalent phrase aloud in Chinese and also displays it on the screen in written Chinese. The tourist then hands the device to the Chinese speaker who can then select a response from a list of displayed Chinese options. Since most tourist conversation follow a linear structure (Is there a free table? Can we order food? Can we pay?) the application arranges phrases in a manner such that the conversation can continue naturally without hunting around menus for the next phrase.  Though limited, this form of conversation helps anxious tourists get their barrings. Additionally, Compass tries to facilitate deeper cultural understanding, advising tourists to be experimental in ordering food by providing hints about Chinese dishes through filtering menus (Are you looking for sweet or sour food? Chicken or Pork?). It provides a list of recommended establishments serving said meals. Similarly tacked on are basic information about shopping, landmarks and maps of the city.

(large readable characters and colourful icons are the norm in Compass)

    While not technologically ground breaking, I believe Compass succeeds in reducing a Lonely Planet to mobile form. By offering a list of typical tourist situations and then providing phrase and cultural information about them, Compass is a blueprint for similar applications worldwide. The challenge to the creators of Compass will remain in its distribution. Due to location ofBeijing and the nature of the Olympics Games, most tourists should arrive in China through a select number of airports. By offering Compass for free download by deploying bluetooth distribution devices at these airports (along with the proper marketing materials), Compass has a real chance to succeed.

    Whatever happens with Compass, Vancouver has a lot of learn. A lot of eyes are going to be pointing North soon.

 -jb