As a kid I always loved treasure hunts! The excitement, the chase, solving riddles, running around from place to place, cooperating with other members of a team, and doing it all first, to get to the 'treasure'! Not much has changed since, as I always try to take part in my city's yearly treasure hunt.

In a lot of treasure hunts teams are required to use their mobile phones more and more. Mobile phones are the ideal tool to technologically enable a treasure hunt and thus add a lot more spice into the explosive mix of a good treasure hunt. Teams are often required to use their phones in order to collect evidence that they have solved a riddle (e.g. take a picture using their mobile phone camera).

This is just the start however. The mobile phone is much more enabling, and allows you to do a lot more than just that. I've jotted down below some thoughts about ways in which the multimedia, connectivity and location features, the mobile phones offer could be used.

With bluetooth you get connectivity in a certain proximity. Proximity is the A-Z of a treasure hunt, as where you are has everything to do with how well you are doing in the hunt.

Bluetooth could be used to send people near the solution to their riddle (i.e. in the same location) more clues, and also the evidence that they have reached the solution, as a digital artifact on their mobile phone.

Perhaps more importantly, it can also be used in order to track and record the presence of team members in designated locations. This is very important because, in large treasure hunts, teams often cheat by obtaining evidence from other teams when they have not necessarily solved a riddle. (Ok, I know pirates in real treasure hunts also stole stuff from one another, but our treasure hunts are games - not real life, and we are players - not pirates! )

Obviously to do all this you will probably need a decent bluetooth marketing platform (for some examples take a look at this recent post, or just google it).

Bluetooth can also be used to send mobile applications to the players, which will consist the riddle itself. The mobile application can be a simple game which is specifically designed for mobile phones and is much harder for people to send to others from their mobile phone. It can also be much more engaging, interactive and multimedia-enriched.

The mobile phone camera is the ultimate tool to provide evidence of presence. If you're there, you can take a picture of it. Unfortunately, however, this does not go both ways, because if you have a picture of 'it', it doesn't mean you were there. Pictures can be e-mailed or sent via MMS to someone else, so the pictures alone are not enough to provide evidence of the solution. It needs to be combined with evidence of presence in the area where the picture was taken (e.g. geotagging, or use bluetooth to record presence).

Wireless Messaging on the mobile phone can be used to provide instant 2-way communication with players. Clues, riddles, evidence, and most treasure hunt artifacts can be sent from the mobile phone, to enable a quicker and painless transition of information.

The GPS functionality available on an ever-increasing number of mobile phones can provide similar evidence of co-location as bluetooth. Using GPS you can know that a team member has been at a certain location. Also you could use some software that geotags pictures with the current location, and make sure pictures were taken where they were meant to be.

GPS can also help players move around more efficiently using:

What treasure hunt is complete without a treasure map!? The treasure map can have all sorts of hidden information that gets unveiled during the process of the hunt.

However maps are also essential tools for team members that often need (in large treasure hunts) to move around the city in parts of it that they are not necessarily familiar with.

Obviously with GPS and Maps you will need both the appropriate functionality on the mobile phone, but also the appropriate software. (e.g. if you want to geotag your pictures you might want to use something like this).

Treasure hunts are (at least for me) great fun! And I think there's a lot more potential to make them even more enjoyable using the latest technology to our advantage. Any ideas you have are welcome!