Fans of Harry Potter might be pleased to learn that the Weasley family’s magic clock may soon be on the market.
Designer John McKerrell is developing the WhereDial at his desk at DoES Liverpool, the communal workshop space he has helped to run since July.
McKerrell’s gadget uses information sent from iPhones and other GPS-ready mobile devices to follow members of a family or other group from home, to the commute, to work and to, of course, mortal peril.
Like many of the projects fostered by DoES, the WhereDial is a hybrid of art and technology.
Working on this principle, DoES has been running ‘Maker Nights’ in partnership with the Liverpool John Moores University’s (LJMU) Open Labs programme since January.
These informal sessions let artists, software designers and electrical engineers meet and exchange creative and entrepreneurial ideas.
“The artists have great ideas and need ways to achieve them with technology, while what the tech people do with it is very discreet,” said Paul Freeman, another DoES founder member.
“We want to marry the technology aspect with the artistic aspect to make really advanced, great-looking things.”
For LJMU’s Andrew Goodwin, the Maker Nights are a way of raising Liverpool’s prospects as a digital and creative hub.
“It’s got great potential,” he said.
“There’s a lot of very good companies – a lot of the time it’s just about bringing those people together.”
Not all the projects support by DoES are quite so whimsical as the WhereDial.
Paul Kinlan, a ‘developer evangelist’ for Google, has made DoES Liverpool the centre of his mission to equip small businesses with free web hosting and e-mail, operating from its premises in the Gostins Building, Hanover Street.
The bargain-basement rates for the rooms on the building’s fourth floor (which is otherwise empty) were welcoming to the DoES crew.
Costs for developers range from a permanent desk at £150 a month, to ‘hot desking’ with wi-fi and mains electricity for £8 per day.
But DoES’s six founders members supervise the space on a voluntary basis.
In the words of John McKerrell: “DoES Liverpool is trying to help people make their hobbies into businesses.”
You can find out more about the WhereDial from it's very own blog at http://blog.mapme.at/wheredial/
Author: Jack from Nerve