Disruptive Conversations

If you are interested in location-based services like FourSquare and Gowalla, you may find this video interview by Robert Scoble of Gowalla CEO Josh Williams of interest. This being SXSW week, there will be lots of location-based service news coming out. I'm not using Gowalla, but I've written about my love/hate relationship with FourSquare and I find the whole "location" space quite interesting right now... anyway, I think you'll find this interview an interesting one:

It was great to learn of the FIR iPhone app and naturally I had to install it right away on my iPhone. (It's also available for Android phones.) It's free, of course, and gives you access to all the podcasts produced under the For Immediate Release brand.

With the iPhone app you have a very easy way to immediately jump to FIR episodes and start listening. When you go into one of the episodes you have a "Play Podcast" link when loads the iPhone's QuickTime player and starts playing the episode for you. You can also follow the "Web Link" to view the page out on the FIR site (where you could see comments). There's also a nice "Categories" screen that lets you see the various different categories of FIR podcasts.

If you create an "account" you can then apparently mark episodes as "favorites", comment on episodes and rate episodes. My one point of feedback I'll be passing along to Shel and Neville is that it's not entirely clear to me where I am creating this account. Is it on the service of the vendor behind this app? (GenWi, the company behind iSites.us) Admittedly I'm a bit more paranoid than the average user (blame my security background), but I'd like to know a bit more about who is going to have my data before I sign up.

Speaking of iSites, they are the iPhone application vendor Shel and Neville used for this app. It's admittedly very cool... for just $25 you can get your own iPhone app created.

Now, the only caveat is that for that $25 one-time fee, you are stuck with the in-application advertising that you see in the image to the left and over which you have no control. iSites does have a $99/year pricing plan that gives you control over ads and presumably they are expecting that a certain number of folks will choose that plan to lose the ads. (I would.)

I obviously just started using the app and I'll be interested to see how using it compares to using the regular "iPod" functionality built into my iPhone. This app has the advantage that you can very quickly get to FIR podcasts and be able to see what is there. Whenever you launch the app it seems to check for the most recent episodes so you are always up to date.

On the other hand, in the "iPod" app on my iPhone I do have to manually initiate the "Get more episodes" process to download new episodes. However, one advantage to the iPod app is that I get to see how far I have listened to any given FIR episode - and it retains that info so with one glance I can see which episodes I still need to listen to and how much more I have of each episode. This is a great advantage when your time to listen to podcasts is rather fragmented.

Regardless, I think it's rather cool for Shel and Neville to now have an iPhone (and Android) app. If you are an FIR listener (or are interested in the intersection of social media, technology, PR and communications), do check out the app and try it out. I'll be curious to hear your thoughts. What do you think of it? Do you see yourself using it versus the iPod app to listen to FIR?

P.S. In full disclosure... if you are not aware, I am a weekly correspondent into FIR, usually on Thursdays, and so I am affiliated with the podcast.

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I admit to not quite being sure of what to make of Foursquare, one of the latest bright shiny objects to catch the attention of the early adopter set... (outside a certain tablet emanating from Cupertino...)

If you've missed all the excitement, Foursquare has been hailed as "the next Twitter" and has had gushing articles like Mashable's "5 Ways Foursquare Is Changing The World", Om Malik's "Why I Love Foursquare and many others on sites like Mashable, GigaOm and TechCrunch. Recently Foursquare has lined up deals with Canadian newspapers (also on CNN.com via GigaOm) and with the Bravo TV network and in mid-January was averaging a check-in-per-second.

All this about a service with a really simple idea: "check in" and share your location with your "friends" and the world.

"Why in the world would you want to do that?" is a natural reaction... kind of like the reaction many folks had when they first saw Twitter.

IT'S ABOUT THE GAME

Given that part of my job (as well as my passion) is to understand the bleeding edge of communication technologies, I'm of course on Foursquare.... but I didn't fully understand the pull of Foursquare until a recent trip to Orlando where my time there intersected with colleague Jason Goecke. Jason lives in the San Francisco Bay area where there are many Foursquare users and while there weren't as many Foursquare users in downtown Orlando last month, I watched as he engaged in a bit of competition with another colleague to see who would be "mayor" of a certain location. (Basically the person who has checked-in the most at a particular location.)

I'll admit that I caught the bug a bit. It was fun - and engaged my fiercely competitive side.

Jason and I then continued a bit more down at ITEXPO in Miami... jockeying for who would be "mayor" of our common hotel. (And when we left, I think he held the hotel and I had the hotel restaurant...) All in all a bit of harmless fun that got a bit of conversation and competition going between Jason and I.

But that's the genius of what the Foursquare folks have done... turning sharing location into a game!

CROWD-SOURCING A DATABASE

It's also a brilliant move on their part because Foursquare is getting the participants to build their location database for them! Tens of thousands of people (or more?) "adding locations" each day... creating the massive location database for Foursquare. At no cost to them. And they've created an incentive... you get more "points" for adding a new location... so if you get hooked into the game, you want to add new locations to get more points.

Brilliant move.

IT'S ABOUT SERENDIPITY AND DISCOVERY

I've not yet had this happen to me, but numerous people have said that in areas with a high number of Foursquare users, they have found out that friends of theirs are nearby and have then met up with those friends. Robert Scoble recently wrote:

Often I’ll check in on Foursquare, see someone I want to meet is nearby, and I’ll text them or tweet them and say “I’m in your neighborhood, want to get together?” I also have had TONS of meetings where other people do that to me. Foursquare has become my favorite rolodex.

I could very easily see this happening for me at some of the events I travel to.

In the same article, Scoble writes about "discovery" by reading "Tips" left by others:

when I checked into Foursquare in Paris, for instance, someone told me that one of the best French bakeries was within walking distance of where I was staying

There are, of course, numerous articles appearing on the web now about how businesses can make use of this for marketing... entering in tips related to their business, offering specials to Foursquare users, working with Foursquare to create custom "badges", etc.

Overall, though, I can see great potential in meeting up with other people I know... it's a good thing.

THE DARK SIDE

I still, though, can't get over concerns about privacy. Sure, I'm a "security guy", so I'm naturally a bit more paranoid than the average person. I've also been working with, using, and writing about online networks for over 25 years now at a fairly deep technical level, so I know how easily data can move around and be accessed. A few years back, I wrote about how "Twitter is Terrific for Thieves" where I suggested that those up to no good could gain a significant amount of info by reading what people are tweeting (which later appeared to be true).

Yet here we are... giving all that information away.

You don't have to try to figure it out... we are saying precisely where we are and when we are there. And more importantly, perhaps, we are saying where we are NOT (like at our home).

Granted, within Foursquare I am only sharing that location information with my "friends" (and hence why I am particular about who I share that info with). Still, it's out there... in a database owned by a small startup... running on some infrastructure I have no clue about...

Even as I use the service, that concern still lingers. The good news is that if you don't want a location you are at to be known, you simply don't check-in there.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION...

I think the reality is that as noted in a recent Mashable article, "Privacy: Managing the New Currency of the Social Web", we all do have to think about what data we share and how that data is stored and used.

As Robert Scoble noted, Foursquare is only one of the many services that are sprouting up around "location-based services"... and the big players are looking at the game, too - Twitter has recently added "local" aspects... Facebook is now rumored to be gearing up to enter.

The good side is that there's a strong potential to connect us in the physical world more closely with our friends... and to help us discover more in our local area or places we are traveling. I can see great potential in bringing people together... creating connections and conversations... all of that is good. How do we balance that with not giving away too much info? Or giving that info to the wrong people? Good questions...

What do you think? Do you use Foursquare or other similar services? Or do you avoid them? Are you concerned about the location data you are giving up? Or do you just view privacy as dead anyway?

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If any of you reading this will be out at O'Reilly's OSCON Open Source Convention next week (July 21-25) in Portland, Oregon, I (Dan York) will be there giving a talk on Wednesday on "Mashing Up Voice and the Web Through Open Source and XML". Here's the abstract:

With over 4.5 billion mobile and fixed phones out there as of November 2007, the phone represents the most ubiquitous user interface out there. As “mashups” on the Web let us quickly and easily access information from multiple data sources, how do we extend those mashups to the world of the phone? How do we bring the old world of voice and telephony into the new world of the Web, social networks, and social media? And how do we do that using open source tools and open standards? In this session, Dan York will introduce participants to the world of “voice mashups” and how applications can be quickly built on top of open source and open standards. Topics covered will include:

• The technology and architecture behind voice mashups
• The open standards in voice of VoiceXML, Call Control XML (CCXML), the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), and new standards emerging from the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
• Open source tools related to voice including Asterisk and RocketSource.org
• How to quickly build voice applications that interact with web sites, databases, and even new services like Twitter.

During the session, York will demonstrate multiple applications and provide participants with sample code, tips, and pointers so they can return home and get started building voice applications with open source and open standards.

If any of you will be attending, please do drop me a note as I always enjoy meeting up with people who read this blog. If you are not attending but are interested, it's not too late... you can still register at the OSCON site. Should be a great convention for those interested in open source development. The schedule is pretty amazing as it truly has a collection of some of the best folks out there in the open source world. (The convention starts on Wednesday with Monday and Tuesday being for tutorials.) I'm definitely looking forward to the event!

Technorati Tags: open source, conferences, oreilly, development, python, voicexml, ccxml, sip, portland, dan york

As I've written about previously, I view Apple's "MobileMe" service as far more interesting than the "iPhone 3G" being released tomorrow. So naturally I was rather pleased to see this message pop up on my Mac this morning:

Naturally, I installed the software update... only to wind up seeing nice messages like this one:

Oops.

I also found that I can't access my iDisk right now (thankfully I haven't really been using it lately so I didn't need anything I had put there).

I realize Apple has a rather gigantic task ahead of it in getting the software out to all of its .Mac users before it does the cut-over to MobileMe. I realize also that they want to do a "big launch" of all this stuff. Still, as a user out here working with the tools... it would be awfully nice if they were set to go when the software update was downloaded and installed.

I guess for now we will need to heed the note: "Please try again later."

Technorati Tags: apple, mobileme, dotmac, iphone

If you are developing applications in the social media / social networking / web 2.0 space, you should know about Social Dev Camp East, coming up on May 10, 2008, in Baltimore. Some info is in PBWiki, although most of the activity is happening on the Facebook event page. It looks like some great topics and events and given that Dave Troy is one of the organizers, I expect it should be good. Dave's the guy behind Twittervision and several other sites and is also the one who put the open source Asterisk PBX running on top of a Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner (seriously... "Press 1 to start sucking"!).

On the wiki there are already a bunch of folks signed up and I look forward to hearing about what happens. (I won't be able to attend due to other commitments.)

Technorati Tags: socialdevcamp, applications, socialmedia, socialsoftware, facebook, facebook platform, development, programming, barcamp

Interesting piece out of Read/Write Web: What Standford Learned Building Facebook Apps. Here's the intro:

Dr. BJ Fogg and Dave McClure taught a class last semester at Stanford on Building Facebook Applications. In 10 weeks, the 80 students had created 50+ applications and in total had over 20 Million installs - with 5 having more than 1 million users.

For the lessons, you need to read the article, but I was more intrigued by what they did in the class. One of the challenges for an instructor is always to "engage" your students and make the class both interesting and relevant. To make the students want to do even more and learn further. To make whatever you are doing "real" so that it applies to the students' lives.

To that end, what a great way to use Facebook to teach application development! The students:

1. Can very easily see their end result (their app) in usage;
2. Can compete with each other to see whose app gets more usage (which may drive further development/innovation);
3. Can get real feedback from users outside their regular sphere (i.e. "regular" Facebook users not just Stanford students);
4. Gain excellent experience and job skills for post-college employment;
5. Potentially get job offers now if their app is cool enough;
6. Learn all the other skills outside of just programming, such as metrics, marketing, customer interaction, etc.

Now I don't know how the class actually went... and I imagine that there are other colleges/universities doing this... it just was the first time I have ever thought about the potential of using Facebook in this way. How very cool!

Technorati Tags: application platforms, applications, facebook, facebook platform, standford, teaching, education

Does anyone still use Orkut?

Obviously some people do and the first visit to my page in eons showed me that a couple of people I know had actually been by there recently. But in the grand "battle" between Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc., orkut doesn't seem to get much mention these days. I know that I joined orkut back in 2004 when it launched and you had to have an invite to get in. But a year or so later I had basically left it behind (except that my account is still there and now and then does get friend requests).

So I was a bit surprised to encounter over on Official Google Blog the post "orkut going more social" that contains this text:

"Starting this month, we're enabling developers to make their social applications available to orkut users. We'll start ramping up to more than 50 million people over the next few weeks.

To prepare for this growth, we're now accepting social applications. For a while now, developers have been able to write, test, and play with applications on orkut. Later this month, however, we're going to start rolling them out to orkut users. OpenSocial developers can submit their completed applications (deadline: Feb. 15).

To help developers ready their applications, we're offering engineering support and training. We've scheduled orkut hackathons on Feb. 14-15 from 10 am-6 pm at the Googleplex in Mountain View and via videoconference in New York. For more information or to RSVP, please email [email protected]. If you can't attend, we hope to see you in the OpenSocial forums or on chat (irc://irc.freenode.net/opensocial)."

The post obviously has more information and the relevant links.

That Google is doing this is no surprise given their backing of the OpenSocial initiative. It is interesting to see the note about "ramping up to more than 50 million people". Is that the current number of active orkut users? If the Wikipedia entry is accurate (that states 67 million users in August 2007) that would certainly be plausible.

Regardless, it is great to see another social network indicating that they will have working support of OpenSocial apps soon. The more there are, the more incentive it is for app developers to develop for OpenSocial.

Technorati Tags: google, opensocial, orkut, socialnetworking, applications, application platforms, apis

So today MySpace squares off against Facebook with the release of the MySpace Developer Platform. One of the key features of the "MDP" is that it is supporting the OpenSocial initiative and has a lengthy page explaining the interaction between MySpace an OpenSocial. They also provide some nice tutorials starting with (of course!) a "Hello World" and then getting right into creating an OpenSocial application.

It's intriguing to me that MySpace is not launching this with any existing high profile apps. It's really just providing a box of parts and saying... "here, have fun, go nuts!"

In fact, serious application deployment is being put on hold for a one-month period while developers try out the platform. Apps are limited to being installed by 10 users during this one-month development period, which, as other sites are mentioning, has the effect of "leveling the playing field" and giving all developers, large and small, a chance to work with the platform before it goes "live" and mass deployment of applications to MySpace's hundreds of millions of users can begin.

It will indeed be very interesting to see what developers actually do with all of those parts and what applications emerge. We'll have a clearer picture in a month, eh?

More coverage on the announcement that I found useful:

• Mashable: MySpace Developer Platform Launches; Levels the Playing Field for App Builders
• Read/Write Web: MySpace Platform Aims to Pick Up Where Facebook Left Off
• TechCruch: MySpace Developer Platform Goes Live (Sorta)
• ZD Net: MySpace Developer Platform launches (for a quick summary)

(Now, the question for me personally is this... will this be enough incentive for me to actually pay attention to my long-neglected MySpace profile? Hmmmm.... )

Technorati Tags: apis, applications, opensocial, myspace, facebook, myspace developers platform, platforms

As I've written about in the past, I continue to remain concerned that social networks are really just "walled gardens" that are isolated from each other. Late last week, Robert Scoble getting temporarily kicked out of Facebook brought the attention of many of us to "DataPortability.org" and its "dataportability-public" Google Group. Now, today brings word that Facebook, who has usually been a holdout in "open" announcements to date (like OpenSocial) will be joining in to the Dataportability.org project. The news can be found here:

• Particls Blog: "Individuals from Plaxo, Google and Facebook join DataPortability.org Workgroup"
• Read/Write Web: "Bombshell: Google and Facebook Join DataPortability.org"
• TechCrunch: "Facebook, Google And Plaxo Join The DataPortability Workgroup"

The news is outstanding, really, for those of us who want this kind of data portability. To have basically all the major players working together will be excellent. It would, indeed, be great to have the walls start coming down...

The devil, of course, lies in the details... time will tell whether true actions will emerge out of the DataPortability.org initiative.

Still, it's a great way to start - and I've definitely joined the GoogleGroup mailing list to join in the evolution. Let's see if the walls can shake a bit, eh?

Technorati Tags: facebook, dataportability.org, dataportability, data portability, social network portability, social networks, social media, social networking, google, plaxo