One small flaw in the plan there. GPS needs a clear line of sight to the sky. You will have SOME success through a mall's skylights. But it will be absolutely NO GO in a parking garage due to all the floors of thick reinforced concrete. Cell phones enabled with GPS navigation have to have LOS to the sky just like an automotive or dedicated handheld GPS. All my Nextel handsets were telenav capable and if I didn't sit the phone up towards my dashboard, it wasn't able to locate my posistion.

My Pharos GPS unit will lose signal underneath a gas station awning.

@MrEvil: You MIGHT wanna actually read the article instead of just the headline when replying to an article ;)

@MrEvil: Yeah, before the last firmware update my N95 couldn't find a GPS signal even outdoors on a cloud-free day. For the plan to work, it would definitely require a different solution than current GPS technology.

Check the original article for some suggestions from a reader on alternative solutions.

So, this would be a MPS Mall Positioning System. My dad and I were talking about this sort of thing a couple years ago. The only problem with the system that we thought up involved picking up a device from the customer service or the maps.

I think part of the evil mall magic is making you walk past crap you didn't want walk past. This seems counter intuitive to that scheme but perhaps user demand could win out. (Yeesh 2 sentences in a row that end in prepositions. What's that all about? 3!)

This sounds like the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Can't anyone read a map on a sign in the mall anymore? Locating a seat in a theatre? Great, a lighted screen to distract from the movie.

Who goes to the mall anymore anyway? Can't we come up with better idea's for technology?

I'm still waiting for this technology to come to grocery stores. I spent forever the other day looking for a bag of mints in the store (granted I don't shop at that particular one all the time, but still).

I would definitely go for this if it also included having store inventory indexed and available (via some google-like thing) so that not only can I get to the mall via GPS, but I can quickly find whatever I want via MPS and get the heck out, especially this time of the year when people go from hah-hah insane to completely bat-poop insane.

@goodkitty: I have already seen something like this in the Big Y supermarkets around here(Its a brand local to the Northeast). They have a little kiosk where you can type in what you are looking for and it tells you what aisle.

Never mind not being able to get a GPS Signal in a closed area but I can hardly even pick up a phone signal or in a Shopping mall. How do they plan on getting this to work?

Good lord this is pointless. First, if you go to a mall, you need help. Second, if you can't read a sign you need more help. Third, unless you are shopping in Mall of the Americas or the Palisades Shopping Center you really shouldn't need something like this as the damn malls are not that big, so if you can't find the store then you should have just stayed home.

@faust1200: I agree. I think this is the same reason many of the digital touchscreen map systems I saw for the Grocery store created years ago, never caught on. They want you to go places and walk in areas you dont normally go in.

Also, can they come up with a hand-shaped device to put up your ass which is capable of manipulating your mouth and vocal cords and make the purchasing decisions for you as well? That way you can just follow the GPS unit to the right store and let the hand take care of the rest! All you have to do it remember to take it out when you shit.
Seriously, is this where we're fucking heading?

This is kinda old. In Ginza they're already doing something similar with RFID tags throughout the city. Though this is through a proprietary device, rather than using BT through an existing phone. Also GPS instructions on your phone in Japan even tell you which car on the train to get on so that you're optimally positioned for the stairs at your destination.

@LTS!: I think the monetary advantages to this system are more in targetted advertising. Like if when you walk by a Gap it texts you a 10% off coupon. You could also market this device to helicopter parents, or soccer moms who are paranoid that some stranger is going to kidnap their child in the mall (though the probability of this is extremely low considering the stat: 354,100 broad-scope family abductions as compared to 3,200 to 4,600 legal-definition nonfamily abductions each year)

GPS is really the wrong way to go. A few years back I saw a demo of where.com (litterally www.where.com). They had the usual booth bunnies walking around the convention hall, but at the booth you could see where everyone was on a screen.

This would probably work very well in a mall type situation. If your location was fed back into a little hand-held device, it could know where you were.

Thinking a bit ahead, you could do a bunch of things, such as targeted advertising. The device could ask "What do you want to shop for today". You click "Birtday - 20 year old female", it could suggest some stores to hit up for ideas.

I can see the headlines now, "Man walks off balcony into food court fountain." "The victim of this incident said, "I was just following the GPS. It told me it was this way to Sears!""

I've always thought, at least in the US, you could ditch GPS and just navigate using WiFi signal strength between StarBucks hot-spots. Sure there might be a few dead spots, but not many.