[*Whatever By The Books*]

Otaku Review brought this interesting ‘new’ device, Navikare, to my attention a few days back. No, it’s not navi-care…While Navi certainly stands for Navigation, Kare (ka-reh) is short for Kareshi, or boyfriend. Also…where’s GPS-tan?? You’ll have to make do with tenuously-technology-related pictures for this post..sigh.

It seems the Japanese have finally capitalised on the possibility for otaku needing tour guides. Since it says ‘Drama CD’ on the AnimeVic link, I’m presuming it’s nothing as high-tech as a GPS — but as Otaku Review says, who is to say it isn’t possible in future?

Okay, so it could well be bad for business if you’re a tour guide. XD But I don’t usually go on tours anyway, though I’d definitely go for this if it’s affordable. Let me backtrack for a bit.Last year (2008), Niisama and I went for Ghostgarden at the Botanic Gardens, which was running as part of Sydney Festival 2008. It was the first time I’d used a GPS; the event was free (just needed to leave ID and some personal information), and we were off and running with our shiny GPS program. While I can’t say the actual program’s content was much good (very perplexing and artsy), the method was pretty cool.

The GPS led us, much like a normal GPS (or a game) would, towards certain hotspots. Once there, a flash movie would play, and we’d be directed towards the next hotspot.

 Strangely enough, I’ve never thought about it as a tour guide system, but something very very similar could well work. Replace all the music when we were walking around with steady chatter. Prefer muzak? Change the settings. Would like to hear more about events and less about restaurants? Again, change the settings.

And who’s to say we can’t have more than one hotspot? “What do you want to do now?” could prompt for a variety of suggestions — all just nearby. Or a simple bus/train trip away, calculated and presented to you right on the GPS, since it would have access to timetables. And it seems people have realised the same thing.

While we’re on the topic of GPSes, it might be worth noting that a GPS version voiced by popular seiyuu (Kugimiya Rie, Norio Wakamoto) was released early last year, downloadable for around 880yen.

The GPS Tour Guide idea isn’t new. In fact, googling ‘gps tour guides’ (no quotes) give me well over 27 million responses, and all the results in the first page seem relevant. Unfortunately, nothing for Gold Coast, which I’m visiting. :( Sigh, looks like I’ll still have to bother with bus and train timetables.

One in particular, SmartAlecGPSTours, seems to go for $35 rented for a full day. That’s pretty damned affordable to me. Not sure if it’s a legit site, though. XD So yes. If someone offered me the program to buy, no thanks; but if I could rent the GPS sets, I’d definitely like to try it out.

What do you guys think? If the program retailed for 40AUD, would you rather rent it at 30AUD instead? I might go for the former if I can get regular update patches, and had a GPS; but since I don’t have one, I’d happily go with the latter… (especially if I’m on holiday overseas)

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