The World Clock Project is a user generated site dedicated to telling you the current time in your local time zone through various photos of clocks that folks are able to upload via Flickr or email. The site prefers photos of public clocks; besides no one wants to see your 1986 Owl Clock.
Check it out and send your clock photos to clocks@worldclockproject.org or, if you're a Flickr user, join the World Clock
Project Flickr group.
A reader forwarded me an article from Forbes about Apple's new plan to turn their iPhones and similar devices into an advanced ordering device. As the article points out, this sheds a whole new light on the Starbucks/Apple partnership. Currently Apple and Starbucks came together to offer Apple users with an iPhone or iTouch free wi-fi at select Starbucks locations (with more coming this year) and in return Apple agrees to help push Starbucks Music through their devices. While connected to Starbucks network your Apple device will begin playing music that is playing in the Starbucks location over the speakers and if you happen to like what's playing you can purchase it from the iTunes Store right then and there.
Now Steve Jobs and the rest of Cupertino are looking build a system to allow you to avoid lines at places like Starbucks. A patent was filed by Apple on December 20, 2007 and it describes a technology that could work through your typical Apple devices as well as PDAs and cell phones. The proposed system would allow consumers to place an order wirelessly through a device and chime the user once their order was ready for pickup. As Forbes puts it, "The technology promises to morph Apple from the business of simply selling gadgets and music and movies that can be played on those devices into an intermediary in all kinds of exchanges."
The system would also be designed to track consumer purchases and where they shopped as well as what they bought. This information would obviously be useful to the stores as well as potential advertisers if Apple opens up a can of worms one day by serving ads through their devices in exchange for consumers having access to use the ordering service, which given the way our society accepts blatant advertising won't be that surprising.
The whole concept makes a lot of sense and could work nicely with the right partners and demographic. Obviously starting with Starbucks and the lines that some people endure for their daily coffee seems like an automatic homerun, not to mention a more affluent and tech savvy customer base. This is definitely one thing to keep an eye on for 2008. It will be interesting to see what other avenues and applications Apple tries to insert their wi-fi enabled devices into.
