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The wireless city of Hasselt

Yesterday evening I went to the city of Hasselt, in Belgium. This is one of the unique cities in Belgium where the city is covered all over by WiFi signals.

Yesterday I was able to follow a tour provided by the people who help with building this application/infrastructure. It's crowdsourcing as we know it, they are just regular people like you and me who have what they call an egg (it's a Dutch expression: "met een ei zitten") or idea and now they have found a place where people help them to realize it. Go to the i-City web site if you want to know more.

There were really nice demonstrations of mobile TV, just watch the live news on your mobile while waiting for the bus. Or write something for the newspaper, well a moderator decides what will be blogged or what will even end up in a real paper news paper. Furthermore a nice demo of a tourist app, where you have the ability to create your own tours with the photos and videos you gathered on your mobile and share them with the rest of the city. E-gov applications, this was really nice with some clicks on your mobile you can send and retrieve information. In the demo they shot a picture of a broken bicycle that was lying on the streets for some days. Just take a picture of the problem and send it, all other info like location, etc. is automatically attached. The tour ended with some kind of city game. Imagine that your wife is shopping for some clothes instead of waiting in the shop and asking yourself why you came along, you can now play some simple but amuzing games even together with other people in the city.

Wow, cool, I want this in my hometown...