Ask your neighbour...idea #30/100...

In contrast to the earlier post of asking my "neighbour" for help, what about asking your neighbour?

In my parent-child hotline posting, Geoff posting a valuable comment:

"Food for thought - My favourite trick is to ring my daughters friends mobile. They always answer."

That's a good tip from Geoff, which led me to the next problem. How do you know who your child is with? For that matter, if you're having difficulty getting through to someone in a hurry, knowing who they're with might help.

Would proximity-based contact work? Possibly, especially if you could detect someone you knew who appeared to be in the vicinity. This would indicate that they are nearby enough to pass on a message, assuming you can get through on their device.

It is also possible to imagine an anonymous service. For example, I could send a message like "If you're with Fred, please tell him to call Paul G". The recipient would be "your contacts near Fred", but I don't have to know who they are. This would therefore circumvent asking the recipients to reveal their permission first in order to receive a location-targeted message. Of course, if they passed on the message, then all is revealed, but they could chose not to. This idea might have other applications, especially in workgroups and using push-to-talk.

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