As I write this, I've just finished packing my large army green duffel bag with all the sweaters and heavy socks I expect I'll need for my trip to Paris, France. I know, I know — but even we lazy Internet columnist types need a vacation once in a while.
I'll admit, the trip feels like something of a gamble. I've never been to Paris before. A few days ago, I realized I've never even seen a map of the city. Worse, I don't speak a word of French. But I'm not worried. The odds are weighted in my favor.
I'll be bringing CitiKey, a small application offered by a Swedish company of the same name. The software currently works on Palm handhelds, though a port to Windows CE is in the works, and a stripped-down version is available for mobile phones supporting the WAP protocol. It's available free of charge, though users have to register on the Web site.
CitiKey is its developers' first offering in the nascent field they call "mobile city services." It's an interactive city handbook: sort of an electronic tourism brochure, shopping directory and restaurant guide all rolled into one.
Within the program's 1.3MB footprint are concise descriptions of a bewildering array of restaurants, bars, nightclubs, stores, museums and Parisian attractions of all kinds. The level of detail is impressive in its own right; but top it off with a navigable street map of the entire city, and you can't help but marvel at what CitiKey has achieved.
Say I wanted to explore Paris's famous underground catacombs. With a few taps of my Palm pen, I have an address at my disposal, along with a phone number to call for information. Another tap shows me a street map of the location. Still another, its hours of operation. I'm even told which subway line I can take to get there. (Unfortunately, there's no map that shows how to find my way back out.)
Or, suppose I'm looking for some gifts to bring back home. I can enter in the cross streets of my hotel, and CitiKey will return a list of local shops, arranged in order of proximity.
All this information is stored in a compressed database right on the handheld itself. Once it's installed I don't need Internet access, or to synchronize my PDA with a desktop computer. The entire directory comes with me in my pocket — though CitiKey points out that its master database is updated daily, with revisions available at the Web site.
Paris is actually one of the more recent destinations to join CitiKey's roster. The service debuted in Stockholm in February 1999, and continues to expand throughout mainland Europe. You can now download databases for London, Berlin, Rome, and Amsterdam, in either English or the city's native language. And more cities are on the way.
There's talk of bringing the service to Asia too, and even — you can unpack your bags — to North America. But should CitiKey try to make the leap to major cities in the United States, they're liable to run into some tough competition.
Since March of this year, Vindigo has been quietly rolling out its own "personal navigator" service for Palm handhelds, in larger markets around the country. New York was first, followed by San Francisco, Chicago, Boston and Washington, D.C. Today, Vindigo databases are available for a total of eleven American cities.
Similar to CitiKey, Vindigo's software offers its users a comprehensive guide to each city featured. Restaurants, stores, and clubs are all listed, including addresses and brief descriptions. Navigating the directory is a breeze, with listings divided in to three straightforward categories: "Eat," "Shop," and "Play."
In the "Play" category, they've added something CitiKey so far lacks: film listings. Vindigo promises that every movie in town can be found in its databases, which are updated regularly with current schedules and locations. In Boston and Washington, D.C., this service is extended to other nightlife activities.
Vindigo eschews CitiKey's processor-heavy mapping feature in favor of a more simple, text-based approach: walking directions. Key in where you are, and it tells you how to get where you're going.
CitiKey and Vindigo are only the first offerings in what's sure to be a growing market for location-based information services. The trend opens up new possibilities, both for the startups pioneering for services, and for more conventional businesses as well.
Traditional information services, as found on Web sites like Yahoo!, present their users with vast repositories of data to navigate. Their breadth might encompass the entire nation. They can be customized to reflect a particular geographic area; but so far, they haven't really been able to offer their users information relevant to where they want to go right now. For one thing, you need to be sitting in front of your computer to use them.
First-generation Web clipping services for handhelds, like San Mateo-based AvantGo, have done an admirable job of making online data more mobile. But the focus of the information they provide is still too broad: more suited to the desktop than downtown.
By comparison, personal navigators like CitiKey and Vindigo can already provide information that's relevant not just to your city, but to your street corner. And once the software makes its way to wireless connected devices and mobile phones, even more accurate information about your exact location could be retrieved instantaneously. The software will know how to get where you're going, even if you got lost.
This distinction creates a unique relationship between these next generation navigation services and one market segment not often associated with the benefits of the Web: independent brick-and-mortar retailers.
Each holiday season, we hear about huge online superstores siphoning business away from conventional retail stores. E-commerce has even come to be seen as the enemy of the traditional retailer, particularly in markets like books and CDs. But despite the hype, in truth most customers still prefer to do their shopping in stores.
Analysts expect Americans to spend $858 billion in retail trade this holiday season. But even the most optimistic estimate, coming from the Internet research company eMarketer, puts the dollar amount spent online at no more than $12.5 billion. That's a mere 1.5 percent of the expected total.
And in a survey of Internet users conducted by market analysis firm Active Research, 66 percent of those surveyed claimed they would be even less likely to spend their money online if their purchases were taxed.
Statistics like these show that traditional stores are still far more effective than online retailers at offering customers the shopping experience they want. What's missing are new ways for brick-and-mortar retailers to reach out to consumers. By taking advantage of the same kinds of Internet technologies that gave the e-commerce megastores their inroad, they can keep their competitive edge.
And that's where handheld information services like Vindigo or CitiKey step in. They'll locate the goods or services you want and tell you where to find them, not online, but in your own neighborhood. They're a new kind of interactive navigation tool: one built not for the massive malls and superstores of virtual reality, but for actual reality. Here, and now.
After all, there's a whole big world out there. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a plane to catch.
