Today's Contents

• A few days late, I know!
• Ewan has just become Mayor of... GAHHHHH
• The Application Review

Monday 1, March 2010

A few days late, I know!

Right I know this is a few days late.  As I explained on my post this morning, I can't force the newsletter.  I either like to do a good job with it, or not bother.  So although this is billed as 'The Friday Newsletter', I just wasn't 'feeling it' on Friday, Saturday or Sunday.  Normally, the inspiration does come -- but when it doesn't, I just leave it. 

Hello and welcome to all the new subscribers -- thank you for taking the time to sign-up.

Now that Mobile World Congress has finished, the utterly hard work of editing and publishing has really begun.  Rafe and I have been going through hours of video coverage and banging up as much as we can, as quickly as we can.  Did you catch the Anssi Vanjoki interviews we published earlier this week? They are -- without doubt -- some of the best work I've ever produced. Check out Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.  I'm utterly delighted to have had the opportunity to work with Rafe on them and I remain entirely thankful to the Symbian Foundation for enabling us to deliver such phenomenal coverage.  You can access the coverage easily by visiting Mobile Industry Review's frontpage.  There's a big box there with a long list of content already published.  Don't miss the Lee Williams episodes either -- Lee, Executive Director of Symbian, agreed to take some time out of his hectic schedule to interview some Symbian partners on camera during the event.  We'll be publishing his MWC walk-about shortly too.

I also recommend checking out Rafe's thorough MWC coverage and commentary on All About Symbian.

Right then.  This week's newsletter is a rant.  By that, I mean it's reasonably unstructured and potentially offensive.  To ensure the spam filters didn't get too crazy, I've replaced characters in the naughty words (i.e. SH1T).

Onwards..

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Ewan has just become Mayor of... GAHHHHH

I have been experimenting with FourSquare and Place Pop recently. You'll have heard of them, I'm sure. But just in case you're not down wit'tha'kids (i.e. too busy focusing on Q1's upcoming earnings report), they are location-based social networks. Or at least, they're a reasonable attempt.

The service typically work like this:

1. You go somewhere -- this is critical. It's cheating if you don't actually go somewhere.
2. You fire up the application, it automatically detects your general location and presents you with a list of possible places you might be. Think shoe shops, takeaways, movie theatres -- anything that the Yellow Pages might randomly throw up.
3. You browse the places and click on the one corresponding to your location.
4. You click the 'check-in' button.
5. Any of your friends are automatically notified that you're now checked in to that particular location. Sometimes this is a push notification, sometimes it's an UBER annoying Twitter update.
6. You get points depending on how often you do this. If

And that's it.

Well, almost. There's a further subset to the service that enables you to 'own' a particular location. This is particularly faaaaaking annoying. For example, on FourSquare, you can -- if you check-in often enough -- become 'Mayor' of a particular location. Which leads to many guffaws of satisfaction on the part of the user -- and total unmitigated derision on the part of everyone else subjected to your 'Tw4tface has become Mayor of ShittingBricks Cafe, San Francisco' Tweet/Facebook/Whatever update.

For a long time, the team behind the service refused to allow you to modify location choices, so you had to choose from the locations they'd managed to dredge from various information sources. Using the Place Pop application, I had the choice between a Shoe Shop and a serviced office. Hardly useful.

I persevered.

I arsed around with both FourSquare and Place Pop, particularly when I was at Heathrow Airport (bored) and most especially when I was in Silicon Valley (bit of free time). I have to admit that the choice of check-in locations was a lot more accurate and relevant in Palo Alto than London. I was also mildly amused to see the apparent revenue model -- that old Coffee Shop location marketing chestnut. Sat in my hotel room I managed to 'check-in' to a pizza restaurant on Palo Alto's University Avenue and saw a little advertisement pop-up whilst I was doing this, prompting me to go to a rival venue for a good deal.

I get the concept, I really do.

But it's b0llocks.

Pushing your location out to other people is the virtual equivalent of grabbing your crotch and yelling 'HEY LOOK AT ME'.

Further, try this viewpoint on for size: Pushing your location out to other people demonstrates that you're having a rubbish time.

It does, doesn't it?

Let's face it, if you're having a really good time -- if the girl or guy you're with is fantastic -- the last thing you'll be thinking about is doing a FourSquare check-in.

Every time I see a FourSquare notification come in, I am forced to think, 'Is it that bad? Are you having such a crap time that you had to actually take out your iPhone and do a check-in?'

What's the motivation to tell people where you are? I mean, to actually TELL them?

There's a big difference between giving friends and acquaintances the ability to lookup to see where you are -- i.e. Latitude style -- than to actually force them to read blow-by-blow 'I'm at the pub, I'm at the club, I'm at the Kebab Shop' account across an evening?

It's hugely, hugely irritating, on quite a few levels. Is this it? Is this the best we can possibly do from a technical perspective?

Unfortunately that is the case on the iPhone. On the sodding iPhone, going somewhere and then MANUALLY 'checking-in' is the height of sophistication.

It seems like the marketplace has taken a step back 5 years. All of a sudden people seem to be convinced that this kind of technology -- where you have to actually remember to tell people where you are -- is the best thing since sliced bread.

Check out BuddyCloud . It runs on proper handsets. Nokias, for example, that can manage background processing. BuddyCloud sits in the background and tracks your cell-tower. With that information, it silently keeps your profile updated as to your current location. You can, if you like, choose to modify that cell-tower location to something meaningful (e.g. 'Home' or 'The Office'). So when you arrive at your office, the BuddyCloud client -- IN THE BACKGROUND -- spots that you've hit that cell-tower and changes your location status for friends, family or whoever you've specified to be notified.

When you arrive home, guess what? Yes, BuddyCloud updates your location. Same if you're at the gym. Instead of your location being set to 'Chiswick High Street, London', it'll say 'Gym', if that's what you've named that particular location. Genius. Really smart, really useful -- and what's more, you don't need to do anything. Good technology at it's best.

With the iPhone, however, millions have regressed back to 1997. Now you need to actually force your location updates out to people. Just in case. In case you might want to meet up.

But, yeah, it's rubbish. Even die-hard FourSquare users I've spoken to only claim to have sort-of benefited from the serendipity 'fancy meeting you here' nirvana that these kind of location tools promise.

Here's an example of an irritating FourSquare scenario I was forced to witness: I was sat with my good friend Noah from Phonedog a few weeks ago. We'd arranged to meet for brunch in San Francisco with another friend, who will remain nameless. Nameless, because -- goodness me -- he's a sodding FourSquare addict.

We all arrive. We sit down. We look at the menu. We order drinks. We get past the 'how are you' pleasantries and then. . .

"Shit!" says the nameless friend, "I forgot to check-in!"

Out comes his iPhone whilst Noah and I stare at him.

FourSquare is activated. It finds his location and presents him some options. He selects the restaurant, he waits a moment . . . tick. . . . tick .. . .

Relieved, he then declares, "Ok I'm checked-in," before putting his iPhone away.

How ridiculous is that?

Of course I lambasted him.

"It works," he retorts, before he explains that only the other weekend he managed to connect with somebody he didn't care about at a location that was irrelevant and inconvenient to both parties, because of a FourSquare notification.

The crucial flaw with FourSquare et al., is that it's based around manual push notifications. I check-in, therefore YOU are notified. And if you're my friend -- and you've selected the default options -- that means every time I decide to sod about earning points on my account and trying to become mayor of whatever postage stamp I can find -- YOU will get a pop-up notification on your iPhone from me.

You can disable the notifications. But you can't easily escape the Tweetspam though -- and it's becoming more and more annoying to witness. If you haven't experienced this, it's where the FourSquare user decides that they need to tell their followers that they've checked-in too.

Dire.

My biggest frustration is that the technology user model is sh1t. It's rubbish. It requires manual intervention at all points. It requires users to remember to update their locations, to check-in. It should be completely seamless. I shouldn't have to remember to check-in. The system should just know where I am and tell my friends when they ask.

When they ask.

That's the key point.

If you're in the middle of a business meeting, you don't need to know that I've just arrived at the Hilton in Mumbai.

If you're about to go to sleep, you don't need to know that I've 'checked-in' to some boll0cks pub in London -- complete with a 'it's not very busy' stupid supplementary comment.

What's even worse is that the ridiculous check-in culture is spreading to other devices. I see that there are now clients available on other platforms. This is bad. Very bad. Other -- proper -- platforms that can handle background location processing shouldn't be subjected to this 1997 'I clicked a button to tell you I am here' technology.

Google Latitude is a good example of location based technology that's beginning to get useful. I typically keep it running in the background on my BlackBerry, Nokia or Android device. Now and again I'll get an email from Google if I'm within 500m of a friend on Latitude. That's nice. It's not too intrusive -- but if I'm bored or available, email is obviously one of the mediums I'll be poking into. When my friend Tom makes the pilgrimage from Winchester into London to meet me for dinner, I can follow his movements on Latitude to see when he's roughly due to arrive.

Latitude has actually proved very useful for meeting. I no longer have to arse around with a barrage of phone calls when I'm trying to meet friends. I just ensure my Latitude is on and tell them 'Meet me in Covent Garden'. Where precisely? Doesn't matter. Wherever I am. I'll wait for you at a pub, but don't bother phoning me. Just look me up when you get to Covent Garden.

Really useful, that.

But FourSquare or Place Pop style 'I am here' notifications? No. No thank you.

I can't believe that it's 2010 and people are actually thinking it's cool to have to manually send out 'I am here' notifications.

I further can't believe that the FourSquare BlackBerry application has got a 'check-in' function. Why can't the service automatically track where I am and when 'my friends' are *interested*, tell them?

I wonder what FourSquare and Place Pop would have done if they'd deployed on a more capable platform such as Nokia or BlackBerry first?

I firmly believe that my location is an on-demand piece of information. It always should be. I don't ever think I should be issuing the equivalent of a text message to tell you where I am.

It would be useful to have a server notify me if a friend of mine is free and nearby. On the basis that I'm free, too. I don't want to have to manage all this information myself.

Good luck and every success to the FourSquare and Place Pop teams -- I think they've done some fine work to get their services to the stage they're at. But please, can't we evolve things to a higher level?

Actually, I'm asking far too much of the Apple platform. At least with this current version.

Until Apple understand that location is actually a critical component of the mobile experience and allow some kind of background feed or update facility, folk are still going to have to keep remembering to check-in.

Incidentally, Nokia get it. Only the other week, Nokia's Anssi Vanjoki commented that he reckons the map 'will be the generic mobile interface' in years to come. And he's talking 3-4 years out. I highly recommend watching that portion of the interview.

Please, please, please tell me that by 2014, iPhone users won't still have to keep on checking in manually?

How frustrating.

So let me end by saying this:

If you're using FourSquare, continue to do so but please -- by default -- switch off the 'notify by Twitter' function. Keep your third-rate location notifications technology to the users of FourSquare. That way, the rest of us can get on with our lives using an on-demand solution such as BuddyCloud, Latitude or something else.

That's a fair deal, right?

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The Application Review

For all those who managed to get to the bottom of the rant, congratulations.  Do let me know what you think.  Just reply to the email and it'll come straight to me.

I send out another newsletter on Wednesdays.  It's called The Application Review.  It's generally short and contains details on one or two new mobile applications that you should know about.  If you'd like to get that too, just register here: http://www.theapplicationreview.com.  It's free, too. 

'Til then,

regards
Ewan

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