Mika Hiltunen's dashboard

Mika Hiltunen asked a question in Brightkite on October 15, 2009 12:09:

Could you use Bing Maps with Google Maps when searching locations?

Do you have any plans for using Bing Maps concurrently with Google Maps?

There has been a very annoying bug in Google Maps. Almost all addresses in Finland are translated to Swedish. And that doesn't mean their Swedish counterparts which are used in some parts of Finland, but straight translations which basically means nothing. The result: Finnish users get and see locations they don't understand and pretty much all location based services using Google Maps are useless - including Brightkite. Google is aware of the problem but they seem to ignore it.

Bing Maps seems to have geocoding API too and they don't have the same annoying bug. Do you think you could use it with Google Maps? The results could appear under "More results". Using two service providers could be good for the situations like this.

If you want to test this "real time translation", try to search for example "Kauppakatu 10, Joensuu". The result is "Handelsgatan 10, Joensuu" and we don't have a street or signs in Joensuu with that name.

I really would like to use Brightkite and recommend it to my friends, but at the moment that's just impossible :(

Mika Hiltunen started following the question "The Ability to Edit or Insert Notes & Locations" in Brightkite.

Mika Hiltunen replied on March 27, 2009 08:58 to the problem "City is excluded when searching coordinates" in Brightkite:

Sorry, the link to Google results doesn't work. You have to go to address bar and hit enter to see the real results or you'll get error code 610 (invalid key).

Mika Hiltunen reported a problem in Brightkite on March 27, 2009 08:53:

City is excluded when searching coordinates

I noticed a problem when searching location using coordinates. For example when I search coordinates 62.598555, 29.719691, the result will be near Kukkola, Pohjois-Karjala, Finland (link to results). The result includes city area, province and country but for some reason the city (which is Joensuu) is excluded. This is somewhat annoying because checkins and posts aren’t included in Joensuu city feed.

I made the same search using Google Maps HTTP reverse geocoding and it can find the city (link to XML results). Do you think you could fix this little glitch?

Mika Hiltunen shared an idea in Brightkite on March 23, 2009 15:58:

Replace the term friend with the term follower

If I’m not wrong, Brightkite is a microblogging service. It’s about content the users create and share (unlike Facebook, which is about the users themselves). At the moment the service is using term friend, but I think it’s misleading. On microblogging services you don’t really have friends; you just have more or less interesting content (and maybe users). What do you think about replacing the term friend with the term follower (like in Twitter)?

Some of my friends declined the friend requests because they thought that the sender wasn’t their friend. They didn’t realize that he or she was just interested to the content they produced. I think this issue is about usability. The term friend is just too intimate.

Like they say: if someone can misunderstand it, he or she probably will ;)

Mika Hiltunen started following the idea "Creative Commons Support" in Brightkite.

Mika Hiltunen started following the idea "Should Have Edit Option on Posts" in Brightkite.

Mika Hiltunen replied on March 23, 2009 15:06 to the idea "add a searchable "free hotspot" flag to places!" in Brightkite:

I think the idea is pretty good. There is one thing that needs attention: how to keep the hotspot database up-to-date? It would be very annoying to walk to hotspot just to see that it isn’t there anymore. If users can add spots, there should be some sort of "report missing hotspot" feature.

Mika Hiltunen shared an idea in Brightkite on March 20, 2009 19:43:

Address string: add links for a city and for a country

Currently, when I check in or post something to Brightkite, the address link points to the most accurate place available. So for example, if I check in at Rantakatu 17, 80100 Joensuu, Finland the whole address string links to the street address. What do you think about this: add links to the city and to the country too if you have them in the address string.

So in the example case:
"Rantakatu 17" would link to Rantakatu 17, 80100 Joensuu, Finland (accurate)
"80100 Joensuu" would link to Joensuu, Finland (city level)
"Finland" would link to Finland (country level)

These links could act as shortcuts to "what’s happening in the city" and to "what’s happening in the country". Of course you could use postal codes to point to city regions as well.

I hope you understood my English :)

Mika Hiltunen started following the idea "Fire Eagle?" in Ping.fm.

Mika Hiltunen marked one of Lesley's replies in Brightkite as useful. Lesley replied to the question "Weird times in Active Friends list. How should it work?".

Mika Hiltunen asked a question in Brightkite on March 02, 2009 23:14:

Weird times in Active Friends list. How should it work?

How should Active Friends list work? My friend logged in but it didn’t change the activity time. Still it shows less time than the friend feed: last post was 10 hours ago but Active Friends shows activity 4 hours ago. She hasn’t post anything in 10 hours. She tried to remove cookies and logged in again, but the activity time didn’t change. So the question is: what is activity and what is not? Or is there a bug somewhere?

Mika Hiltunen started following the question "Brightkite S60 Client" in Brightkite.

Brady's reply to "can you unlock my secrets if asked by me?" was just promoted to the most useful! Mika Hiltunen and 2 other people think it's one of the best replies.

Hi markzero. We are implementing a way to edit both your privacy settings and location on a post. Its in the works and expect it soon.

Mika Hiltunen started following the idea "can you unlock my secrets if asked by me?" in Brightkite.

Mika Hiltunen started following the question "Modifying existing posts" in Brightkite.

Mika Hiltunen started following the idea "Facebook Status Update" in Brightkite.

Mika Hiltunen replied on February 21, 2009 08:08 to the idea ""Me & My friends" view could list also comments my friends make other Notes" in Brightkite:

Good idea, but I think this feature should be optional. Maybe one more check box to Stream settings?

Mika Hiltunen marked one of Lesley's replies in Brightkite as useful. Lesley replied to the question "Why is Brightkite asking for delete permissions on flickr?".

Mika Hiltunen replied on February 21, 2009 08:02 to the update "Changes To Our International SMS" in Brightkite:

Good to hear you are preventing the abuse and fix the problems with the international SMS. This appears to be important feature for many, but I think we all can wait. At least it's still possible to use SMS for check-ins and posting.