Michael Strutton's dashboard

Michael, this is something of a complicated situation. We will definitely consider your suggestion and look into it. Thank you very much for your input.

Update.

From the Apple Mail client (not my iPhone), I sent the following message:

"say My wife is almost on Facebook. She's there, just not using it yet... Next stop Brightkite."

I tried it in the body without the "say" prefix and BK didn't understand the request. I re-typed a new message with the "say" prefix and message in the body. The subject line was blank. My message posted to BK but was prematurely truncated to this:

"My wife is almost on Facebook. She's there, just not using it"

I'm guessing there's a line feed issue when using the body (60 characters would hit right in the "yet..." )

So I went back to my old method of including the "say" prefix and entire message in the subject line. The post went through as expected.
My conclusion is that all commands and messages should be in the subject line. If this is the case, then I think my original problem is worth investigation.

Use case: User attempts to post a message via email and forgets to include the "say" prefix. User will either retype message or open their Sent mail and forward email, correcting the Subject Line prefix s/FWD:/Say/. Following the above steps from an iPhone will not work, leaving the user to retype the message (and longing for cut/copy/paste on the iPhone).

Seems to me the logic should be something like:
Combine the subject and body preserving line feeds when finding the string "say " take the next non white space character +139 more (unless 2 or more consecutive line returns are found) = message.

This would allow the user to put "say" in the subject line, or body and the message in the subject line or body so long as the message proceeded the "say" command. It would also most likely ignore automatic signatures as they usually are separated by more than one line return.

Keep up the great work. I'm loving the service and anxious to see what may come post iPhone 2.0...

OK, I'll give that a try. I have been including my message with "Say" in the subject line. Do I still need to use the prefix "say"? If so where?

Michael, to post a message via email you would need to put your text in the Body of the email and not the Subject. You would only use the Subject line if adding a caption to a photo. It also looks like you have your iPhone signature enabled, if you take this out it should help to prevent any misunderstandings by Brightkite. I hope this helps.

Michael, sorry about that! This is a bug and we will fix it. Thank you for letting us know about it.

Thanks for the update. I'll patiently wait...

Michael, I've found this annoying as well. We are working on a way to link both SMS and Email notifications to the Brightkite object page where you will be able to view the photo/user/map and add comments, etc. Stay tuned.

I had quite a bit of trouble figuring it out for verizon. I couldn't send the email as a regular sms. I had to send it as a picture message (with no picture selected) and it worked perfectly.

A little strange but not totally inconvenient

I followed the directions of putting the location in the subject line and continued to get error emails. Finally, I swapped it up, cleared the subject line and put my "@ mylocationgoes here" in the body... TA DA! It worked, then it replied telling me how I could post a note as well.
So, it seems something may have changed and you no longer use the subject line, you put your commands in the body of the email, leaving the subject line blank.

I guess clearing the message body was the trick. Seems like if it's reading the subject line it should ignore the body (except for attachments). Use case: if I'm replying to an email with options 1,2,3,4 my reply may include the original message quoted in the body. It's extra work for me to delete the body before sending... – Michael Strutton, on May 06, 2008 18:36

And make sure the body is empty. I tried uploading a picture and use the subject line to set my location at the same time but this is not working. It only processes the image and not the command in the subject line if you do that. – Martin Dufort, on May 06, 2008 18:21

The only thing I have done with with the email interface is photo/comment (as advertised), check in "@ location" and "Say, ". Yes, commands are in the subject line. – Michael Strutton, on May 06, 2008 18:16

Hmm... that's strange. I keep getting error replies from brightkite, when I try. Could you provide some examples? Also, I'm assuming that the body is left empty and all information/commands are placed in the subject, right? – Dave B, on May 06, 2008 18:11

Can anyone confirm business checkin choices work? I tried ?starbucks and get a response with 1) SB, 2) ... 3)... etc. - I tried replying with "1" in the subject line, but it didn't recognize my response. – Michael Strutton, on May 06, 2008 18:11

Dave B: All of the SMS commands work via email as well, including notes. – Jordan Running, on May 06, 2008 18:07