Free location alerts in Central London

A FREE location based service called Myplace is being employed by UK Telco, BT, to try to entice users onto its Openzone public Wi-fi service.

Apparently, the service initially works in Central London and the West End and can only be accessed properly by those on Openzone. Otherwise the service thinks you are in Leicester Square.

There's a whole bunch of useful categories under 'find my nearest' but sadly there's no listing for pubs. Perhaps that's because the service was developed in conjunction with the City of Westminster council.

Content is actually currently provided by the likes of Time Out, Love Theatre, Kodak, and London Pass, although there's a hint that after six months the information may no longer be free.

On the technical side, BT Myplace is supported by both Intel and Cisco.

Indeed, Ciso's Delyth Harris commented, "Able to detect the location of the user, the technology allows BT My Place to provide context aware communications and service delivery to residents, business commuters, and visitors."

BT also claims that the system is better than rival offerings because it easily allows users to input and store their personal preferences such as Thai cuisine. There's no option for Timothy Taylor, however.

Supposedly as users trot around London, My Place will send them alerts to say they are close to favoured locations. Not sure how those alerts are delivered, though.

The INQ will let you know when we've managed to try it out. µ