Nick Taylors blog

Brightkite is a geosocial network. Based loosely on twitter-style short messages, but with a much stronger leaning towards location awareness.

I’ve used both the standard Brightkite website and also their iPhone optimized site for many months. There are three things I really like about Brightkite. Firstly, they’ve done a great job in making the application agnostic. I don’t care if I’m accessing Brightkite via Safari on my Mac in my office, using the iPhone optimized site or now, the native iPhone application (link to the iTunes store). While obviously the look is slightly different, the feel is alway the same. 

Secondly, Brightkite is great at getting my location. When access from a desktop or notebook computer, Brightkite will do a pretty good job at guessing your location either by using the Loki plugin, or Mozilla Geode (more here and here). When using your iPhone, Brightkite will use CoreLocation to discover your location. I like the way the iPhone native application will sort your placemarks by what it thinks is nearest to your estimated location. When the estimated location isn’t quite right, you can “pick a place”, by searching for your actual location. It’s nice that locations are named, rather than just co-ordinates, it’s a nice human-friendly touch. 

Lastly, the balance between openness and privacy is ideal, and customizable. For example, if I want to make my exact location known or hidden, or obfuscated (Brightkite calls this “City” and is really just your location generalized to a larger area), a simple switch lets me do this. I can also set privacy levels for different categories of contacts, including trusted friends, friends and everyone else.

This aspect makes it ideal for meeting fellow Brightkite users in real-world social gatherings. Use Brightkite to see who’s nearby and send them a message!

In fact, it’s how I met Brightkite founder Martin May, at a recent Tech Cocktail event in Boulder. 

Of course, Brightkite lets you stream your consciousness a’la most other social networks, via a simple URL:

http://brightkite.com/people/nickt

This will take you to my stream of checkins, photos and notes. 

It can also stream directly to twitter, and meta-update services like ping.fm support updating Brightkite. Links to services like Facebook, Flickr and Linked-In are available via your profile page. 

Here’s a video demo of the Brightkite iPhone app in action.

Brightkite for the iPhone from Brightkite on Vimeo.

More background:

Brightkite Blog
Ars Technica review of the Brightklite iPhone Application
ReadWriteWeb review of Brightkite

Summary: a great mobile geosocial network. Recommended.

My friends Mark, Mike and myself thought that the Land Rovers and ourselves should get one last camping trip in this summer. We’d camped near Water Crossing 3 on Halfmoon Creek earlier in the year, and decided to camp a bit further up the trail. Given the weather forecast of 15F/10C and snow, the wives declined, so it was just a boys camp. 

Anyway, it was cold, wet and overcast when we arrived in Leadville, much the same as it was in Denver. Still, we had bourbon, brats, sushi and Snow Peak Chopsticks, so we were happy.

After out sushi lunch and setting up camp, we drove further up the trail to Champion Mill where we took some photos of the mill in it’s decaying state. It’s a shame to see such a wonderful place making its last stand against the elements. 

 As the elements were making an appearance, we had a quick look inside (be careful – don’t fall through the floor), before heading back down to our 11,110 ft campsite. 

Back at camp, we had some brats and bourbon and given the sleet and cold we turned in early.

The next morning dawned crisp and blue, and made the drive back to Leadville wonderful. 

Next camping, err, June!

UMapper makes it easy to embed Flash-based maps in your website, blog or popular social networks. If you quickly need to create and share a one-off map for almost any purpose, UMapper is a great way to do it. 

UMapper home page

I like UMapper as both a technologist and as a traveler. It has one of the easiest interfaces I’ve used; I created and embedded my first map within 3 minutes.

WIth the ability to choose from map providers Google, Microsoft and OpenStreetMap, and the ability to embed maps easily into Facebook, MySpace, Blogger blogs, Wordpress (hosted) blogs, Orkut and iGoogle – as well as providing a Wordpress plug-in, there is enormous flexibility and ease of use. 

There’s also the ability to add custom markers, polygons, circles and lines, making it useful for a whole set of businesses from mining companies to real-estate agents. 

Import options supported include KML, GPX, and GeoRSS.

The traveler in me really liked twbr’s map, outlining his route through Africa. 

I’ve also started using it over on my other blog. 

UMapper: If you need to quickly create or embed custom maps it’s highly recommended.

The last couple of weeks have been tumultuous for the economy at large, and Silicon Valley doesn’t get away scott-free. At the October Boulder Denver New technology Meetup, Mark Soane of Appian Ventures did an overview of how the current conditions may affect the VC market, with a focus on the local Colorado market. Basically, the VCs can still get funding, and have funding available but things will get a little tougher. Some funding in Colorado is moving from software products into renewable energy technologies. 

So I was interested to find, via this VentureBeat article, a presentation from Sequoia Capital.

[slideshare id=648808&doc=sequoia-1223625495238287-9&w=425]

Slide 44 outlines, and to a degree reenforces, what Mark had to say. Smaller B/C raises, slower customer uptake and a need to become cash-flow positive. Basically, startups have to become more efficient and focussed (though looking around my local area I’d say that’ll be difficult as the startups here already do a great job at that), and be extremely careful with cash. Common sense to a degree, and certainly the usual reaction to this part of the cycle.

Still, good, free advice. Batten down the hatches and as the last slide in the presentation reminds us, “get real or go home”!