Twitter locations are being shared

buzz with twitter locations

I guess I’ve missed this previously, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that tweets posted with locations are fully shared to Buzz.  This is how things should absolutely work, but often times (like with foursquare) you have to click through to see the place rather than simply marking the post.

This tweet was posted via Tweetie 2 with location sharing on … in case you were wondering.

Please don’t turn location updates into info spam

As more people start to use location services like Foursquare  Gowalla we are starting to see an influx of I’m here posts across Twitter and Facebook which is annoying but more importantly carries no value.

In my own usage I find that the pure check-in action stays within the location network.  Anyone who’s linked to me there can see that as desired.  By choosing not to share that simple pin on the map claim, I’m doing two things … not sharing my location directly and reserving the attention any social network friends might have for something I actually have to say.    If I have something to say about the location I’m in, I might choose to push that out to both twitter and Facebook as an update to add a bit of additional context to what I’m doing.

Location should be something of interest.  When we can connect to each other in a meaningful way, things get interesting and should add value to the potential of our conversations as well as lead to potential experiences.

Apple’s cooking their own Social Location

Not too surprising to see, and frankly not real yet … 9to5Mac reports on a patent that covers a pending piece of Apple tech to match and enhance the capabilities currently found in Latitude – at least on the surface.  The goodies within the patent seem to indicate that geo-data will be able to extend to both sms and instant messages making it more of a system wide feature.

I’m hoping this leads to a more standard way to handle location data.  Apple seems “good enough” to start as a source for handling this … I just hope it’s not restricted to Apple only things.  That would be a very Nokia-like approach (Friendview anyone?) and one that while successful within it’s own world, would severely limit the opportunity.  On second thought it does actually sound a lot like what’s baked into Nokia Chat Ovi Contacts.

Location, location, location!

In the past few years, I feel like I’ve tried just about every location service.  Some have certainly offered more than others, but one thing has been sadly consistent and that’s absolutely no consistency in access to your data.  If 2010 can bring one thing, I hope it’s a simplified and federated view into our location data.

Social location services are a very interesting area.  I’ve dabbled across various apps to try and find the magic but have come up short.  The potential is there, but because no one service or perhaps suite of tools enables

  • the right degree of privacy control
  • proactive friend notifications
  • base of users and importantly a way to contact each other either publicly or privately

A quick look back at the list of things I’ve tried in no particular order… Jaiku, Twitter, Latitude, Nokia FriendView, Loopt, Brightkite, waze, Stalqer, dopplr, tripit, fire eagle, Foursquare and Gowalla.  Of all these, only Fire Eagle and Dopplr currently talk and a quick check on Fire Eagle tonight revealed I am in Singapore yet I write this from Katonah, NY.  Dopplr actually knows that’s where I am but for some reason has not shared this info with FE … not that it matters for now.

There’s a clear issue with all of this.  There is no way to share my location data easily across services and situations.  Instead I have to explicitly state or open the app I want to use in order to have things update and shared across my social network.   Unlike status messages, location is not a subjective thing, it’s actual.  You can and should be able to share the degree of accuracy people see and Latitude does this well.  Even the two competing check-in services FourSquare and Gowalla do it differently… Foursquare requires and address if you want the place to be used by others while Gowalla places a pin on the map via GPS.  I prefer the GPS method personally as I almost never know or want to take the time to find the address to simply check-in.  If I fire Latitude up my location will be highlighted within a few moments, but that’s not something I can actually use.

Speaking of using … the three points I was initially making all clearly tie together.

  • I need to have total control over how my location information is shared.  I rarely want to show when I am in my home, but showing the town is cool.
  • With friends in the system, I want to know when they are close and see that as prioritized info in whatever view I’ve got within the app.  For some reason this is not the case with anything.  Latitude sorts randomly when you browse the map, Foursquare sorts by time and Foursquare, Gowalla and Stalqer give me updates on everyone regardless of where they are.  While there are some modifiable settings, it’s not even close to granular enough to be valuable in this context.
  • Having friends in the system is important and since this space is still fragmented there are too many options to choose from to find your friends.  Stalqer did an admirable job linking through Facebook, but Facebook doesn’t actually have a native location system.

Twitter and Facebook will probably duke this out in the end with some competition from Google.  Currently twitter supports location and you can geo-tag tweets via various mobile clients, but this information is so hidden from the main view, it’s essentially a waste to even bother.  Google has quite a few pieces behind the scenes, but so far has not taken them anywhere.  You’ll notice I’ve got a location widget on the sidebar of my blog which will show city-level views via Latitude.  Other than that Latitude is mainly a view only layer on Maps.

I’m sure 2010 will be a hype filled year for location services.  I’m really hoping we’ll see standards that will let these things work together.  I don’t want to entrust my location data to a single provider (yet) though if someone was able to develop the right open federation model it would make things very interesting.

Nokia Chat becomes Contacts on Ovi

Nokia Beta Labs has updated / rebranded the Nokia Chat client into Contacts on Ovi and released versions for all devices except the S60 5th Edition platform which is really only the 5800 for today.  Nokia Chat and now Contacts on Ovi really is a great way to do IM on the go.  Aside from the simple IM handling you can also broadcast your location, send locations to friends and even send a voice message (gone in Contacts on Ovi).  In the latest version, you can also share your current music track much like on a desktop IM client.

What’s new, apart from the brand? I’ll have to first say that the
clients are in a better shape, we’ve resolved lots of bugs that have
been bothering you and us too. Secondly, we’re supporting lots of more
devices now. The new platform we have a client for is S60 3rd Edition
Feature Pack 2. It’s about time, right? We wanted it to look better,
and have more features in it. With the new client available for the
latest models you’ll be able to broadcast the music you listen as a
part of your personal message (for those of you that are in to XMPP,
I’ll just give out that it’s using the PEP extension, which you’ll find
supported in some PC clients too).  [Nokia Beta Labs]

Meet the Nokia N97 – The New Nseries Flagship!

12012008258 - Share on Ovi

(more pictures to come – need more connection speed!)

Today Nokia announced the Nokia N97, the new flagship of the Nseries line.  The N97 brings a QWERTY keyboard to Nseries for the first time as well as continuing the touch UI (S60 5th Edition) introduced in the 5800 Express Music.  The home screen is all new and what I can only describe as a widget-top, giving you instant access to content that matters to you in your connected life.

There’s a clear emphasis on context which enables you to get both geographically and time sensitive information delivered at a glance.  The N97’s homescreen will be customizable to allow both Nokia and 3rd party developers to activate WRT (Web Runtime) widgets without having to launch an application.   Essentially live feeds at a glance.  For the connected the social networking enthusiast, this will be a must have device.

The keyboard slides and tilts from the longer side revealing a very comfortable raised typing surface.  While I only had a limited time to type around it seemed very easy to get used to and absolutely like something on which I could do ton of messaging.  It’s great to see QWERTY FINALLY on an Nseries!  Nokia has typically made you choose between E and N series for a device that does what you want most of the time and with the N97 there’s finally a single unit that can handle everything.

The new homescreen is an awesome way to provide direct access to information within an instant.  During our briefing with Nokia we learned that they consider the N97 a new category of device and one that is more a mobile computer than the prior generation of multimedia computers.  The N97 offers a massive amount of functionality in a very reasonably sized package.  The screen is 640×360 and is just gorgeous.  Contrast was excellent and colors (all 16 Million of them) seemed quite vibrant!  You can customize every part of the homescreen which is remarkably something that we’ve not had previously in S60 devices.  You can add, remove or just slide any of the widgets around to make things just how you like them.  When you rotate the device between portrait and landscape modes, things nicely re-align.

On first glance the N97 compares to the 5800 in size and seems like it’s older brother … until you slide the keyboard out and realize you’ve got an altogether new breed in hand.  While it’s not a small device, the N97 feels great in your hand and can easily be used while walking without needing two hands in most cases.  The virtual keyboards (numbers and T9) were clear and the softkeys seemed eas to access for quick data entry.  Of course for larger text needs a quick flip and you’ve got a real keyboard at your disposal.  Weight (Approx. 150 g) felt semi-comparable to the E71 and in the front pocket of my jeans it was not in any way uncomfortable.

There’s much more to this device than I can possibly do justice in an initial post.  When this goes live I’ll be listening to the keynotes and will report back after further Q&A.

Where’s my Federated Presence?

It’s easy to maintain a single status line across services which lets you report the same update across your social services.  I tend to use Ping.Fm mainly which lets me deliver cross-service updates via email, IM and web including mobile.  What’s missing in this age of unified communications though is the ability to share a richer level of presence.  

By presence of course I mean my actual presence – am I in a meeting, on the phone, on the go or even in a different timezone from you.  All of this information can be relative input for deciding how to best get in touch with someone and there is still no way to do this effectively outside of the expensive enterprise route from companies like Cisco, Avaya, and Microsoft which also require that you use their solution exclusively without taking inputs from other sources.  Of course these inputs should be definable so I don’t share random personal bits with business contacts or important business information across to my Facebookfriends but I realize that’s a degree of complexity that might be more challenging.  Still even the “basic” federation for presence seems to be missing …  

The key thing here is that I don’t want anyone else to have to install or use a particular service for this to work.  I just want this solution to deliver the right level of detail to the right service so my various contacts are informed appropriately.  Not too hard right?