Chris's dashboard

Chris asked a question in Brightkite on July 12, 2009 13:26:

Push notifications in the iPhone app?

Are there any plans to add push notifications to the Brightkite iPhone app?

In a related question, now that push has been implemented on the iPhone, it'd be nice if I could specify a separate notification e-mail address, an address to which SMS-length notifications would be sent. I use textfree on the iPhone, which recently added push. I have an @textfree.us e-mail address, and messages sent to that address are pushed to my phone. I'd like to have notifications that I currently have sent to SMS sent to that address instead, bypassing SMS but still allowing instant notifications.

I realize that I could just change my e-mail address with Brightkite, but I'd prefer to have a separate address for the SMS-type notifications and continue to have e-mail notifications sent to my regular e-mail address.

A comment on the idea "Make an iPhone App so users can map hotspots for you" in Skyhook Wireless:

They probably would also have to protect themselves from someone intentionally injecting large amounts of bogus data. I realize that someone can submit bogus data now through Skyhook's web site, but the amount of damage they can do is limited, and I'm sure Skyhook has a way of detecting whether a user submitted position is wildly inaccurate. – Chris, on June 11, 2009 15:33

A comment on the idea "Make an iPhone App so users can map hotspots for you" in Skyhook Wireless:

One concern I could imagine is that you wouldn't want the source iPhone to be moving too quickly when it's taking its wifi samples. Position updates can take a few seconds, as can the wifi scans, and if the phone is moving along at sixty miles per hour as it's scanning, it's possible that the position and scan information could be pretty far out of sync. (It's also possible that I'm talking out of my butt, but I've done enough fooling around with this stuff to make me think it might be a concern.) – Chris, on June 11, 2009 15:18

Chris asked a question in Skyhook Wireless on June 09, 2009 12:52:

XPS 2.0 in the new iPhone firmware

Does the iPhone with the new (3.0) firmware use XPS? I just upgraded my phone to 3.0, and from the way position is displayed on the new Google Maps application, it appears that perhaps the iPhone doesn't use either A-GPS or wifi triangulation or cell triangulation like it used to, but perhaps uses all the sensors in combination.

I realize that maybe the information is proprietary and you can't say one way or another, so just wink one time if the answer is yes and two times if the answer is no.

Chris started following the idea "Make an iPhone App so users can map hotspots for you" in Skyhook Wireless.

Chris started following the idea "Character Count / Push Notifications" in innerfence.

A comment on the question "Excluding travel routers" in Skyhook Wireless:

I got a new router and haven't used that one in a while. As of the last time I used it (which was several months ago), I was still having the problem, but I don't know whether it'd still be a problem. – Chris, on January 14, 2009 21:44

Chris replied on December 31, 2008 14:06 to the problem "What's up with "Visited Places"?" in Brightkite:

As an example of how the Map View makes no sense with this new way of displaying visited places, if a brand new user makes his first check-in in Miami, Florida, his map view will right away indicate that he has checked in in Miami, and also on the west coast of Florida somewhere north of Tampa (which I guess is what Brightkite considers the geographical center of Florida), and also either in southeastern or north central Kansas (two locations Brightkite uses for the center of the United States). So Brightkite will pinpoint three locations, very far from each other, for a user who has checked in just once.

Chris replied on December 31, 2008 02:30 to the problem "What's up with "Visited Places"?" in Brightkite:

I'm seeing places I've never been before in my list of visited places, and there are places I've been that aren't in the list. For example, Brightkite shows me as having checked in 24 times in Partido Judicial de Pamplona, in northern Spain, as recently as 20 hours ago, and I've never been there. I was in Valencia, Spain, 20 hours ago, but that's a considerable distance from northern Spain.

On the other hand, I have checked in in Dubai, but that no longer shows up (at least in Map View, where it used to show up).

I understand that if I've been anywhere in the U.S., then U.S. will be a visited place. But it doesn't make sense to show that in the map view, since it shows a very specific pinpoint at a location I've never been anywhere near. The same goes for any country or state--the map specifically pinpoints somewhere I've never been.

There are some other oddities--Alaska, US and AK, US are two different places in two different locations, even though they're both Alaska.

I'm glad you're backing this out. I can see the idea, but, especially in Map View, it doesn't make much sense.

Chris started following the problem "What's up with "Visited Places"?" in Brightkite.

Chris asked a question in Ping.fm on December 12, 2008 19:59:

Checking image view count without affecting the count myself

I'd like to be able to see how many views a picture of mine has gotten without changing the count by viewing it myself. As far as I can tell, the only way to see how many views a picture has gotten is by looking at the picture myself, and doing that adds another view. Is there a way not to count my own views, or could you add some sort of count to the Your Media page so that I could see the count without affecting it?

Chris replied on November 22, 2008 19:14 to the question "brightkite wall to work in australia" in Brightkite:

How about this?

http://brightkite.com/places/c49aadfc...

Chris replied on November 20, 2008 12:42 to the problem "Viewing Friends or Nearby sections crashes iPhone app" in Brightkite:

My iPhone app has started crashing too, and it always happens when I scroll down my Friends Activity list and the next message to be displayed in the stream is a check-in by <http://brightkite.com/people/sullrich>. If I set sullrich's activity not to appear in my stream, the app doesn't crash. I don't know if it's relevant, but this user doesn't have an account picture. Could the app be crashing when it encounters a user who's using the generic account picture?

A comment on the question "Brightkite SMS responses come from the U.S. short code when I'm roaming outside the U.S." in Brightkite:

I used the short code in Europe last week, and it worked just fine. I was under the misapprehension that it wouldn't work when I was outside the U.S. – Chris, on November 19, 2008 00:10

Chris replied on November 03, 2008 13:10 to the idea "Select placemarks in iPhone app" in Brightkite:

Click More and then Placemarks. There's a Check In button there for you to click. You can also edit the icons at the bottom of the app and put Placemarks there for quicker access.

A comment on the question "Brightkite SMS responses come from the U.S. short code when I'm roaming outside the U.S." in Brightkite:

Great! I'll try it when I'm back over in Europe in a couple of weeks. – Chris, on October 22, 2008 20:31

A comment on the question "Brightkite SMS responses come from the U.S. short code when I'm roaming outside the U.S." in Brightkite:

I'm back in the U.S. now, so I can't test it at the moment. Will the U.S. short code work when I'm roaming outside the U.S.? I was under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that it wouldn't, which is why I was using the +44 number. – Chris, on October 22, 2008 20:25

A comment on the question "Brightkite SMS responses come from the U.S. short code when I'm roaming outside the U.S." in Brightkite:

A little more info: I send my checkin to the international +44 SMS number. I get a reply from Brightkite asking me to reply with a Y to confirm, but this message from Brightkite comes from the number 83960 (I mistakenly reported before that it comes from the U.S. short code, 80289). Rather than replying, as instructed, to 83960, I have to send Y to the +44 number instead. – Chris, on October 22, 2008 20:16

A comment on the question "Brightkite SMS responses come from the U.S. short code when I'm roaming outside the U.S." in Brightkite:

My user name is captainslim. I was in Paris, so I didn't think I could use the 80289 number. When I did send my Y response to the 80289 number (before I realized that that was the number I was sending it to), I didn't get a further response from Brightkite. I subsequently sent a Y to the +44 number, and I got a confirmation from Brightkite. – Chris, on October 21, 2008 01:30

Chris asked a question in Brightkite on October 19, 2008 20:44:

Brightkite SMS responses come from the U.S. short code when I'm roaming outside the U.S.

I'm a U.S. Brightkite user, and recently I checked in by SMS at a placemark I had in Paris. I sent the SMS to the international +44 number. Brightkite sent me an SMS message back asking me to confirm that I wanted to check in at that location. This message from Brightkite came from the U.S. short code, and since I was roaming in France, sending my reply to that number didn't work. After I realized that sending my reply to the short code wasn't going to do anything, I sent a "Y" to the +44 number, and all was well.

If I send an SMS to the international number, shouldn't any confirmation from Brightkite come from that number, so that my reply to it will work? I don't know enough about how the SMS stuff is put together to know whether this is a necessary limitation I'll have to work around.