Nokia Chat + Robot + Plazes

You can now grab the source code and run your own version if you want to try it out!

Ever since my experiments with Nokia Chat and XMPP I’ve had the picture in my mind of an XMPP-driven robot that would accept geographic locations from Nokia Chat and respond with a list of nearby Plazes. This, after all, is the promise of the “location-based future,” is it not?

Tonight I managed to hack something together in PHP, running on my MacBook. You can try it out if you like: you’ll need Nokia Chat running on a GPS-enabled device. Here’s what you need to do.

First, start up Nokia Chat and select Options \| Add Friend:

Nokia Chat + Plazes: Add a Friend - Share on Ovi

Add user reinvented@ovi.com as your new friend:

Nokia Chat + Plazes: Adding reinvented@ovi.com as frend - Share on Ovi

If everything goes according to plan — my robot hasn’t imploded and is still running — you should automatically receive back a welcome message:

Nokia Chat + Plazes: reinvented@ovi.com says hello - Share on Ovi

Next, select Options \| Send \| My location (this will only appear if your GPS receiver is running, and your device knows its location already):

Nokia Chat + Plazes: send my location - Share on Ovi

You’ll receive back an acknowledgement with instructions to send a keyword to look up Plazes:

Nokia Chat + Plazes: acknowledges my location, asks for more - Share on Ovi

Enter a keyword — in this example I entered bar, but you can enter a Plazes category, or, indeed, anything that you can normally enter in a Plazes.com search. After a brief delay you should receive back a list of the three Plazes nearest your current location that match your search:

Nokia Chat + Plazes: get nearby Plazes - Share on Ovi

If you move up and click on the Open link under any of the Plazes, and you have Nokia Maps installed, the location will appear on a map:

Nokia Chat + Plazes: - Share on Ovi

At this point you can add it as a new Landmark, or you can click Exit to go back to Nokia Chat and continue your exploring.

This is a two-hours-old alpha robot, so it’s likely prone to breakage or other weirdness; please bear with me.

This isn’t an official Plazes or Nokia project; it’s just me doing some weekend hacking.

Comments

Jonathan Greene's picture
Jonathan Greene on July 28, 2008 - 02:19 Permalink

I was just writing up a quick blog post on this mashup, but see you’ve taken the bot down …

Peter Rukavina's picture
Peter Rukavina on July 28, 2008 - 12:46 Permalink

I’m working this morning on transitioning the service to an actual server. Stay tuned.

Peter Rukavina's picture
Peter Rukavina on July 28, 2008 - 12:58 Permalink

Ok, the bot is back; you can again befriend reinvented@ovi.com as outlined in this post.

oliver's picture
oliver on July 28, 2008 - 15:13 Permalink

Patch in Yankee for the weather and the Solar Racer for the wheels and you’ll have a robot that delivers take out. Seasonally at least.