topics in Brightkite

Browsing through some of the privacy ideas here, it seems like a great number of them could be solved simply by attaching a privacy level to individual locations. For instance, when signaling BrightKite that I'm at home, I would have Private mode attached to Home, so before it would notify anything at all to anyone it would set me to private than send the check it that I'm at home (but private). Likewise I could attach public to the Cafe, so when I get to the Cafe from home and checkin at the Cafe it would set everything to public and announce that I'm at the cafe.
This would even solve some of the issues with SMS checkins. I would no longer have to set Public or Private before checking in at a location, I would simply /know/ that as soon as I checked in where I was the appropriate level of privacy would be applied.

ShaBot

I was going to suggest adding the ability to check-in via IM, but then I found this: http://tinyurl.com/6ys3wa

So maybe an alternative would be to send a direct message to a dedicated Twitter account (“d brightkite @home”). That way we could just use Twitter’s Jabber bot, which seems pretty stable.

Let's have a Blackberry application! Why should iPhone users have all the fun? It would be great to have even just a little of the awesome functionality of the BrightKite website on my Blackberry.

integrate with Fire eagle. they do a better job of resolution of location. its nice to reveal my neigborhood instead of the all or nothing choice i have with brightkite now.

It would good to be able to edit placemarks. Currently you can either checkin or delete only.

Could the name of our placemarks be what is passed to twitter? I don't want the universe knowing my location, but my friends know where my home is and if they want to find locations that I check into they can investigate/ask me.

So, to an extent Brightkite = pownce+location. The fun part about Pownce (though it is NOT perfectly implemented) is posting and commenting - pics, videos, links, etc.

Without suggesting that ya'll ought to go whole hog in that direction, I do think it is key to allow commenting/conversing to some extent.

In a general sense, user-to-user messaging is clunky on the site. Enabling easy commenting and replying to posts and photos would go a long way towards mitigating this issue.

Maybe you're already working on this, but how about when I send a photo from a location, you put that photo in my flickr stream in a set of my choosing with the proper location tags/metadata and other tags I may want to add.

I know I could just cc flickr on a picture email from my phone, but it would be cool to get the photo and useful location info to both places (bkite and flickr) in one step.

Perhaps you could also add some machine tags a la Upcoming.org so the flickr photo links back to my bkite post?

Hey, thought it would be cool to share Placemark names (like "home" or "work") instead of revealing the exact address, as a privacy feature. Right now displaying address doesn't really give an idea of what the location is.

The single best thing you could do for BrightKite is make checking in automatic, so my phone *totally automatically* tells my friends where I am. I want the service to be invisible. I'm constantly forgetting to check into my new places, and it seems silly that I need to remember to do so in order to make good use of the service. It's a huge weakness.

It would be cool if there was a jabber bot to interact with. Basically another way to access the SMS tools. Without having to pay for SMS.

Playing with Brightkite makes me realize how siloed all the technologies in my phone are. My Blackberry Curve has GPS, so theoretically I should be able to give Brightkite (or any other app) permission to use that data, and then automatically check in just by posting a note or photo. I believe cell-phone tower triangulation can be used much the same way.

This is a really broad question, then. Is this something you guys see as feasible in any kind of near term? That would be really cool, especially since the SMS check-in seems to require very specific types of information- like street name and number.

Thanks! I'm having fun with it.

Custom alias for locations would be useful for my friends to understand where I am. Especially with twitter turned on! Personally, I know two addresses: My home address and the address I grew up in. I don't expect my friends to know either of them :)

Of course, they can still find those details by visiting the location page.

Is there a way? Or can there be a way to publicly mark an address as someone's house or my house? So someone knows I'm at my house or elsewhere instead of just a random address?

I want the ability to check OUT (aka "going off the grid") as well as checking in.

Obviously 14 hrs later I am still not at my favorite coffee shop down the street. But I don't necessarily want to say the new place I'm at (home, date, new coffee shop trying to get serious work done). This should be as easy as flipping the privacy switch on the homepage or clicking the lock button on the upper right of the iPhone interface.

I love your service and love that I get to watch it evolve daily. Keep up the kickass work!