mkb's dashboard

mkb replied on November 25, 2008 00:20 to the idea "Need Time Machine" in ExpanDrive:

To clarify, does this mean no Time Machine support at all, or no Time Machine support on remote Linux boxen?

Does Time Machine take advantage of AFP-specific features which aren't feasible to simulate over (S)FTP?

A comment on the idea "Attach Privacy Level to Location" in Brightkite:

Thanks very much for this. It makes BK much more convenient to use. What is the idea behind the "Within N meters of this place" setting? Hopefully you aren't planning to use it to select randomized locations to map. Enough randomized points can collectively show the real location pretty easily. Witness what happened with GPS. – mkb, on July 19, 2008 03:18

A comment on the idea "One more "zone" of privacy between "City" and "Exact"" in Brightkite:

I like the spirit of "street" and "neighborhood," but they are both problematic. Some streets are only one block long, which means there's no real privacy gain by omitting the address. Other streets are so long that they are less specific than city. Neighborhood would be perfect if the data were readily available. Unfortunately, I know of no databases which can map a US address to a neighborhood name and I doubt Brightkite has the resources to create one. While zip code is only a meager approximation of neighborhood, it has the advantage of being completely straightforward from a programming standpoint. That's why so many sites and services report location at the zip code level. Brightkite has plenty of other work to do. No need to re-invent the wheel on this feature when there is already a well-tested solution. – mkb, on July 19, 2008 03:10

mkb marked one of dominik's replies in Brightkite as useful. dominik replied to the idea "Check-in via Twitter".

mkb marked one of ThomasHan's replies in Twitter as useful. ThomasHan replied to the question "replies rss feed?".

mkb replied on May 06, 2008 22:37 to the question "mobile support & API & desktop client plzthx :)" in Brightkite:

I'm surprised by the lack of an API. My approach is always to build the API first, then implement other interfaces on top of it. Eating your own dog food makes for a better API.

mkb started following the question "mobile support & API & desktop client plzthx :)" in Brightkite.

A comment on the idea "Throttling of cross-posts" in Brightkite:

That's an interesting idea, but much trickier than what I'm suggesting. Remember that this isn't about what appears on Brightkite itself but rather what is propagated to Twitter. Within it's own domain, Brightkite can taylor displays to individual users based on various criteria. In the Twitter domain, all of my followers see the same thing. The question of which of my actions is relevant to you is moot, because there is no way to determine who you are. Or put another way, "you" refers to the collection of all my Twitter followers, and lacks a single location.

I'd simply like some finer control over what is sent to Twitter than the all-or-nothing currently provided. I like the manual override best, but if numerical throttling is easier to implement, that's fine too. – mkb, on May 05, 2008 23:55

mkb started following the idea "FriendFeed and Facebook integration" in Brightkite.

mkb replied on May 05, 2008 08:16 to the idea "One more "zone" of privacy between "City" and "Exact"" in Brightkite:

But what would it say in Fred's stream? Looking at Fred's stream directly, one expects Fred's checkins to be listed without context. That is, they aren't related to your checkins or anybody else's. You might not even be logged in. How does Brightkite handle the distance issue in that case?

Displaying location fuzzed by a particular distance factor introduces a long list of questions that must be answered before the code can be written. With zip codes, these questions have already been answered and the implementations are well understood.

As for some zip codes being pretty big, I agree, but that's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. Zip code size mirrors population density and bear some loose relation to neighborhoods, while fixed distances do not.

mkb replied on May 04, 2008 20:15 to the idea "One more "zone" of privacy between "City" and "Exact"" in Brightkite:

I suggest zip-code level. That's the privacy level that most dating sites use, and many other social networking sites. People are familiar and comfortable with the idea of zip code granularity.

Distance-based may suffer the same problem as city. 100 yards in the country might not mean much, while 100 yards in a big city can be a world away.

Zip code has the added advantage of being more precise and easy to calculate. There is no guesswork about the distance between points A and B.

Finally, zip codes are easy to display. "Fred is in 94608" makes sense. What exactly do you display with distance-based privacy?

mkb started following the idea "One more "zone" of privacy between "City" and "Exact"" in Brightkite.

mkb replied on May 04, 2008 19:54 to the idea "Attach Privacy Level to Location" in Brightkite:

I'm pleased to see this is already being discussed. I was about to add it myself. For me, location is highly correlated with whether I want to be public or private. Diner? Public. My mistress' house? Private. (Or did I get that backwards?)

My idea for this might be a tad more work to implement, but would likely be easier to use. Users would still have a global public/private setting, which they could set at will. Placemarks would have three settings: always public, always private, or honor the global public/private setting. The default for a new placemark would be to honor the global setting.

Make sense?

mkb started following the idea "Attach Privacy Level to Location" in Brightkite.

mkb shared an idea in Brightkite on May 04, 2008 19:29:

Twittermap integration?

Have you thought about integration with Twittermap? This is hardly a high priority, but the implementation is likely dirt simple. Looking at their API, it appears that a single HTTP call is all it would take, provided you have the location data already available in a format they can parse.

mkb shared an idea in Brightkite on May 04, 2008 05:32:

Throttling of cross-posts

I love Brightkite's ability to cross-post to Twitter. It allows me to start using Brightkite with little or no additional effort even though other people I know aren't using it yet. I do have one concern though. The current controls for what gets propagated from Brightkite to Twitter don't quite mirror my own preferences. If I sent as much as I'd like to Brightkite, I'd end up spamming my Twitter friends.

I have two ideas for dealing with the problem. First is per-type throttling-- no more than N messages of a given type for each M minutes (or hours). Or just restrict N to 1. That is, my first photo (or whatever) will be Twittered, but then no more for some number of hours.

The second approach would be to have some syntax for exceptions in crossposting. Eg, normally I want my photos crossposted to Twitter, but not this one I am sending right now. Normally I don't want my checkins crossposted, but I'll make an exception for my current location.

Make sense?

mkb started following the question "Doncha think you should mirror Twitter's syntax?" in Brightkite.

mkb started following the question "Doncha think you should mirror Twitter's syntax?" in Brightkite.

mkb started following the question "Doncha think you should mirror Twitter's syntax?" in Brightkite.

mkb started following the question "Doncha think you should mirror Twitter's syntax?" in Brightkite.