Glympse @ Where2.0 2009
So as Where2.0 gets up and rolling there are sure to be a number of new and interesting location aware applications getting their share of the spotlight this week. The first that I noticed was a company called Glympse, created by a bunch of ex Microsoft folks.
The idea of broadcasting out ones location is certainly nothing new and a number of folks have had offerings in this area for a while. For example you can let your social network know where you are on a variety of services like Loopt, Loki, Limbo or Google’s Latitude… evidently if you start such a service, it’s required that you give it a name beginning with the letter ‘L’.
If you’re a corporate type, you can make your employees use a mobile resource management system like Air-Trak to track via a phone or GPS Buddy to track via a personal navigation device. Meanwhile, Sprint has had its Friends and Family Locator and Verizon its Chaperone product for a number of years now.
But, the latest push seems to be more free, downloadable, off-deck services targeted to the mass market via Android and iPhone. With Android currently having the clear advantage for “tracking” applications by allowing applications to run in the background, spitting out GPS fixes without the phone user having to actively do anything for each location fix.
At first glance it seems that Glympse has done a good job of trying to understand how the general public will want to share location with others. with the core components being that people will want an easy improptu way to share their location… with as few steps as possible and without the recipient needing anything more than the ability to receive an email or text. It also seems to expect that people will generally want to share their location for a specific purpose or event, so tracking sessions are able to be turned on for only limited periods of time for up to four hours, so maybe you can help coordinate meeting up with a friend, or allow friends and family to monitor your progress on a trip to see if it looks like you’ll be in home in time for dinner. If you’re indoors and out of GPS coverage, no worries Glympse uses cell ID and wi-fi positioning systems as back up when GPS is not available.
I am sure 4 hours of continual tracking could become an issue for battery life which probably has everything to do with Glympse putting a four hour limit on the length of time the service will transmit location per session.
The service is currently only available on Android on T Mobile for the G1 so I haven’t had a chance to play with it first hand, but its free and seems to make a lot more sense than some of the other attempts at similar services like PocketFinder which is trying to charge big money for a similar application on iPhone which can’t transmit location in the background while the phone is used for other things.
If you don’t have a G1 you can at least check out the video below!
Dodgeball Can’t Dodge the Google Axe
Google announced yesterday that it was laying off a number of under performing application, including the mobile social networking application Dodgeball that they acquired in 2005. If you’re not familiar with Dodgeball it was one of the first mobile friend finder type application that allows mobile users to be able to notify others in their network where they are and when they’re nearby. With Google’s senior management openly talking about how they expect mobile and LBS to be a huge driver of growth, and this early investment in Dodgeball nearly four years ago, at first is seemed a bit surprising to hear that they had not invested any money to grow and build on Dodgeball since the acquisition and are now closing it down. Although the acquisition itself seemed like a bit of a stretch for someone who’s goal is simply to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful.
In the long run, Google certainly wants to see the market for mobile ‘finding’ and location awareness to move right along, but I suspect that they never really wanted to directly be in the business of running this application. In 2005 I suspect they instead wanted to motivate other market participants to develop more on this front, and keep Dodgeball as a hedge in case the market didn’t act accordingly… and if this was the case, they were certainly successful as this long list of mobile social networking applications will attest to. Google can now sit back and hope that they all adopt Google Maps as the underlying platform, and all will be fine.
What Google should do now is sell back everything that was formerly Dodgeball back to its founders for some small sum, still take the tax benefits on the “loss”, and let the original founders try to take the service to the next level on their own dime… it sure beats shutting it down and will ultimately benefit Google to have the original innovators working hard to continue to develop the service, and letting them pick up where they left off will move things in the space along quicker than making them start from scratch.
Highly doubtful this will happen, because it will look like a “failure” to the rest of the world, but it makes sense to me.
Location Based Social Networking Sites
Claudio Schapsis put together a nice list of all the Location Based Social Networking sites he could find and posted them to his site… its a handy resources to have… there sure are a lot of them these days.
Limbo iPhone App, Activity: Feeling>Frustrated>Confused in NYC From 3 to 4p today, DND
It also seems to be a product that may really only work for the MAYBE U crowd (MAny, Yet Bored Enthusiastic Updaters), so if you’ve already updated what you’re doing right now on Facebook more than three times today, please read on, this product may be for you.
I first learned about Limbo while waiting in line with a friend at the NYC Apple Store. Guys and girls, who well looked like they belonged in an apple store, were handing out cards promoting the application. So being the good consumer I am, I loaded it up as I was told and tried to get to work. Loading it up and setting up an account, worked like a charm, no problems. Once I got in, that’s when the confusion began.
Problem #1 Complexity. There are probably ten times as many option in this application as there needs to be, and it’s not readily clear what they all do at first pass or why they’re all there. There are four categories across the top, Faves, Friends, Contacts and Members… this could very easily be two: people I know and people I don’t know.
Then there is the Who, What, Where, Shout and Profile. “Who” shows who is nearby and “What” shows what the people nearby are doing categorized in one of seven categories: socializing, eating, playing, me time, chilling, working and feeling, all of which can be described in great pre selected detail. For example a mere ten taps later I can tell the world that I am Socializing>Dancing>Salsa Dancing in Chinatown and plan to be participating in that activity Today from 6 to 6:05 PM. I can also shout at people, or in other words send them a text message… presumably to let them know that I plan to commence swing dancing next, just in case they’re not around to see the update on my activity profile.
So that brings me to issue #2… I am not in the MAYBE U crowd (Many Yet Bored Enthusiastic Updaters). The product assumes that you have 50 friends all with iPhones and all the time in the world, who are all bored and willing to update their status information constantly. Anything less, and I am not sure this product really works.
