The Good NET Guide

Posts Tagged ‘functionality’

Brightkite is tricky. Tricky and smart.

While larger than most of their location-based rivals with over 2 million users, they know that in the past year they’ve lost some momentum to the newer check-in services like Foursquare and Gowalla. So they’re trying to do something unique to swing momentum back in their favor.

Today, at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, Brightkite is unveiling its new Group Text service. It’s both a feature on the website and a standalone application in the App Store (it should be available shortly). With it, Brightkite is latching onto one of the most popular and fast growing categories in mobile applications: group texting. Unlike regular text messaging, this type of app allows you to message many people all at once (and go back and forth). And better, in a world where cell providers are still managing to rip-off users with their text message bundles or $0.15 rate per-text, group texting is absolutely free.

Services such as textPlus have already made the functionality very popular on the iPhone, and now Brightkite hopes that will translate into converting different types of users over to its core location-based service. The reason is that built-in to the Brightkite Group Text app is the core Brightkite functionality itself. While it’s a bit buried to the left hand side of the menu, you can both check-in at venues, and get check-in updates from other users in the app.

It’s a smart play. As other location services such as MyTown have proven, there’s a market to get users outside of the traditional early-adopter crowd into location by doing something novel (in their case, a straight-up Monopoly-type game). Group texting users seem to be rabid about the software, so why not give them a little location-based bonus to play around with if they desire?

At the same time, this app provides a nice compliment to the Brightkite service itself. With it, users get another social outlet to communicate with, sending messages or pictures, and having them threaded both in the app and online. And yes, it still works with traditional SMS messaging, as Brightkite was lucky enough to be granted a texting shortcode (41414) and it can work with these threaded conversations. For example:

By adding three digits to the end of the code, each person can now have 100 simultaneous threaded text conversations running on their phone.
41414-001 = conversation 1
41414-002 = conversation 2

And thanks to the SMS support, you can contact anyone in your address book, not just those using the app.

The service is now live on Brightkite’s site, and look for it later today in the App Store.

Yesterday brought news that Facebook is planning to launch its location offering at its f8 conference in the end of April. In first reporting the news, the New York Times noted that “the company was not trying to beat the smaller location-based social networks, such as Loopt, Foursquare and Gowalla.” From what we’re hearing, that’s true — because they could be using some of those services to federate check-ins.

How do we know? Because it appears that a Facebook employee has been showing the app around to friends. One person who has seen it notes that the icon for the location feature has a pushpin on a map. This was apparently a beta version of an app, but the functionality, if Facebook chooses to go with it, would likely be built into the massively popular Facebook iPhone app.

When reached for comment, all Facebook would say is, “We are constantly experimenting with new ideas and products internally. We don’t have anything more to share at this time.” That’s not exactly a denial at all.

What Foursquare and Gowalla (the two location apps specifically cited by a source) had to say was more interesting. Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley danced around the idea of working with Facebook on such a feature, but notes that anyone can access their check-in data through Foursquare’s API. And in fact, plenty of users are already pushing their check-ins to Facebook through Connect, he notes. Also, this page is sort of interesting. It’s what we call a placeholder.

Meanwhile, Gowalla founder Josh Williams said a bit more:

It’s no surprise that Facebook is wading into the location waters (cannonball!) — our ultimate goal at Gowalla is to provide the easiest and most fun way to share location with friends, regardless of where that information is distributed… Facebook, Twitter, etc. It will be important for folks like Facebook and Twitter to clearly spell out how this information is used and displayed.

That suggests that both Facebook and Twitter have been looking at ways to import check-in data. Twitter already syndicates the data through its Geolocation API, but as more and more players get involved in the space, it wouldn’t be surprising at all for the upstart players like Gowalla and Foursquare to ask the platforms (Facebook and Twitter) to make it more clear which data is being sent from where. And make no mistake, based on what we’re hearing, that’s exactly what Facebook aims to be with location: a platform. Yes, like their good buddies Twitter.

[photo: flickr/24oranges.nl]

When I wrote that location would be this year’s Twitter at SXSW, I also meant that Twitter’s geolocation would be this year’s Twitter at SXSW. The service has just turned on geolocation on its website today for the first time.

While Twitter’s geolocation feature has been live through its API since last November, there was no sign of integration into the main twitter.com site until now. As you can see in the screenshot above, for tweets tagged with location, right next to the source of the tweet there is a location placemarker. When you hover over it, it turns blue, and clicking on it brings up a little Google map showing the location that tweet was sent from.

You can see these maps as overlays both on individual tweet pages, and on tweets in your main stream. In some cases, depending on how Twitter geolocation API is being used, it looks like place names are even passed through to Twitter. For example, here’s a tweet sent from Foursquare that also says where the tweet is being sent from.

The timing of this move by Twitter is significant. Earlier today, the New York Times reported that Facebook would unveil its answer to location next month at its f8 conference. Twitter’s first-ever Chirp conference takes place just one week before f8. Google, meanwhile, is in the game with Latitude and to some extent Buzz (but could have been in it a lot more). And of course, every app and their mother appears to be launching with some sort of location functionality at the SXSW in Austin, Texas, which begins on Friday. Many of those apps use Twitter’s geolocation API to pass the data back to Twitter, so it makes sense that this would be a good time to turn the functionality on for the website.

Update: It looks like Twitter has just turned off the location functionality after having it on for a bit. Look for it to come back shortly — certainly some time before SXSW.

[thanks Chad]

It’s a little surprising to see a Twitter application coming out of Fuze Box (formerly CallWave), which creates visual collaboration product. The company has clearly caught the Twitter bug (albeit a little late) and today is launching Tweetshare, an third party Twitter app that allows anyone to immediately publish any type of content to the web, including HD video, presentations, images and more and automatically start Twitter conversation threads around their content. It’s kind of like FriendFeed meets Twitpic or Twitvid. Tweetshare has also rolled out a companion iPhone app that allows mobile users to upload content, tweet and create discussions on the Tweetshare platform.

A social alternative to static landing pages, Tweetshare aims to be a Twitterfied-Facebook Fan Page. Twitter users can post relevant content, such as presentations, images, videos and PDFs, and can also Tweet from the platform. Any comments made on a Tweetshare page or similarly, made on Twitter in response to posted content is also threaded on the page. A free application, Tweetshare also provides measurement and analytics tools, including polling functionality and the ability for users to become a fan of a brand’s Tweetshare Fan Page. And similar to YouTube channels and Facebook pages, Tweetshare Fan Pages can be branded and customized.

The site is missing Facebook connect, but Fuze Box says this will be rolled out soon. Of course, Mixx offers branded Twitter channels through TweetMixx, which offer some of the functionality of Tweetshare. And Tweetmeme also offers a similar product. Its unclear if there is any monetization that can be made from the Tweetshare, but the application seems that it could be useful.

Fuze Box has a pretty unique history as far as startups go. CallWave was founded in 1998 and went public in 2004, trading on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol CALL. After reaching a peak soon thereafter of over $15 per share, the stock dropped steadily, dipping as low as 50 cents early this year. Deciding to cut its losses, the company delisted itself from NASDAQ on Monday after buying back shares from public shareholders at a 44% premium over the current market value and paying out a total of $10 million. Last summer, the company rebranded itself as Fuze Box and launched Fuze Meeting, which it’s pitting as a sleeker, lighter, and cheaper alternative to services like WebEx.

Although the company has experienced some tough times over the past few years, it appears to be in a better place now. And the startup is obviously broadening its product base. However, while a little late to the Twitter frenzy, Fuze Box is moving in the right direction.

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Remember that guy who made the DuckPhone iPhone app? And how his app was rejected due to “Minimum User Functionality?” Well, Apple just approved his app after he added some news streams and a twitter feed from the stars if Jersey Shore. It just goes to show that one man’s dumb garbage app is another man’s acceptable piece of useful software.

Justice, friends, has been served.

Remember that guy who made the DuckPhone iPhone app ?

Original post: 
Duckshead Revisited: Apple approves DuckPhone after minor changes

You can get this functionality in an iPhone app ( onOne ), but it probably kills your battery, and besides: in photography, more accessories equals more glory. So check out this little doodad — it hooks onto your camera’s hot shoe and beams a signal to a little LCD monitor, where you can adjust aperture, take an exposure, and so on. The only trouble is that it doesn’t seem widely available, and I’m not really sure what the resolution is.

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Simple wireless live view monitor lets you control your DSLR from a distance

There are people out there who take to World of Warcraft ’s Auction House like NYU Stern graduates take to Wall Street. The Auction House, for those unawares, is a place where WoW gamers can buy and sell in-game items using in-game currency.

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Man alive, the World of Warcraft economy is quite elastic!

We all know that sleeping is a good thing. It refreshes us.

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Science vindicates afternoon naps, yet again

Exciting news, friends. I’ve just come back from the future, and I have some news to share.

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Remeber that post about the wire shoe thing?