Networking by License Plate

For a hundred years people have been passing each other on the roads without realizing they had an email address tattooed to their bumper - their license plate. The combination of state and numbers provides a unique identifier that was originally just intended to prove that you paid your vehicle taxes.

Because vehicle registration information is (rightfully) protected by stringent privacy laws most people just assume that, unless there's some legal matters involved, there's no way for them to use a license plate to talk to another driver. That has all changed.

It's now possible for anyone to send a message, any message, to someone just by addressing the message to their license plate. So the obvious question is - how? The answer is simple and PL8SCAN.com was the first to implement it and provide a service for anyone to use.

We've always thought of sending messages as a sort of "push" process. You create a message and then find a way to force it to go to the person you want to receive it. In order to do that you needed info on where to push it. What if we changed that paradigm just a little? What if we changed the message process from a "push" to a "pull" process. Simply put that means that the recipient doesn't get messages addressed to them until they ask for them. That way the sender just needs a unique identifier that his intended recipient can use when asking for messages. It could be anything. In fact the Post Office has a method for doing this right now. You can send a message to a name and General Delivery to a city and the only way the recipient will get it is to go in and ask for it.

All you need to implement this message process is a unique identifier and a place to store and find messages. That's exactly what PL8SCAN has done. Using either their online or text messaging interface you can Post (send) any message to any license license plate. Anyone can then Scan (lookup) messages for any license plate. PL8SCAN took it one step further though. If you become a member they will do the Scanning for you and as soon as a message is Posted to a license plate you care about they can send you an email and/or a text message notice, all the while protecting the privacy of sender and receiver because the notice comes from PL8SCAN not the message originator.

So that's what this lens is all about. PL8SCAN.com is an active service and for the time being you can join for free - even text messaging. For more info on how to use the service there's the PL8SCAN 101 page and a detailed FAQ. There's also a blog available where you can find more info and comment about anything.

Stay tuned, there's more to come as PL8SCAN evolves based on your feedback...