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 Nokia Chat + Plazes: Add a Friend - Share on Ovi](http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/large/0302/a6e1a4b566a54d29bbd6810c9a805723.jpg)
Add user reinvented@ovi.com as your new friend:
![Nokia Chat + Plazes: Adding reinvented@ovi.com as frend - Share on Ovi Nokia Chat + Plazes: Adding reinvented@ovi.com as frend - Share on Ovi](http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/large/0302/50e37e870d4f4f6f920bbc76e55e8b9d.jpg)
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 Nokia Chat + Plazes: reinvented@ovi.com says hello - Share on Ovi](http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/large/0302/e145c6b99e214742b4632310107a809b.jpg)
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 Nokia Chat + Plazes: send my location - Share on Ovi](http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/large/0302/d7ea5fb540f54a4d91abaefdded45e61.jpg)
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 Nokia Chat + Plazes: acknowledges my location, asks for more - Share on Ovi](http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/large/0302/9be9129a8b434cc5aa4a869543c45820.jpg)
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 Nokia Chat + Plazes: get nearby Plazes - Share on Ovi](http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/large/0302/68732b2cc0ce4e8d9172cda79353e9ed.jpg)
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 Nokia Chat + Plazes: - Share on Ovi](http://media.share.ovi.com/m1/large/0302/bb7bebe703e44846be8b595a53af682d.jpg)
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
I was just writing up a quick blog post on this mashup, but see you’ve taken the bot down …
I’m working this morning on transitioning the service to an actual server. Stay tuned.
Ok, the bot is back; you can again befriend reinvented@ovi.com as outlined in this post.
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.