Ok, so the 'mobile translator' idea had me re-thinking about an idea that's bounced around my head for years now, especially since reading 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'. Many people have pursued this idea for year but it seem that we're closer to ever. Devices like the Nokia N810 and iPhone 3G seem to have most of the features you might need to make something like this happen. The other really neat thing that's happened is that the open source data needed to make this happen has become available.
The devices now have a reasonably large display at a reasonably high resolution. It's even touch sensative with an input mechanisim. The other important part is that they have a world wide connectivity solution, the iPhone 3G more then the Nokia N810. Finally, most of these devices now have the capability to store huge quantites of data (16+gb). One the data side, services like Wikipedia and OpenStreetMaps have a humongous amount of free data available to users.
The idea would be to create a multi-purpose application that is able to provide data to the regular traveler. This kind of data would include local weather, local currency exchange, news, maps, resturants, etc. Part of the data would have to live locally on the device, that why it's important to have so much space available on the device. The other part of the data would be brought from the net, that's why having net connectivity is important. This live or near live data would be pulled in from the net. For example, currency exchange and weather would be near live but resturants and maps can be less the realtime.
Ok so the question is what data would a user want: weather, traffic, resturants, gas stations, maps, directions, currency exchange, emergency services, embassy contact, hotel information, language translation. The is more but I can't seem to think of it right now :)
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