So now we've got - Ecademy - Jaiku - Pownce - Plazes - Skype Mood All trying to get you to post "What are you doing now?". Some of these have RSS/atom out. Some can read RSS in and use it for posting. Some have an API. They allow 140, 160, 255 characters. And they each have their own set of friends and followers. I really just want one place where I post what I'm doing now and where I am now. And I'd really rather have a single list of friends and followers. Is this ripe for a shake out? Or is it the future and what we need to do is to build bridges between all of them and create one system to bind them all? Meanwhile I have yet to see a really good system for posting "Where are you now?". Twittervision have overloaded Twitter with a convention for L:address or L:lat,long but it's really manual. Plazes is getting there but it's still really clunky. Loki have some cool technology but it's unfinished and still largely US only. Yahoo! are working on research projects in this area (like FireEagle from Tom Coates) but it really is pre-alpha. And location is one of those things that should be transparent and require minimal input from the user. Your PC and/or Cellphone knows what IP address it has, the Cell ID it's connected to, the Wifi AP it's connected to, it may even have a GPS. All these things can get you close so that you can just fine tune it on an embedded map and give it a re-useable name. And given the multiplying status systems, maybe it should be bolted on the side of the existing systems rather than trying to duplicate all their other function. The goal for location should be that it's as easy as with Twitter to keep track of where your friends are now as it is to track their thoughts and attention. |
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[ 04-Jul-07 8:44am ] [ status ]