As James Mejia GS runs the New York City Marathon next weekend, Internet users will be able share the experience, charting his progress through the global positioning system he will carry in his fanny pack.
In Mejia's fanny pack there will be a hand-held pocket PC called an I-PAQ, which will use Blue Tooth technology to gather information from an antenna, and a digital cell phone. The technology is an experiment of operations research and financial engineering professor Alain Kornhauser.
Kornhauser, himself a marathoner, said he conceived of the idea after he found that those interested in a runner's progress usually cannot find them in such a large crowd.
Currently, Kornhauser is just "playing around" by working on this project, he said, but his research also has "serious overtones."
During the Nov. 2 marathon, Internet users will be able to view Mejia's location and write him messages, which he will be able to hear through text-to-speech software — a technology through which text is read aloud by the computer.
Mejia will not be able to reply with long answers to Internet users, Kornhauser said. Instead, his I-PAQ will have buttons, which will allow Mejia up to four responses.
Some answers may be as succinct as "yes" and "no." Therefore, Internet users will have to anticipate such answers and accordingly write questions that can be answered in such a format. Mejia will also have the option of turning the device off.
The website for the project can be found at http://live.alk.com but requires a username and password to log in. Viewers are shown a map of the United States and can zoom in or out to different locations in the country.
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