What's the big idea?

As we presented this at the midway event I thought we better get it up on the blog! The whole idea of Happy Packages was to enable the people of Bristol to leave digital gifts around the city for their friends. The application we are working on which looks like fulfilling that most literally is the latest evolution of the Happy Stamps concept. We are calling it Happy Packages for that very reason.

The idea is that the user creates a trail where they choose the locations, the clues, and the rewards for a friend.

The process starts by visiting a website. Using an interactive Google map they can easily make the trail in minutes. Choosing the location is done by clicking on the map and dragging the markers to the desired places. The rewards can be images or text chosen by the user, so in-jokes and personal photos are encouraged to make it a really personal experience for the recipient.

This all gets bundled up and send to the friend's mobile, so they can start the trail straight away! It could be designed to be done in an afternoon or a month. Using GPS the application knows when the user is within range of one of the designated locations and supplies the appropriate reward. Only when they find the first location are they given the clue for the second, so they have to follow the trail in the order intended by the creator.

One neat use of this we have thought of is that the last location is the friend's favourite bar or coffee house and the reward is a voucher for a free drink. The application could make web requests for rewards so the content provided can be dynamic.

As not many handsets currently support GPS we are using a separate device called BlueNext (cost about £25) which gets GPS information and transmits it to a mobile via Bluetooth. Of course in the future lots more phones will have GPS!

We will look to be demoing this in the next week or so in (and out!) the studio. Although Happy Packages is all about Bristol there isn't actually anything to constrain the application to this city!