For most people, nationality is an important part of their social location. I like to travel and when I do, I am often reminded of the degree to which my nationality influences my perceptions of the world, my likes and dislikes and my tolerance for different behaviors. I visited China in 2008 and had the chance to travel from north to south, visiting not only large urban areas like Beijing and Cheng Du, but also small towns and remote minority villages. The food throughout China was delicious – I don’t think I ate a meal that wasn’t tasty and fresh. Here’s a picture of a meal at the home of a Tunpu family (the Tunpu are a minority group not officially recognized by the Chinese government):

However, there were a few foods I encountered that I didn’t try. In villages north of Beijing there are many donkey meat restaurants and in Southern China, dog meat restaurants are common and you can also buy dog meat at the open air markets, along with pork, tofu, fish, chicken and other birds. Here’s a restaurant sign, which advertises the different types of meat available in the dishes sold there (notice the golden retriever at the bottom).

Having worked at the Humane Society for years and knowing what becomes of unwanted animals in the U.S., the thought of eating dog meat didn’t disturb me. However, there were other tourists from the U.S. that I observed who were very upset about the notion of dining on this type of meat. Some of their reactions were quite ethnocentric, such as making proclamations out loud opposing the sale of dog meat and refusal to enter into any markets selling dog meat. Ethnocentrism is a reaction to cultural differences where we are intolerant of these differences and judge the differences from our own cultural perspective. If these individuals had been raised in southern China, I’m sure they’d gladly eat dog meat, as it is a good, inexpensive source of protein, and it is a cultural norm.

Another example of food from this trip that reminded me of how culturally bound we are, was the selection of snacks available at the Wangfujing Snack Street in Beijing. Each evening on Wangfujing Street, the snack vendors set up in a long row of open air stalls, selling quick and cheap eats to the throngs of people who go to this popular shopping district. The vendors sell meat or tofu skewers, stir fries, soups, candied apples, and such.

A number of the vendors selling skewers, in addition to meat and tofu skewers, sell silk worm pupae, starfish, gecko, seahorse, scorpion, grasshopper, and other insect skewers.

Now, I must admit, that while I found this interesting, the thought of eating these foods was not appealing to me (I stuck with the tofu skewers). My national cuisine doesn’t involve the intentional eating of insects, thus my social location influenced my food choices and desires. About 60% of the world’s population eat insects, which are a readily available source of quality protein. But, having grown up in the U.S., where insects for the most part are not a part of our culinary culture, I was not at all delighted at the thought of munching down on these snacks. However, I also recognize some of the problems with the U.S. food pyramid.

Maybe it’s time for those of us in non-insect eating cultures to get over our phobia. Insects are touted by some as the answer to the global food crisis, being a less energy intensive way to gain access to a high protein food source. However, in order to do this, we non-insect eating cultures must change how we perceive these foods. How is this accomplished? One answer, promoted by Dutch scientist Arnold van Huis, is to offer food tastings and cooking classes integrating insects into the menu. Here is a blog entry discussing how one of these events went: eating bugs to save the planet.  If we expanded our diet to include insects, our food repertoire would be much richer. In her “Girl Meets Bug” blog, Daniella Martin lists 38 insects that are readily available to and edible by humans:  edible insects. She also includes some tasty looking recipes. Cricket stir fry or Bee-LT anyone?

Author — Jean L.

Critical thinking starts with self-awareness.  It entails the intellectual virtue of humility, a virtue not easily won.  To think well, one must practice noticing the contours of one’s perspective. It means thinking about the way we think.  It means asking ourselves (and being open to others asking us) what biases and assumptions are already at work as soon as we start the act of thinking.  Recognizing our biases and background beliefs and exposing them for evaluation is fundamental to critical thinking.  This is what I mean by self-awareness.

An exceedingly important example has to do with recognizing our own social location in the ways we read the Bible.  The reader admits to being situated in a particular place, time, culture and language.  Race, gender, educational level and socio-economic status influence how we read.  There is no neutral ground, no way of reading the Bible without bias.  The Bible, likewise, is situated in a similar way.

This kind of self-awareness is liberating, not limiting.  (It has nothing to do with one’s commitment to biblical authority.)  I will get far more out of reading the Bible if I pay attention to how my context affects the way I read.  If I am aware of my assumptions, I can practice avoiding the automatic, default conclusions, thereby learning to let the text speak more on its own terms.  This is the liberating effect that self-awareness can bring.

On this topic (of Bible reading) the easy target for people inside the academy is “literalism.”  We regularly lament how it distorts people’s understanding and, with no little indignation, verbally shake our fingers at literalists.  We accuse them of not being appropriately self-aware, of not paying attention to social location; in short, of not thinking critically.

But, as the old childhood admonition goes, pointing a finger at someone else turns three back at us.  We in the academy can be guilty of simplistic readings ourselves, using the very tools we believe so powerfully illuminate.  I have read too many scholarly articles to count, in which the author identifies herself or himself by virtue of this social location paradigm.  Let me illustrate: I am a white, male, middle class, well-educated, married heterosexual, academic, from the rural high plains are of the United States.

The problem, I hasten to say, is not the description of social location, which, to the good, gives you (and me) the opportunity to assess how it might influence my perspectives on any given topic.  The problem, rather, is that we’ve come to think that simply by describing our social location, we have proven that  we are self-aware, as if the mere naming of a handful of socio-economic categories proves our scholarly legitimacy.  it can easily serve as an academic shibboleth.

I have to admit, I have begun to worry more about this latter problem than I do about the literalists.  We academicians are supposed to be the self-aware critical thinkers.  It’s part of our job.  But, because we have grown so confident in how we use the tools of our trade, we often sound self-congratulatory and complacent.  We can make astute-sounding references to critical thinking while displaying a shocking lack of it ourselves.  We should not miss the irony.

Social Location campaigns to drive for social responsibility and brand charity donations have been seen previously in Foursquare (CNN’s Healthy Eating Badge) and Facebook Places (Argos’ Teenage Cancer Trust donations).

More here on the Gowalla/Fridgidaire campaign

Logan Airport (Boston)
Facebook: 84,000 check-ins
Foursquare: 66,908 check-ins

Cowboys Stadium (Arlington, Texas)
Facebook: 50,000
Foursquare: 20,800

Westfield Shopping Mall (London)
Facebook: 38,000
Foursquare: 11,300

Hotel Piazza di Spagna (Rome)
Facebook: 6,000
Foursquare: 1

Caesar’s Palace (Las Vegas)
Facebook: 33,000
Foursquare: 29,300

Interestingly though, apart from Hotel Piazza di Spagna in Rome, the Foursquare check-ins are not that far behind their Facebook counterpart. Although many observers thought that Places could be the end of Foursquare, it has instead seen them almost double their user base since Facebook launched their offering to 10 million users. Foursquare has the gamifaction element – the chance to win badges and that all important Mayor – that Facebook lacks. Whilst some companies beginning to work with Places and Deals, Foursquare are particularly brand friendly with some good campaigns under their belt.

• Out of 2 million+ venues, 44.5% had just one check-in
• 2,500 venues had 100 or more check-ins
• 61% of the check-ins were from men
• Men were more likely to check-in to transport venues, whereas women veered towards beauty and health venues (such as doctors’ surgeries)
• The most check-ins – over 13,000 – wasn’t a venue at all but Snowpocalypse, celebrating the heavy snow fall that week

View the complete figures from WSJ here

Cele mai importante locuri în care orice persoană ce ce deține o afacere ar trebui să fie implicată sunt următoarele:

• Google business listings – este una din cele mai populare baze de date folosită ca punct de plecare pentru cele mai multe aplicații Google Business. Legată de un cont Google, această resursă permite deținătorilor unui business să adauge o serie de informații, oferte gratuite pentru afacerea lor.  Foarte multe aplicații și servicii folosesc MashUp de la Google, astfel încât business-ul tău listat aici este un pas crucial în răspândirea și promovarea afacerii tale. Adăugați business-ul tău aici. În România acest servicu apare ca Google Locații.

• Citysearch – în România mai puțin, dar în rest este destul de popular.  Compania oferă baza lor de date dezvoltatorilor de aplicații, ceea ce înseamnă că listarea afacerii tale aici, în baza lor de date, nu este folosită doar de către userii care folosesc serviciul citysearch ci și de dezvoltatorii care construiesc aplicații ce folosesc date de pe CitySearch. Înscrieți-vă aici și căutați  Merchant MyAccount.

• Mapquest menține resursa “paginilor galbene – yellow pages”  –  poţi să îţi listezi afacerea pe MapQuest Yellow Pages în pagina – Directory Listing Information. Orice informaţie pe care o veţi trimite va fi verificată de/prin providerul tău de date.  Începe-ţi acum:  http://list.infousa.com/dbupdate.htm

• Yelp – dacă te preocupă reclamele, oferirea de cupoane sau reduceri pentru useri de pe foursquare este un loc unde poţi găsi nenumărate resurse de informaţii. Foloseşte acest site cu încredere pentru aţi descrie afacerea, manageriază comentariile şi multe altele. Informaţii aici.

• Navteq menţine resursa https://mapreporter.navteq.com/dur-web-external/ unde userii pot oferi informaţii despre actualizări, omisii, erori în baza de date de la Navteq. Adiţional cei care deţin un business pot adăuga mai multe detalii într-o baza de date a Punctelor de Interes (informaţii de contact, adresa corectă, comentarii, poze etc.).

• Where reprezintă o altă resursă de căutare cu posibilitate de listare a afacerii tale. Poate că nu pare ca ownerii unei afaceri ar putea să-şi revendice business-ul dar dacă ai un cont înregistrat poţi menţine, adăuga şi edita informaţii şi poţi acorda diferite ponturi despre afacerea ta vizitatorilor. Mai multe detalii aveţi aici.

• Gowalla oferă deţinătorilor unui business posibilitatea de a revendica locaţia lor, de a adăuga  mesaje, oferte speciale, care vor fi afişate când o persoană va da checkin în locaţia ta prin Gowalla. Îţi poţi crea op ştampilă a business-ului tău şă oferi reduceri şi multe altele.  Mai multe despre asta  aici.

• foursquare – Poate că un pic mai simplist decât Gowalla dar la fel de atractiv şi în acelaşi spirit, Gowalla oferă posibilitatea de aţi atribui business-ul pentru a deţine un control asupra informaţiilor care apar pe foursquare.  Foursquare (şi celelalte aplicaţii sociale) oferă anumite instrumente de analiză a vizitatorilor, bineînţeles doar în cazul în care ai revendicat un business. Detalii suplimentare aici.

• Truvo sau SaySo folosit în parteneriat cu NAVTEQ (like), Truvo oferă posibilitatea unei căutări locale eficiente. Mai multe despre asta aici.

• Facebook Places – business owners  nu ar trebui să aibe doar pagină de Facebook ci ar trebui să investigheze şi să ofere anumite “best deal-uri” atractive via facebook places.  Pentru a începe, creaţi-vă pagina,  atribuiți-vă afacerea și urmăriți instrucțiunile.  Pe pagina principală Facebook… în partea de jos, la locației tale îți va apărea un buton cu  “Is this your business?” Click pe acel link. Detalii suplimentare aici.

So, the principle of check-in to a retail outlet and get a discount is clearly an obvious and promising one for brands. What about some more interesting examples of how the Foursquare check-in has been used? Ironically, given the prevelance of fast food and coffee shop offers, CNN’s promotion of the Healthy Eater badge showed how it can be used for a more beneficial purpose. The History Channel worked with Foursquare by creating the History Badge. Initially they wanted to generate more interest for London’s historic sites. In fact a number of media brands including Bravo, Zagat and MTV have all made good use of Foursquare.  Although the Super Bowl is a venue-based event, this year they used the Foursquare check-in to provide vouchers to redeem a discount at the NFL shop online.

I have often said that Foursquare isn’t really social media, but actually the game of winning Mayor. Coke in Australia tapped into that gaming element with their Fairy Machine. Foursquare users could check-in to vending machines around Sydney with the chance of receiving a winning bottle of Coke through the dispenser. The gaming element of Foursquare was used to even greater effect by Jimmy Choo who took an imaginative approach by creating a treasure hunt to win a pair of sneakers. Check-ins were to some of London’s cooler haunts. Another great example of the creative use of SoLo is Nike (where are they not creative?). OK, so they used Facebook Places, but their Sneak and Destroy Burrito trucks are a great example of getting everyone talking through SoLo.

Of all the FourSquare campaigns, the one that showed how brands can really do it, is the Dutch airline, KLM. Their KLM Surprises, offered a gifts to the airline’s travellers who checked-in on Foursquare. They wanted to help relieve the boredom of waiting for a flight with a bit of fun. They didn’t tell customers the gifts were available, they just offered them. Even better they used their Twitter and Facebook information to make the gifts as relevant as possible. One woman passenger had a photo of herself in sports gear so they gave her a Nike running watch. Another passenger who used his iPad to check-in was given an itunes voucher. Brilliant. What KLM have shown is that brand engagement in SoLo doesn’t just have to be about giving discounts or free coffees. It’s about making customers feel good about buying from your brand.

Foursquare is addressing this, by working with the NFL on the forthcoming Superbowl. They have created a Super Bowl Sunday badge, and fans checking in will be given a code that they can redem it for a 20% discount at the NFL online shop. Clearly, one campaign will not be enough to give true figures, but when it comes to marketing response we are generally looking at a range of ROI or uplift. Foursquare say this is an experiment and they are not getting any revenue from it – looks like their revenue model has still not been found!

Whilst the Argos deal is the most high profile, other brands including Debenhams, O2, Alton Towers and Mazda are also taking iniatives. YoSushi! who are offering 5 free plates and a drink for those checking in to selected restaurants. At a time when retail sales are taking a plunge in the UK, Facebook Deals may help drive some business back to the high street.

It’s the end of a decade and yet time goes on, it’s time to look back and to reflect upon.

The decade has been quite amazing to see, so here they are where hindsight is always 1080p.

Florida Recount, Tiniest Phone, Rolling Blackouts, More Is Not Enough, John McCain, Shaq & Kobe, Pokemon, Carrie & Mr. Big, Going Viral, Lattes, glitch, I.M., 9/11, Airport Security, Dot Com Crash, Anthrax, Russ Feingold, Dale Earnhardt Sr, According to Wikipedia, Harry Potter & Voldemore, Oprah’s Book Club, First Responders, news cycle, outsource, Flag Pins, Guantanamo, Cragslight, Snipers, Al Jazeera, Patriots, American Idol, Europe & Money, Collagen, HBO, freedom fries, download, Iraw, MySpace, Credit-Default Swaps, Everything, Dixie Chicks, Steroids, OutKast, Bennifer, Tuscany, Oprah, spider hole, punk’d, Abu Ghraib, Wiretaps, Google, It’s Too Late, Al Franken, Mia Hamm, Camera Phones, Demi Moore & Ashton Kutcher, Nicknames, Dubya, friendly fire, Swift boat, Katrina, Self-Portraits, Blackwater, I.E.D’s, Kanye West, Lance Armstrong, MMORPG’s, TOm Cruise & Oprah Winfrey, Movies in the Mail, News Vs News, truthiness, Google, Watching TV on Computers, Tsunami, China, Avian Flu, Sincere Beards, Barbaro, Rachael Ray, Heath Ledger & Jake Gyllenhaal, Ironic Mustaches, Apple, chatter, text, Baby Boom, Rock Bands, Housing Boom, Peak Oil, T. Boone Pickens, Tiger Woods, Writers’ Strike, Brangelina & Family, Crocs, Russian Moguls, surge, blog, The Election, Moms on Facebook, Foreclosures, Credit Freeze, Ron Paul, Michael Phelps, The Art Market, Federer & Nadal, Canvas Bags, Obama, hope, go rogue, THe Economy, Iran on Twitter, Stimulus, Swine Fly, Goldman Sachs, Yankees, Lady Gaga, Not Jon & Kate, Vampires, citi, Auto-Tune, crowd-source, Breast Cancer, Flattr, Volcanoes, Transport Chaos, Old Spice, NoAgenda, Fibre Optic,  Blendtec, Facebook Mobile, Call of Duty, Video Games are evil, Foursquare, YouTube, Halo, Social Location, Skype on Facebook, Adobe is evil, Google is evil, Facebook is evil,  Photo Sharing, Sexting, EMA cuts, Tuition Fees, Class War, Tories, Ice & Snow, erosion of privacy.

Here’s to the students. The ones who didn’t look at what’s happening & thought ‘I cba’. Here’s to those who showed their anger and those who took it maybe too far. To those who reached the plateau and carried on across the plain and to those who, through their actions, were looked upon as insane.

It’s the end of a decade and yet time goes on, it’s time to look back and to reflect upon.

The decade has been quite amazing to see, so here they are where hindsight is always 1080p.

Florida Recount, Tiniest Phone, Rolling Blackouts, More Is Not Enough, John McCain, Shaq & Kobe, Pokemon, Carrie & Mr. Big, Going Viral, Lattes, glitch, I.M., 9/11, Airport Security, Dot Com Crash, Anthrax, Russ Feingold, Dale Earnhardt Sr, According to Wikipedia, Harry Potter & Voldemore, Oprah’s Book Club, First Responders, news cycle, outsource, Flag Pins, Guantanamo, Cragslight, Snipers, Al Jazeera, Patriots, American Idol, Europe & Money, Collagen, HBO, freedom fries, download, Iraw, MySpace, Credit-Default Swaps, Everything, Dixie Chicks, Steroids, OutKast, Bennifer, Tuscany, Oprah, spider hole, punk’d, Abu Ghraib, Wiretaps, Google, It’s Too Late, Al Franken, Mia Hamm, Camera Phones, Demi Moore & Ashton Kutcher, Nicknames, Dubya, friendly fire, Swift boat, Katrina, Self-Portraits, Blackwater, I.E.D’s, Kanye West, Lance Armstrong, MMORPG’s, TOm Cruise & Oprah Winfrey, Movies in the Mail, News Vs News, truthiness, Google, Watching TV on Computers, Tsunami, China, Avian Flu, Sincere Beards, Barbaro, Rachael Ray, Heath Ledger & Jake Gyllenhaal, Ironic Mustaches, Apple, chatter, text, Baby Boom, Rock Bands, Housing Boom, Peak Oil, T. Boone Pickens, Tiger Woods, Writers’ Strike, Brangelina & Family, Crocs, Russian Moguls, surge, blog, The Election, Moms on Facebook, Foreclosures, Credit Freeze, Ron Paul, Michael Phelps, The Art Market, Federer & Nadal, Canvas Bags, Obama, hope, go rogue, THe Economy, Iran on Twitter, Stimulus, Swine Fly, Goldman Sachs, Yankees, Lady Gaga, Not Jon & Kate, Vampires, citi, Auto-Tune, crowd-source, Breast Cancer, Flattr, Volcanoes, Transport Chaos, Old Spice, NoAgenda, Fibre Optic,  Blendtec, Facebook Mobile, Call of Duty, Video Games are evil, Foursquare, YouTube, Halo, Social Location, Skype on Facebook, Adobe is evil, Google is evil, Facebook is evil,  Photo Sharing, Sexting, EMA cuts, Tuition Fees, Class War, Tories, Ice & Snow, erosion of privacy.

I think this is a brilliant idea, and I can’t wait to see the official announcement to get more details. However, I have some thoughts on how I hope this goes down.

First off, I think it’s imperative that there be a way for people to continue to use SportsTracker as-is. Nokia should definitely continue to update the application, but I think it’s really important that users be able to use it for tracking workouts, as it’s clear there’s a real market for such a concentrated application/service. This could be a setting in the application itself (maybe a few checkboxes on what information to record?), but it needs to be there still, and not be tossed to the wayside for the photos/vids/etc media aspect.

Second, I think this is a big reason Nokia bought the team at Dopplr. From what I can see, this is basically a rebranded Dopplr service, automated. Supposedly, Ovi Journeys will run in the background on your phone and record where you go, photos and videos that you take, as well as music that you listen to, etc. It’s easy to suggest that they’ll also integrate the recently added Good Things aspect of Ovi Maps, so that you can create Good Things on your phone from your Ovi Journeys app.

James Whatley came up with an awesome use-case in the comments of TheSymbianBlog, where users could create location packs (for lack of better name). From James…you could trace other people’s journeys, you could create journeys for other people to trace…I’d love to do a Soho one, i.e.: You come to London, you don’t know what to do one day and you can log on and track ‘the bars of soho’ via @whatleydude’

Completely brilliant. What do you think of the idea behind Ovi Journeys? Keep in mind that it hasn’t been officially unveiled yet, but what other use-cases can you think of where this would be extremely useful/cool?

You’ll need to update the Ovi Maps plugin on your computer, which you can do by going to Maps.Ovi.com/GoodThings, and then restart your browser. After that, you’ll notice the new ‘Good Things’ tab on Maps.Ovi.com, and you can start adding your own good things landmarks. You can give a description of why it’s a good thing, and then there’s also an option to share that with your friends, as well.

Hopefully, this will be added to the new beta of Ovi Maps for our devices, so that you can view, add, and edit Good Things on your phone, as well. What do you think about Good Things on Ovi Maps? I think it’s an awesome thing, personally, and will be using it quite a bit. Hopefully this will also improve the P.O.I. search in Ovi Maps, which currently sucks.

Reading the latest post on the Dopplr blog, I think we can get a quick idea:

Early on after we launched the Dopplr private beta to a small crowd of international friends and industry colleagues, I posted a screenshot of some graphs on Flickr. The graphs showed sparklines of real travel patterns to major world cities, and in the description I wrote “I’m so excited about what we’ll be able to do with the dopplr dataset in the future.” Now Dopplr is a well-established site, we’re thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to wield data as a tool to make better services.

There are plenty of great sites out there where you can find subjective reviews and star-ratings of places round the world. We wanted to do something different, building lists of the best places ranked by everything that we know about the traveller. Because of our existing community, we already know all sorts of things about our travellers’ habits – for example, we know who visits New York most often, and we know who lives in Europe. These “opinionated lists” would tell us things like where Europeans eat in Tokyo, or where frequent visitors to New York stay compared to people visiting for the first time. [source]

Dopplr currently has an iPhone app (wonder what’ll happen to that, lol) that allows users to quickly search for various places nearby, such as hotels, restaurants, coffee shops, and more.

Clearly, with Nokia’s focus on navigation and ‘SoLo’ (Social Location), Dopplr is a great fit. Nokia will be able to maintain massive databases that track who goes where (as long as they’re checking in, of course) and when. Taking this a step further, let’s look at how this could integrate with Ovi Maps.

Today, as you’re navigating around, Ovi Maps is rather useless, until you’ve told it where you want to go, like other navigation applications. It knows where you are, and you tell it you want to go to Point B, and there you go. Ovi Maps, then, is currently rather ignorant. Fast forward a bit, and with Dopplr’s database and algorithms and whatnot, Ovi Maps might start recommending things to you. If you have been driving since noon, and it’s getting close to 6-7p, Ovi Maps might start looking ahead to see what’s coming up. It might see that there’s a fantastic BBQ restaurant ahead, and that you’ve stopped at BBQ restaurants before. You may, then, see a pop-up on your Ovi Maps, something like, ‘You haven’t eaten in 6 hours, and there’s a BBQ place that you might like just ahead. Would you like to navigate there?’

Personally, I would *love* to see a more personalized GPS system that I could leave running all the time, like Waze. I’d like for it to know that I don’t normally drive more than 2 miles off the freeway to get gas/food when I’m on a road trip, and that I don’t like to drive on one-way streets. What do you think? Would that be creepy, or would that be just the thing that GPS systems need to really become useful?

Of course, the problem with all this is that it assumes Nokia is going to be able to execute properly. Based on the last 24 months of Ovi development, the above is likely more of a pipe dream than something you or I will see in our lifetimes.

La introducción de las plataformas y herramientas de redes sociales en el móvil está moviendo a todos los grandes actores del sector móvil a desarrollar sus propias soluciones para adaptar las plataformas de más éxito y hacerlas de fácil uso en los móviles. Pero los planes de Nokia parecen apuntar a la integración de Plum en sus servicios para complementar sus servicios de localización social, que combinan las dinámicas de redes sociales con información sobre la localización geográfica del usuario.

En opinión de algunos expertos, con esta adquisición, Nokia espera contrarrestar la popularidad de terminales interactivos como el iPhone.

Más información: Marketingdirecto.com

Nokia just announced that it has purchased Plum. If you don’t know who Plum is (neither did I), it’s a social grouping service that plugs into your website to bring social features. On the Plum homepage, there are two testimonials, one comparing the service to Facebook, but saying that Plum is more intimate and personal, whereas the other mentions Yahoo! Groups. The official Nokia press release specifies that Plum will complement Nokia’s social location services, and will be part of the Nokia services group.

Sounds cool, I suppose. It’s a big deal to the Plum employees in their Boston and San Francisco offices, so congratulations to you guys and gals. Nokia, we’re interested to see how all these little purchases are going to add up to big value.

Mexico’s David Emmanuel Castro Guerro’s ‘Rocket’ – a swine-flu tracking social location widget – which shows the nearest three friends in any given place – won the competition, having been built on-site as part of the Nokia Developer Summit.

So what does he win apart from a place on the Ovi store? You guessed it – a brand new N97, complete with his app pre-loaded. And he’s quite chuffed too: “It’s mind-blowing to think that my application could potentially be used by millions of people on their Nokia handsets,” commented David Emmanuel Castro Guerrero. “It’s been such a great experience to watch these masters at work and see how an app is build from start to finish.”

“We received over 1,300 submissions, many of which were exceptional. Pitting the best Forum Nokia developers in the business against each other and watching the apps being built in front of summit delegates was so exciting,” said Pekka Pohjakallio, Vice President, Services. “By distributing through Ovi Store by Nokia, developers benefit from Nokia’s global scale to provide a potentially lucrative and unrivalled opportunity at reaching a global audience of consumers.”

The competition’s runners up – Marco Lobb from Italy, who designed the widget, Shoppy, a shopping list application and built on-site by Inova IT from Slovenia and Bruce Hopkins, who designed Travel Planner and built by PavingWays from Germany, will also be featured on the homepage of store.ovi.mobi.

Since mobile phones found their way into the pockets and hand bags of everyday people the often heard questions when taking a call is: “Where are you?” followed by “What do you do?”. These are the things that most social network services revolve around. Up to the minute status messages have created a new neural network among friends, business partners and otherwise connected crowds. Mark Zuckerberg talks about “creating efficiency within society” and I agree.
And while it is good to see that “Melina has chocolate for breakfast”, “Martin is freezing in Chicago”, or “Jeff is returning from a conference in Berlin”, theses posts are of limited relevance when either enough time has passed between when they are posted and when they are read or simply thousands of miles are between poster and reader. Add in proximity filtering and alerting options and posting like the ones above can become a whole lot more relevant and actionable.

So let’s step back for a moment and have a look at the different usage scenarios of social location features today. There are a few basic differentiation possibilities:

1. Static location information
That’s an easy one. Post your home or business address and see a map of where other users are at home or doing business.

XING – a Germany based business network – allows you to see your contacts on a map. This is helpful when you have no idea where a contact’s home town or office location is, but it only puts a static location on a map. It’s not sharing a current location of a contact and hence doesn’t cater for ad-hoc meetings or location based information exchange. Please note that XING color-codes locations it can not geo-code exactly; so the point on the map and actual position of a contact’s business address to not match. That is because either the user has not entered his full address or doesn’t want to share the exact location with every other user – a good to see application of privacy rules.

XING Contacts Map

2. User posted activity and location information
This takes things a step further. These are often referred to as “Status Messages”. Users who post their current activity in combination with location information expose themselves voluntarily. They open an opportunity to connect with them based on their activity and location.

But that information is only of value as long as activity and location last. As soon as the window of opportunity closes without the user actively updating she is moving on, you may arriving at the bar where your friend is enjoying a drink only to find out she is not there anymore.
Some services give their users the option to enter future activities and locations and to time when the information is released. Plazes allows this and another good example is Dopplr,  a service for frequent travelers which lets their users share their trips and travel tips.

Plazes - Share Location and Activity

The advantage of this non-automated sharing is user have full control over what and when to share what they do and where they are with the outside world. They can do both, an activity update with location, e.g. “Jay is at Mobile World Barcelona, booth 1G45(1-0) with his jaw to the floor.” They can share only limited location information, e.g. “Jay is in Barcelona” (or pretend, because Jay is actually at home in Mesa, Arizona and watching TV). And of course there is no need to include location information at all, e.g. “Jay is at a congress seeing amazing things”.

As Status Messages are the most basic – and easiest to implement – form of sharing location you will see theses in nearly all social networking services.

Facebook News Feed

3. User posted events, enriched with automated location information
This is very similar to the status messages from above. But while users actively and manually use these services to post their current activities they don’t have to include the location into their status update manually; it’ll be added automatically based on their actual location.

There are various ways to do this: geo-IP, Geode, WiFi geo-location or GPS to just name a few. Depending on the device, technology used and the current location of the user this is more or less accurate.
The two essential privacy options needed when implementing this are; first, an option for users to decide whether they actually want their current location to be appended when posting an activity and second, a selection possibility for how accurately to share the location, e.g. city level or exact location.

There are various services out there like Brightkite or Yahoo! Fire Eagle and interestingly they are really strongly focusing on automating location with the possibility to optionally add on activity information rather than the other way around. I personally find this a bit odd because what is the point of sharing where you are without any context?

Brightkite User Update

But there is also challenge for these kind of services. They are only of value when they are able to create a network effect. It’s pretty pointless posting activity and location when no one listens or takes action upon the information.
Some social networks are open enough to let users tie in location and activities information into their status messaging. Facebook who is aiming to become a social aggregator is particularly good at this. Check out their Facebook Connect API.

Brightkite Update on Facebook

But location information can also be appended to other online activities. Google Mail has just added a new feature which allows users to automatically add their current location as part of an e-mail signature.

4. Real-time, automated location information
The location of vehicles, valuables, convicts or personalities have all been tracked for a long time already. So this is not really brand spanking new.
New is the ability for a broader audience to broadcast themselves and follow others without the need for very special equipment. A new window of possibilities has opened with the growing adoption of super-smart phones equipped with enough processing power and space to run location-aware application at all times in the background. Now users can feed and receive a constant stream of location information to social networks without lifting a finger.

With the right level of privacy controls in place this is probably the most comfortable and interesting option of the four discussed in this post. Throw in proximity based alerting options as a feedback channel to enable location based instant meetings and socializing. These proximity alerting options may not only be person based, they could also be place based.
So let’s say a user traveled to a meeting which got canceled. She now has three hours to kill before the next flight home. Setting her device into explore mode, she can follow the trails and tips of previous visitors or locals and go see places or meet industry peers in the area. And in case the user is more interested in finding a place with free WiFi and decent cup of coffee; there may be an offer just around the corner. In fact my colleagues at NAVTEQ Media Solutions have built a location based advertising network for advertisers to send message to selected customers based on their location and time of day through either their mobile device or in-vehicle navigation unit. Needless to say this is also based on real-time, automated location information and works both one-way and with a two-way connection that is standard on phones and soon on many navigation devices.

NAVTEQ Location Based Advertising Network

But let’s come back to social location and the super-smart phones and look at some figures and trends to see where this may take us.
Currently only about 5% of the 3.2 billion mobile phones in use worldwide are super smart phones, according to T-Mobile’s Hamid Akhavan. But there are two factors indicating a tremendous growth in the coming months and years. The growth of data traffic is surging worldwide – Western Europe is showing growth of 400% annually.
In many regions of the world people simply don’t own PCs or let alone have easy access to high speed internet to explore social location at home. But they do have a phone – and often having a fancy phone is both, a social status booster, and a piece of freedom and independence. And here is a story Mark Zuckerberg told in Davos: “People in the Middle East walk 2 miles to a cyber café to check out Facebook and then use the app on their phone.”
25 million users of the Facebook Mobile app proof that mobile is becoming an increasingly important factor for the success of social networks. (Note: comScore attested Facebook 200 mio. unique visitors for Nov. 2008 )

Several real-time location broadcasting services for mobile phones already exist and have been reviewed in depth.
So I would like to take a closer look at one new entrant: Google Latitude
Google Latitude can be used on compatible phones and on computers. It allows its user to constantly broadcast their location to their contacts. This of course only works well from phones – the desktop version has other advantages we will look at later. So the mobile application is what users should get.
But don’t expect a stand-alone application. Google has done a very, very clever thing here: they integrated Latitude into Google Maps Mobile. So not only new users download both functionalities at once, existing Google Maps Mobile users who update to version 3 can instantly tap into Latitude. And if you have an account with Google already, there is no need to sign up for a separate Latitude account. Google has enabled single sign-on – like with every other Google service out there – and hence removed another barrier of conversion.

Location detection in Google Maps Mobile and Latitude work either based on GSM localization or GPS. A flat rate data plan is recommended as Latitude will constantly stream a user’s location information, even in the background while others tasks are performed on the phone. Interestingly when shutting down the Google Maps on my Nokia it asks me whether I want to continue to share my location with Latitude.

If a user doesn’t have an existing Google account or wants to set up something with a separate user id, it’s easily done from the phone. An e-mail address and password is all that is needed. Once signed-in users can add or change their status message, profile picture, phone number and privacy settings. You can see the different universal setting in the screen shot below.

Google Latitude Privacy Settings

But it gets even better. Let’s say a user has set Latitude to automatically detect, update and share her location. Now she can also set the level of location accuracy and sharing individually per contact:
- Share best available location
- Share only city level location
- Hide location from this friend

Actually, when connecting with a new friend Latitude will ask users to select one of the three choices. This can be edited any time later. So a user can decide to share her best available location when she is comfortable doing so but can also switch ad hoc to not share or share the city level only anytime. This comes in handy when a user wants to escape the watching eyes of the boss, the spouse, the mother or whomever else the user accepted sharing her location with but now needs to give that a break.

Adding new contacts to Latitude is limited to entering a friend’s e-mail address manually or selecting from existing Google Mail contacts (if the user has an active Google Mail account). So there is no user directory or any possibility to see or connect to other, yet unknown users. As of now, there are also no tie-in possibilities into social networks.

As said Google Latitude for phones comes in combination with Google Maps Mobile. Once signed up and friends added, simply fire up Google Maps on the phone, select Latitude from the options to see your own and friends’ positions on the map or as a list.

Google Latitude Friends List

Because Latitude is part of Google Maps there are some clever integration options like getting directions to a friend or search something nearby a friend’s location. When the friend has added his mobile number, calling or sending a text is possible directly from Latitude as well. However, there is no direct friend messaging embedded within Latitude.

Another good addition is the possibility to use Latitude within iGoogle on a computer. You get the same options and friend viewing possibilities. Of course signing up and adding friends is much easier on the bigger screen. And because Latitude is run from Google’s servers every addition or change users make on their computer is instantly reflected on the phone as well.

Using the desktop version I was actually wondering whether Latitude might be a good entry level alternative for vehicle tracking for small businesses. Let’s say a cab, bike messenger or delivery company equips each of their pedal pushers with a proper phone and signs them up for Google Latitude. The dispatcher would then have a pretty good idea of where they are and possibly what their status is. This will lack many of the features of a professional industry solutions but maybe a good low cost entry for some.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article and as always I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Please get in touch!

Finally I would like to recommend reading WIRED Magazine’s “I Am Here: One Man’s Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle“, TechCrunch’s “The State of Location-Based Social Networking On The iPhone” and take a look at the comprehensive list of social location service by Claudio Schapsis.

Da qualche tempo non basta comunicare ai propri amici “cosa si sta facendo” ma anche il “dove lo si sta facendo”. Nokia Friend View è la risposta della casa finlandese al fenomeno del Social Location.

Pg 30 – “State policy changes typically mark the dominant culture’s accommodation to social, political, and economic pressures for change that have emerged in struggles with oppressed groups over a long period of time.” ~ Shows how to make change.

Pg 31 – “A war of maneuvers takes place when subordinate groups lack democratic rights…any substantial basis on which to challenge the dominant social order.” ~ Good for reference.

Pg 31 – “In a war of maneuvers, groups develop an alternative internal society as a counter to the repressive social system.” ~ External/internal identity? Maybe also external/internal culture.

Pg 31-32 – “…War of position, where subordinate groups have access to diverse institutional and cultural terrains on which to develop strategies to challenge oppression. In a war of position, subordinate group members, strengthened by the sense of community and political power developed in the war of maneuvers, are strategically positioned to challenge the state’s race, class, gender, and sexuality hierarchies.” ~ How to break domination through culture.

Pg 64 – “…Complex person trying to comprehend her life circumstances in light of the race, class, gender, and sexuality hierarchies in society…” ~ Just a few of the cultures that can affect identity development.

Pg 64 – “Race, class, gender, and sexuality are fundamental features of social organization and personal identity. They are deeply embedded in society’s basic political, economic, and ideological institutions…” ~ Shows how deep cultures run and why they affect so much.

Pg 64 – “Yet every day, the meanings of these hierarchies are negotiated and renegotiated…” ~ Everything is constantly changing and never static.

Pg 70 – “We can ignore some aspects of our social location at any time, but because they are fundamental elements of society’s organization, we cannot render them inactive or unimportant.” ~ Social location key to understanding identity of an individual.

Pg 70 – “These systems are (1) historically and geographically/globally contextual, (2) socially constructed (3) power relationships that operate at (4) macro social structural and micro social psychological levels and are (5) simultaneously expressed.” ~ This is also how cultures are formed and how identities and personal histories are affected.

Pg 71 – Goes into greater depth of the 5 themes listed above. ~ Good for reference.

Pg 73 – “Their meaning develops and changes in group struggles that are firmly rooted in particular geographic locales and in particular historical time periods. From these group contests, new racial groups, new social classes, new gender constructions, and new sexual communities arise, transform, and dissolve. Through similar processes of biologizing, dichotomizing, and ranking, race, gender, and sexuality systems of power and privilege are created and challenged.” ~ Talks about changes in things due to personal histories affecting cultures which then changes identities.

Pg 73 – “Although they persist throughout history, race, class, and gender, and sexuality hierarchies are never static and fixed but are constantly changing as a part of new economic, political, and ideological processes, trends, and events.” ~ Idea that nothing is static.

Pg 81 – “…We also mean that we cannot fully capture their meaning in everyday life in the way that social scientists often attempt to do by employing them as variables in traditional quantitative research. When race, gender, and sexuality are treated as discrete variables, individuals are typically assigned a single location, along each dimension, which is defined by a set of presumably mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories. This practice reinforces the view of race, gender, and sexuality as permanent characteristics of individuals, as unchangeable, and as polarities; that is, people can belong to one and only one category. So race, gender, and sexuality are not treated as social constructions whose existence and meaning depend on social relations among groups opposing one another for societal resources but rather as fixed and permanent characteristics of individuals – more like eye color than group membership.” ~ Why personal histories and cultures are so important, because you can’t just look at one thing you must incorporate everything.