Socialight / blog+news

Ready for the inside guide to Wine Country? Grab your glass, your fork and your sense of adventure as WineTravel.com staff sticky-note all the best spots in Napa and Sonoma to get your grape on. Get a sneak peek at 3 of their first getaways…

• Girlfriend’s Guide to St. Helena: Shoes, chocolate, wine and pampering in Napa’s toniest town. Hey, if you want you can bring the gents too.
• Zin tour of Dry Creek: Forget the clinkers and head straight for the good stuff. We ID the top Zinfandel sipping spots near Healdsburg
• Healdsburg Tasting rooms: Wine-crawl around the square

Want to feel like a local wherever you go on your summer travels? Of course you do! Use Socialight to find the best things near you. Then, let people know what you think is best. We’re happy to see that Motorola’s recommending you use Socialight to do just that.

From MotorolaRoadTrips.com:

Sign up for Online Sharing & Social Sites

• Flickr for photo sharing
• YouTube for video sharing
• Twitter for micro-blogging
• Socialight for geo-tagging
• Google Maps for interactive maps, directions and traffic

Not to be confused with the Norse God of mischief, Loki is a great new application to help you find and use location.

What they say:

Combining GPS-like location, local search and one-button access to location-based content, Loki is the first web-based application to make the Internet revolve around you. Literally.

What we say:

Loki kicks ass at finding your location using the WiFi in your Windows or Mac laptop. We’ve been using it since day one and recently integrated with their new developer API so that if you’re using Loki, we’ll automatically detect your location and show you content around you on Socialight. Sweet!

Download the plugin from the Loki site here. Once you’ve got it installed - you can also play awesome location-based games like Plundr from our buddies at area/code.

We just launched our new Facebook application! It lets you create Sticky Notes using photos in your Facebook albums. Now, you can explain the story behind the picture and where it was taken. The app also shows off your latest creation on your Facebook profile. Check it out over at Facebook. We were also mentioned in a Wall Street Journal article today about the launch of many new applications on the Facebook Platform.

If you’re a Rails or Java ninja who can work in our New York office, mail us now.

Review the job descriptions first…

• Ruby on Rails Engineer
• Mobile Java Engineer

…then, if you’re qualified, send an e-mail to jobs [at] socialight.com with your resume and one or two paragraphs describing why you rock.

Existing Socialight users get first dibs at the positions!

As an early holiday gift, we’ve launched an all-new version of Socialight!

During the past few months, we’ve explored the dreams we have for Socialight and the suggestions and comments you’ve made and have done a comprehensive overhaul that we’re quite excited about. Here’s a quick overview of some of the changes:

• a brand new logo and web site design, and even a new name for our place-based messages - Sticky Notes. StickyShadows, RIP. Word.
• more ways to access Socialight while mobile - new mobile web (WAP) and text messaging (SMS) interfaces let you find and create Sticky Notes anytime, anywhere. http://socialight.com/help/mobile
• more ways to connect with other people – message users directly, post on users’ pages and invite contacts through easy address book importing.
• enhance the networks and content you’ve already got by importing GeoRSS feeds from sites like Flickr to share content from specific places. If you have your own site like a blog or a MySpace page, you can also embed Socialight widgets right there.
• tools for publishers (even you!) to create opt-in channels. WCities and Movie Locations Guide are already programming Socialight channels, with many more coming soon.

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback on anything, positive or negative. Don’t hesitate to reach out.

We hope you enjoy the upgrade!

If you haven’t noticed, we’ve turned off Socialight for a little bit. Sorry! We have a good reason, though. We’re preparing to unleash a whole new version on you guys when we turn back on in a couple of weeks. You’ll be rewarded for your patience with tons of new features, a whole new web site design, and several new ways to use Socialight while mobile.

During our little bit of down-time, last week we had the pleasure of taking part in WIRED NextFest here in New York City. It was awesome - like a super science fair. Thanks to everyone who visited us there last week. We had a great time meeting people, showing a preview of the new Socialight, and giving out Socialight stickers.

The Discovery Channel and the Science Channel have been airing a NextFest special and we’re featured prominently. The Socialight segment is up on YouTube if you want to check it out.

Stay tuned to this space and we’ll keep you updated.

Socialight was unavailable for a little while we switched over to our new datacenter. We apologise for any slowness you may have experienced. We are back and better than ever! We’re also hard at work on a brand new version of Socialight with some delectable new features that you’re going to love. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but I will say that the new Socialight will work on many more phones and will allow you to communicate in some very new ways with people near and far away.

Of course as a loyal early member of the service (and reader of this blog), you’ll be getting a heads-up from us about the new site before anybody else.

If you live in NYC or are looking for an excuse to take a trip, late September / early October is the perfect time to be here. This fall, along with the wonderful weather, New Yorkers can look forward to checking out some of the awesome exhibits at the WIRED NextFest. Check out the story in the magazine here.

Socialight will be featured in the Communications Pavilion, where you’ll be able to meet us and take things for a spin. If you can’t be here, you can still watch the festivities on The Discovery Channel’s NextFest special (29 September @ 9pm).
SPOILER WARNING: Contains scenes from Socialight HQ.

Backstage images from the Socialight shoot.

With our happily provided permission Penelope from London Metropolitan University created this wonderful animation on Socialight: The Future of Conversation. <blush> Thanks, Penelope!

Brady Forrest just posted a podcast on O’Reilly Radar with me in which we discuss where some of the ideas for Socialight originated (23centstories shoutout!), as well as what we’re working on now and what you can look forward to in the next version. (MP3)

If you’re anywhere near San Jose next week - come say hi and meet me at the Where 2.0 Conference.