Spend-a-penny SMS service starts flowing
From sat nav to Sat Lav
If you’re caught short in central London tonight then just text Westminster Council (WC), because it has launched a loo-locating texting service.
Mobile-enabled geeks out on the pi** now need only text the word ‘toilet’ to 80097 and the service will text you back the street name of your closest water closet. The service is called Sat Lav and was designed by student Gail Knight.
A spokesperson for WC told Register Hardware that its service communicates with nearby mobile phone masts to triangulate your location. Sat Lav includes the details of 40 toilets and covers 8.5 square miles of Westminster.
We couldn't resist a try and so sent a text to Sat Lav. It's a good job we weren't bursting, because the reply took 7-10 minutes to arrive. And when it did come through, the exact location of the toilets were so vague that it would have taken us ages to find them. We'd have burst by then...
It’s not so much that Ken Livingstone has suddenly become an avid texter, but more because WC claims that 45,460 litres of urine is at risk from ending up on the city’s streets, thanks to those not willing - or unable - to wait.
The service is available now at 25p per text, a little more than spending a penny. Let's hope the money goes to building more outhouses.
COMMENTS
@MacDonalds is a toilet
As a matter of fact, any restaurant, particularly fast food ones, has toilets that you may use. Ditto for petrol stations. And they're so ubiquitous that you don't even have to ask anyone for directions to the nearest McDonalds or BP.
Of course what would be clever...
would be to analyse the locations from which the service was requested and use that information to guide the in-stall-ation of further conveniences.
Joined up government.
MacDonalds is a toilet
Since Macs are de facto toilets anyway I suggest forcing them to add additional free bogs. Extra entrance needs to be created so people won't have to navigate through throngs of yobs stuffing themselves on big macs. If MacDonalds doesn't agree - close their shop:)
@ John Taylor
It beggars belief that we can put a person on the surface of the Moon, yet we cannot design a public toilet which is physically impossible to vandalise.
(My suggestion: have French-style squatting toilets -- after all, it's only the same as what you'd have to do anyway otherwise -- so no seat to rip off and also providing a handy floor drain; flushed from the main, so no cistern to break and flood the place, and entered via a labyrinth, so no lock to break. This probably can be improved upon.)
Public toilets should be funded from general taxation -- after all, taxes are the subscription charge we pay to live in a civilised society.
Litres?
What is the correct El Reg unit for this? or maybe 45,460litres is a "London night out"
