For more than a year now people have been forecasting that GPS phones would mesh with social networks. It's potentially a compelling combination of not only what you are doing, but where you are doing it (and with whom, once we all get connected).
It's an area I've been researching and experimenting in, and one I predict is about to really take off.
I previously blogged about GPS and the traveller, and being able to have the folks at home keep up with your travels, see photos and other media right in the place on the globe where they occurred. Following someone feels like you're watching their journey in realtime, with very little effort from the travelers end (no more late nights doing bulk e-mails to the whanau, this happens auto-magically as you go).
Recent development have see a few new players on the market and a new cast member, in the form of social networks. Let's look at some of those:
- Google Latitude is an application which lets you track nominated friends on a map and chat via Google chat.
- NokiaviNe tracks your current location, let's you save trips and upload photos, I've commented about this in a previous blog.
- Twitter has really caught on as a preferred social interaction medium, and is being extended by it's users all the time with new functionality, the ability to add photos to your tweet is such an example. Will location awareness be added to twitter? I toyed with Twibble a GPS add on to Twitter, but too few people were using it yet for it to really work. Plus, the extra 20 characters of location data really eats into your 140 character allotment.
Other more minor players in the field include:
Checking all these out, had me wondering about another potential mash up of Twitter, Google Latitude and Flickr.
As is often the case when you think of these things, someone is doing it - and its called 'Bliin', named after the champagne 'Guy Blin Laurent' (off to a good start in my estimation!).
Bliin has been dubbed by one commentator as 'the best location app you've never heard of'.
Bliin consists of two parts a small app you download to your phone, (available for Blackberry, javaME phones, Windows Mobile and iPhone), you start this app to 'Go Live', allowing others to see you. There's a mobile version of the website, showing the standard feature of 'you on a map', and you can also enable recording a journey as a 'Trip' which allows you to group photos and other media to this session. Media can be uploaded as you go via you mobile browser or email, this can be fun for followers, as photos pop up as you travel along, or you can upload your photos later. Not many surprises so far, but go to the site and that's where the fun starts. I have to admit the site takes a quite a while to get used to as tabs change their functionality depending on the context (world, person, photo etc), but it's worth persisting. Your uploaded photos will be positioned on the world map where they were taken (they are linked via the time they were taken and your GPS location at the time - currently GPS is too hard on battery life to have on all the time). Photos can be added to groups, locations and albums. You can message individuals, join groups of like minded people, and link your photos to other groups or albums.
Public photos can, and are, commented on, which starts conversations. Here's one of mine in the coffee group that elicited a couple of comments.
Trips have their own unique URL so you can send a link to any of the folks at home interested in your trip, and they need not be a Bliin user. Here's a trip I did from Wellington to Rotorua. The ability to do this is lacking in NokiaviNe.
You can go to any place on the globe and click 'Explore area' to see who is in the current view and any pictures that have been uploaded relating to the area. To see what I've taken around Martinborough in the last couple of weeks, click here, you might want to zoom in 3 or 4 times and click the 'Explore area' button at the bottom of the screen (works well if you set the map source set to Google Hybrid).
So does this mean even more time updating another social networking site? Not necessarily, you can link Bliin and Twitter so that tweets update your Bliin status and vice versa, and also you can also link Facebook to Twitter.
Want to know what a social network is like at the beginning? Well, this give you a taste as there are just 27,000 users so far. The small number of users gives it a 'family' feel and an interesting way to make new friends.
If you're interested in this type of technology - give Bliin a go I highly recommend it.
PS: A big thanks to FrankvE who spotted my viNe blog, pointed me to Blinn, and helped me getting to grips with it (and you do need a personal guide!).
