Mobile phone will find your friends for you

MOBILE phones that can tell you where your friends are, warn you if it is going to rain and advise if it is worth waiting for the bus could be on sale within a year – developed by Scottish scientists.

Users will simply have to wave the mobile phone in the air to get information about the world around them, as the next generation of phones adopt the technology of the Nintendo Wii to make them easier to use than ever.

Professor Roderick Murray-Smith of the University of Glasgow, who is working on the point-and-find software, has already created prototypes of the "magic wand" phones, and he predicts they will be on the shelves by next Christmas.

While the basic technology is already in iPhones and some Nokia handsets, the computer scientist is developing a host of applications to help people access information from the world wide web in the real world.

Murray-Smith, who has worked for Nokia on other projects, said: "We are working on linking people on to the world wide web in the real world, so they can use social networking sites to locate their friends in the real world, or point their phone at a building or a bus stop and find out the right information."