Just putting the idea out there: would you guys be interested in signing up for Brightkite and having Jaiku-style convos there?
3 months, 1 week ago.
23 comments so far
I ask because I noticed that their conversation threading is similar to Jaiku, where the first post is limited to 140 chars, but replies are longer (still limited to 1000 chars, IIRC). There's also location-based posts and ability to post pictures to it. I am finding it to be pretty nice, but a lot of the people I've friended there still use it more like Twitter than having extended conversations.
Why not just continue here? Well, we can, but activity is low, and I'm really aching for a mobile client. Brightkite's mobile client for the iPhone is pretty nice. I'm slowly using Brightkite more, but I want more friends on it. :)
@map I got a Brightkite account when I was at Google IO and the client is lovely. However I find giving my location away with that level of precision and such limited privacy controls a little uncomfortable. Besides I already have somewhere to put my photos (Flickr and PicasaWeb) and I dislike services that try to subsume the rest of the web.
one of the services i tried during the 7 day server move outage last year. Was not for me, location is not that big a "social object" and photes are not such a big part of my online life. The discussion part was WAY too clunky requiring far too many clicks.
All these factors made me not bother with it. It did not help that it was obvious it was created by programmers used to normal Client-Server idea, not so much the Mobile one (infrequent connection, limited bandwidth, small screen, minimum number of clicks to do task etc)
@adewale: On Android, no. Currently, I only have an S60 phone, but i have tried Latitude on that, is the Android version much different?
Like probably all of the current crop of services that are primarily based around location as their "social object", not so interesting in itself. The new layers stuff looks cool (or is that Maps?), it's just i have not used it enough to form a real impression yet.
I like the simplicity of the sharing model (none, country, city, accurate), which has potential to help with non-technical users adoption of the service.
Couple of things that i think could help make Latitude better:
Latitude makes it possible to use the Assymetric Follow pattern, but instead uses the Facebook style "grip of death". If implemented the default should be set "none" but the user can over-ride this depending on their desired privacy level?
Latitude is coded/designed as a "start-point" but not an "End-point" for location information? By this i mean my limited exploration has not shown that it is easy/trivial for some other service to update Latitude with my current location.
The second point exposes some tricky areas (authentication & authorisation), and I realise that Fire-Eagle can do this work, but I am un-easy when there is only one solution to a problem. It might be that some "big-brain" could come up with something utilising PubSubHubbub (or would this need to be a new thing?) that goes some way towards solving this.
Basically I mentioned that while Brightkite's main purpose is to share one's location along with a post or photo, you can easily fake out the location by choosing one totally different from where you are, if you're concerned about that. Also changing your privacy level will only show your city/state/province, instead of lower-level granularity of your location. But I understand that if you really don't want to share your location, a service like Brightkite would not appeal.
Then I mentioned that I don't regularly post on Brightkite, but I'm slowly starting to do so more often because everytime I use the iPhone app (which is my main method of interacting with it), the way the timeline is set up greatly reminds me of Jaiku. The initial post is limited to 140 chars, but replies are longer, limited to 1000 characters.
And since the Brightkite app can tell you where your friends last checked in, it reminded me a little bit of the Jaiku mobile app's feature of showing your friends' status, though it doesn't show online/offline status, and it doesn't update your location automatically.
In truth, as I tried to post in my "lost post", I would prefer if my Jaiku friends would congregate on FriendFeed, since it is closest in functionality and structure to the old Jaiku, but for whatever reason a lot of people have dismissed FriendFeed as essentially "too hard". What's difficult? The option to hide certain posts according to certain criteria offers powerful filtering so that you can quiet down parts of your friends' lifestreams. But I love how you can embed photos and videos, and even upload files.
I'll find you there on FriendFeed, @Snipergirl. :)
@glas: Are you talking about Brightkite or FriendFeed? If FriendFeed, at least there you can monitor just about every social network you're on at once, so that's good. With Brightkite, I've found that it's an easy way to do a bit of moblogging, taking pictures of silly things while I'm out running errands or shopping, to make such tasks less laborious. :)
23 comments so far
I ask because I noticed that their conversation threading is similar to Jaiku, where the first post is limited to 140 chars, but replies are longer (still limited to 1000 chars, IIRC). There's also location-based posts and ability to post pictures to it. I am finding it to be pretty nice, but a lot of the people I've friended there still use it more like Twitter than having extended conversations.
3 months, 1 week ago by jezlyn
Why not just continue here? Well, we can, but activity is low, and I'm really aching for a mobile client. Brightkite's mobile client for the iPhone is pretty nice. I'm slowly using Brightkite more, but I want more friends on it. :)
3 months, 1 week ago by jezlyn
Hm, I might be willing to give it a try for a while!
More and more Swedes have been coming back here lately though, so I'll have to divide my time :)
3 months, 1 week ago by lemonad
I don't like the idea you are forced to geotag youself somewhere... Or has it changed?
3 months, 1 week ago by map
@map I got a Brightkite account when I was at Google IO and the client is lovely. However I find giving my location away with that level of precision and such limited privacy controls a little uncomfortable. Besides I already have somewhere to put my photos (Flickr and PicasaWeb) and I dislike services that try to subsume the rest of the web.
3 months, 1 week ago by adewale
one of the services i tried during the 7 day server move outage last year. Was not for me, location is not that big a "social object" and photes are not such a big part of my online life. The discussion part was WAY too clunky requiring far too many clicks.
All these factors made me not bother with it. It did not help that it was obvious it was created by programmers used to normal Client-Server idea, not so much the Mobile one (infrequent connection, limited bandwidth, small screen, minimum number of clicks to do task etc)
3 months, 1 week ago by ymb
@ymb: Have you tried Latitude on Android? What do you think of that approach?
3 months, 1 week ago by adewale
@adewale: On Android, no. Currently, I only have an S60 phone, but i have tried Latitude on that, is the Android version much different?
Like probably all of the current crop of services that are primarily based around location as their "social object", not so interesting in itself. The new layers stuff looks cool (or is that Maps?), it's just i have not used it enough to form a real impression yet.
I like the simplicity of the sharing model (none, country, city, accurate), which has potential to help with non-technical users adoption of the service.
Couple of things that i think could help make Latitude better:
Latitude makes it possible to use the Assymetric Follow pattern, but instead uses the Facebook style "grip of death". If implemented the default should be set "none" but the user can over-ride this depending on their desired privacy level?
Latitude is coded/designed as a "start-point" but not an "End-point" for location information? By this i mean my limited exploration has not shown that it is easy/trivial for some other service to update Latitude with my current location.
The second point exposes some tricky areas (authentication & authorisation), and I realise that Fire-Eagle can do this work, but I am un-easy when there is only one solution to a problem. It might be that some "big-brain" could come up with something utilising PubSubHubbub (or would this need to be a new thing?) that goes some way towards solving this.
3 months, 1 week ago by ymb
Okay, wow, the long comment that I added to this thread, though I thought it was posted, is now gone. That's awesome.
3 months, 1 week ago by jezlyn
And some wonder why posting has gone down. >:-/
3 months, 1 week ago by jezlyn
Basically I mentioned that while Brightkite's main purpose is to share one's location along with a post or photo, you can easily fake out the location by choosing one totally different from where you are, if you're concerned about that. Also changing your privacy level will only show your city/state/province, instead of lower-level granularity of your location. But I understand that if you really don't want to share your location, a service like Brightkite would not appeal.
3 months, 1 week ago by jezlyn
Then I mentioned that I don't regularly post on Brightkite, but I'm slowly starting to do so more often because everytime I use the iPhone app (which is my main method of interacting with it), the way the timeline is set up greatly reminds me of Jaiku. The initial post is limited to 140 chars, but replies are longer, limited to 1000 characters.
3 months, 1 week ago by jezlyn
And since the Brightkite app can tell you where your friends last checked in, it reminded me a little bit of the Jaiku mobile app's feature of showing your friends' status, though it doesn't show online/offline status, and it doesn't update your location automatically.
3 months, 1 week ago by jezlyn
In truth, as I tried to post in my "lost post", I would prefer if my Jaiku friends would congregate on FriendFeed, since it is closest in functionality and structure to the old Jaiku, but for whatever reason a lot of people have dismissed FriendFeed as essentially "too hard". What's difficult? The option to hide certain posts according to certain criteria offers powerful filtering so that you can quiet down parts of your friends' lifestreams. But I love how you can embed photos and videos, and even upload files.
I wish more of my Jaiku friends were there.
3 months, 1 week ago by jezlyn
@jezlyn: You do know that FriendFeed was recently bought by Facebook. Right?
3 months, 1 week ago by adewale
Yeah, don't remind me. At the moment the service seems unchanged, so I'm trying to enjoy it while FB hasn't ruined it.
BTW, will the login issue get fixed anytime soon? Still seeing it, and it's still a pain in the rear.
3 months, 1 week ago by jezlyn
@termie was deploying some patches over the last day or so i think, so for that period, at least there is an explantion
3 months, 1 week ago by ymb
i'm snipergirl on friendfeed...
3 months, 1 week ago by Snipergirl
@jezlyn: Set up an acct and I just subscribed to you, but do I really need another social network to follow???
3 months, 1 week ago by glas
I'll find you there on FriendFeed, @Snipergirl. :)
@glas: Are you talking about Brightkite or FriendFeed? If FriendFeed, at least there you can monitor just about every social network you're on at once, so that's good. With Brightkite, I've found that it's an easy way to do a bit of moblogging, taking pictures of silly things while I'm out running errands or shopping, to make such tasks less laborious. :)
3 months, 1 week ago by jezlyn
friendview anyone? anyway it's being shut down...
3 months, 1 week ago by cybette
@jezlyn: FriendFeed
3 months, 1 week ago by glas
@glas: Cool, I'll find you on there.
3 months ago by jezlyn