Co-ordinating Physical Resources: Some Thoughts

I was in the UK recently and needed to go from plane, to train, underground and taxi, all within a particular timeframe. Although I left home with a plan, inevitably something will change: a meeting is longer or shorter than expected, or an opportunity to take another meeting presents itself. Many 2.0 companies look at "cheapest ticket" solutions, (www.kayak.com www.skyscanner.com) but I think there is a whole other market out there. If I could buy a "Live Ticket", I would. It would tell me that "the next train is 2 miles from here, or 20 minutes by cab (do you want to book a cab, do you want to check train availability etc.). It would be linked between transport systems ("your train is on time"), it would push a text or call to me that allowed me query ( al la www.tellme.com, contained a weblink, or put me through to help desk). Even a simple 2.0 service that allowed me to set up my journey in advance (on Google Maps?) and then texted me with updates as to the current status of my plan, or "next train", "Next plane", and gave me "options" at the end, this would dramatically improve my current experience. If these options are push (appropriate time, place and mode of course), it would decrease the stress and pressure of travel, i.e. it would have strong psychological selling points. It could dynamically "suggest" that I "re-schedule outbound flight at this point in time", it might have learned that I do not like to have less than 45mins at the airport prior to flight time or base it on an evaluation of optimum price : value : risk profile that I have. To those that follow the online space, this all sounds pretty "semantic web". But it doesn't have to be that hard, I think. What would participating companies get for participating in opening up their data? Everything. I don't buy flights, I buy "on time attendance at meetings", (paying for predictable and reliable flights); I buy "ability to take a speculative meeting" (due to low price point); I buy the total cost of getting me to that meeting. A vendor like Blackberry/Nokia with a simple Google Maps application could be pretty much ready to go "out of the box". And it is very much in the telco's interest to enable this as volume of interactions would be exponential. I think we are going to see a lot more of this kind of thinking in the next two years as companies find their train times, flight times, reviews etc. mashed into other services. It will begin with simple outbound texting, but will quickly move to "intelligent co-ordination". And there are very few industries out there that couldn't benefit from thinking about how the confluence of low cost sensors, mashed data, and ubiquitous mobile phones will effect them.

Update: As if "by magic" Forbes Article on Semantic Web and Travel. Sramana Mitra is always a good commentator on the strategic thinking behind Semantic Web. Her thoughts on next generation 3.0 Enterprise can be found here.