blazamos's dashboard

I think it would be a good idea to make it possible to write in places you're visiting them the morning, night, week and even month before you're visiting them, so they update automatically at a set time/day without you having to come onto the website, or send a text message.

Great compromises - now:
π (3.1.41592) - Mega Mashup: Devs implement GPS location updating. You have three options in your account if you've checked in from GPS before. One being the default, is checking in manually still, but from the GPS-enabled application on your phone - therefore guessing where you automatically. Essentially no different than the current system, but with the GPS helping you check-in faster (but still manually). Once back at your computer after getting the GPSware installed, you'll have a new profile setting - a checkbox for two and a checkbox for three. The second checkbox is "Do you want to automatically be checked in when you arrive at favourite placemarks?" if checked, things work as Josh suggested above. Finally, you can check off "Do you want to automatically be checked in when you have arrived at your destination?" If this last one is checked, you will be queried as I described - by ping from the GPS application, or by SMS, or however you want, it's up to you, the user is queried after being 'stopped' for a reasonable amount of time. Perhaps the query is nothing more than a reminder - "Hey! You've been here a while, why don't you check in?" - or perhaps it tries to guess your location "Hey, you look like you've arrived at Foo Bar Inc. Are you staying here (1) or are you staying at a different place nearby (2)?".

This solves the novice user problem - the default is to just make the GPS facilitate the current check-in environment.

Ah - defined locations make much more sense. My only point was that I don't want people randomly spamming me with checkins just because they're driving down a street two away from my house and I have nearby checkin notifications enabled. – elliottcable, on June 16, 2008 16:28

I think that there are a few ways that brightkite's checkin can work:

0 - Current way: manually check in only, currently through typed address in sms, in the future though 1 click on device app.

1 - Elliotcable's way: receive an sms notification after you stayed more than 15 minutes at the same location asking if you would like to check in there.

2 - Josh's way: you manually setup placemarks and you are automatically checked in when you are close enough to any of those placemarks. The daily routine of home-work-home would fall well into this scenario.

3 - Chris + Elliotcable's mashup way: auto check-in whenever you stay put more than 15 mins at the same location. This will check you in wherever you go but will avoid check ins along the way. Should reduce some of the notification overload.

3 - Chris's way: you automatically check-in to a place every certain amount of time/distance if you moved from where you were before. Generates a lot of messages, but is useful for bike rides and other events where route is interesting to transmit (crazy bar hoping night outs? :-) )

I don't think that the developers need to choose one of the above, instead, brightkite should aim to implement a method where ALL of the above are possible configurations. With simple default and very private settings (1 maybe) for starting novice users and then advanced settings that would allow greater and fine grained configuration of auto-checking.

The more control and application gives the user the better. No two users are alike and the more options the more likely someone will find a use for the system. Also, by giving a lot of options, Brightkite fosters innovation and emergence of new usage patterns instead of trying to lock the users into the initial designed behavior pattern.

The drawback of excessive control is that excessive freedom can be overwhelming for novice users. So there should def be progressive methods of getting into deeper setting that novice users should not be confronted with unless they feel like going into them.

Excellent summary Josh. – Martin Dufort, on June 16, 2008 14:43

elliottcable said: "If someone had access to a truly accurate system - such as an external GPS unit instead of the one in their phone... then this wouldn't be a problem."

We're going on the _assumption_ that the GPS systems in use to do automatic checkins are sufficiently accurate. Getting into the nitty gritty of which devices are able to get coordinates that are accurate to within how many meters is not a part of this idea, and is left to good implementation. It doesn't need to be discussed here. (I understand the ideas are related functionally, but they are entirely separate topics.)

Again, the central idea here as stated above by me and others is that if you are sufficiently near a check-in point that is already known, you can be assumed to be there, and you will check in at that location automatically. As it's already been said, many people wouldn't want even their friends to know their location at every second of the day. I'd prefer that my friends can know when I'm at one of these five locations. Other than that, I want to be invisible. I don't envision driving down the street and "checking in" every 100 feet as I drive. That's not part of this idea.

There's also a possibility that if you roam outside the tolerance range of your check-in point (perhaps set by user-specific preferences?), you check out, and your location is unknown until you manually check in or come within range of another known check-in point.

Christian Rauh I guess it makes sense to try to compromise - but that reduces the number of... 'useful people' in the system? Does that make sense? People who auto check-in would, in essence, be 'useless' as a contribution to the system, from the point of view of those who are only interested in the social-location aspect of Brightkite - without contributing accurate location information, it's impossible for them to contribute to the virtual people-web that will inevitably form as Brightkite grows.

Of course, it'd be fine for people you actually know; I'm fine with knowing if my mate is in the general location, I'd call him up and hook up or something if I so desired. But as a social network, with a purpose of allowing disparate internet denizens to meet based on some similarity or relation (in this case, physical location), it fails where it relates to inaccurate data from auto-updating systems - in such a case as the automatic systems themselves are inaccurate, of course.

If someone had access to a truly accurate system - such as an external GPS unit instead of the one in their phone (assuming the one in the iPhone will be as inaccurate as the ones in the Windows Mobile devices I've seen), then this wouldn't be a problem. In that case, the auto-updates could be treated as manual check-ins.

I am not advocating for only auto check-in but for different levels of customization, most certainly for choosing between auto or manual check in. But possibly, as I was discussing with some brightkite folks, to be able to distinguish betwee auto and manual check-ins also on the receiving end.

So elliottcable, you should be able to specify whether you want to be notified of no check-ins, manual check-ins or auto check-ins in an increasing volume of notifications.

I have to be that one guy who disagrees. After tweeting multiple times daily for... at *least* a year, it's no trouble whatsoever to checkin when I move. Fast WiFi in most cities coupled with a not-too-slouchy job of making the site speedy to respond on your end makes it, mostly, a breeze. I'd personally prefer the service remained manual - having notifications pop up when somebody happened to walk or drive by a place where I was, instead of when somebody *was actually at* a place I was, would make this service useless for me. Here's an idea: Instead, track people's locations... but don't check them in. When they've been still in the same place for like 15 minutes, send them a text "Do you want to check in at *insert guessed location here*?". On an iPhone, the software could take care of this query, so it doesn't even cost a text message. This lets the users continue to be precise, while letting them be automatically reminded/assisted in checking in by the GPS.

Here's some interesting background reading on location-based services and how hard it is to work with the carriers:

http://tinyurl.com/69fyqr (Venturebeat written by Skydeck founder)
http://tinyurl.com/3hubjk (Techcrunch by Loopt founder)

Sounds like a tough job, guys. Keep chipping away at it!

Martin Dufort. I assure you we have not forgotten about you request. We still have plans to support reading from FireEagle. We use it, and would like to see that feature as well. However since it is still in private beta and the user base is still very limited, it is a little farther down on our priority list.

It will happen, I assure you. Please bear with us we are a very small team:)

Hi Christian. With the release of the native Brightkite iPhone app, (available at the launch of the app store) you will be able to check-in at the click of a button. Android and BlackBerry apps are in development as well. – Brady, on June 14, 2008 16:40

Let's spread this feature request. Use:

http://tinyurl.com/5oa4lg

on your posts about it on brightkite.

I've been requesting a read from FireEagle from quite some time now. The BrightKite are saying it is in the roadmap but we do not seem to get a straight answer as to when it would be implemented. I completely stopped using BK until this is done as I do not want to update my location in 20 different spots.

I just managed to setup Navizon on my iPhone so that it updates fireeagle every 10 mins, then I hooked up that to Brightkite, and now if I go to the sharing tab on my brightkite accunt it does say that fireeagle thinks I am logged somewhere. But there doesn't seem to be a way to:

1 - just click there and checkin to that address
2 - have it to automatically check-in everytime my address is updated on fireeagle.

Having to maually check in defeats the whole purpose of using fireeagle to centrally control your location. Fireeagle's concept is to have multiple application updating and reading a central location point, imagine if each of these applications required that you manually set the location in them?!

Please add this ASAP!!

All new Nokia Nseries phones have GPS now as well. There are multiple ways to code an S60 app that does this. – Christian Rauh, on June 12, 2008 16:28

Good idea.

I just started a new topic on this point and then found this one, so I am reposting here as well.

It seems like the privacy issues could be avoided if the location is part of a Note/photo sent. I.e. the Note is the checkin. If you don't want to be "seen" somewhere, don't post.

My phone has GPS and I'd love to see BK use that to update my location automatically based on where I am when I send the Note.

Yay. At Stanford,all buildings on the Quad have the same address, but being at the Math building 380 is way different from being at Wallenburg building 120. Checking in by building number or name would be great. I see you're working on it. Thanks for a kewl app!

Cool.... I wonder if it does work via SMS. Honestly I would rather see the SMS work for this before API because that gives people an incentive to develope a mobile application that would actually be useful in many other scenarios since SMS is universal. Developing software that would interact with the API would make it BrightKite specific. Maybe I'm just an open standards guy :) – bblboy54, on May 02, 2008 21:09