Socialight / blog+news

We were covered by CNN today, in a story on the homepage as part of their Welcome to the Future series. Thanks to everyone who gave us the heads-up.

They say:

Socialight…works more like a tagging service. It lets users create virtual “sticky notes” wherever they are with their cell phone. If you’re at a music concert, for instance, you can create a note. Then if your friends approach your location, they’re notified on their phone. (A new version of Socialight is under development and the service will be unavailable until that version is launched.)

That new version is coming very soon, folks. I promise!

During NextFest, we were featured during an hour-long special about the festival that aired a bunch of times on the Discovery Channel and the Science Channel. Gotta hand it to the Discovery Channel and the production crew from MHP. It’s a pretty sweet segment, and the guys being interviewed weren’t bad either…

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.

NewMediaAge magazine in the UK wrote about us in a piece called “Mobile Networking”.

Dan Melinger, co-founder of Socialight, agrees that content for content’s sake isn’t going to form mobile social communities unless that content is specifically relevant to people. Hence Socialight allows people to tag places, such as a good restaurant, with a comment and a picture taken on their mobile. These can then be shared with friends on the service, as well as those who have opted to receive content from beyond their buddy list.

“We’re going to get people talking on their mobiles about places they’ve enjoyed or hated,” says Melinger. “By the end of next year, 70% of new phones should have GPS, which will make the system work at its best - although we can get some form of accuracy without it and people can later move their notes onto an online map. Then, when someone passes a spot with a note assigned to it, they’re alerted and can comment on it.”

There was a blurb on Socialight in the Septeber 2006 issue of WIRED Magazine.

Tell the world about that fabulous martini bar you’ve discovered. With StickyShadows, owners of location-aware cell phones can leave virtual sticky notes for the next guy. While sipping a gin, thumb a text message. The next traveler to step into your StickyShadow will get an instant heads-up on his handset. Psst! Order the Boodles.

Our hometown tabloid the New York Post published a story on the ways online mapping tools are changing the way we live in NYC. I’m proud to say they featured a choice quote on Socialight from yours truly, including the following tidbit of wisdom:

“It’s this connection with place that resonates deep down in the human psyche; it’s very empowering.”

Deep, Dan, deep.

Since the late ’90s, LBS has been linked to a host of intriguing, yet somehow not-quite-ready-for prime time, mobile scenarios..

USA Today has a great article on the new wave of LBS applications entitled “Where in the world am I? Your phone might know”. The article is comprehensive and is a good overview of what is happening in the space today. My favourite bit (apart from their mention of Socialight) - Dan Gilmartin from Sprint debunking the ubiquitous “Starbucks finder” LBS myth.

What a happy surpise! If you head down to your local newsagents and pick out a copy of the Business 2.0, you will find Kamida (makers of Socialight and other fine socialware) and friends (including Semacode) featured in a lavishly illustrated article by Carlo Longino (of Mobhappy and The Feature [RIP] fame). We’re in the bit called Here You Are: Location-based services.

Click here for a full-size scan (~550k).

David Rowan thinks we’re part of “The Next Big Thing”…

The next big thing; Place-tagging; Trendsurfing

David Rowan
11 February 2006
The Times Magazine

Remember when mobile phones were simply for talking to people? Here’s yet another fashionable use for them to add to video camera, music player, satellite navigator and tea-maker. Cellphones are now a tool for pinning virtual messages to physical places, messages that any passing stranger can retrieve once their phone comes in contact with the location-based “tag”. It’s all part of a trend to map out the geographical world with digital information held on the internet, building what the techies call “the geospatial web”. Geospatial what? Guys, we can’t use jargon like that in The Times Magazine. Can’t we just call it “place-tagging”?

Let’s say you want to recommend a local pâtisserie to tourists, or just let friends know you’re in the neighbourhood. Simply “tag” the location with a code designed to deliver a message by phone. Some techniques use the Global Positioning System to make phones respond to a place, others rely on visitors sending texts or e-mails to addresses scribbled on to pavements. So far, only a few thousand people have been leaving virtual calling cards, but the trend offers so much scope for social networking – not to mention advertising – that we predict you’ll soon be hearing much more about it.

Up to now, creativity not commerce has been driving the trend. Take the yellow arrows that you may have seen stuck on to lampposts and street benches from Bangor to Dungeness. Part of a “global public art project” co-ordinated at yellowarrow.net, the stickers let anyone with a phone share their thoughts about a place with passers-by. Each arrow comes with a unique code, which the person placing the sticker sends by text to a central phone number along with their personal observations. Any subsequent visitor merely sends a text containing the code to receive by return the original note with which the place was tagged. In London, arrows currently recommend “a quiet garden” in a Camden pub and “the best Lebanese takeaway” in town. Just don’t ask whether placing stickers in the street without permission is entirely within the law.

Another project, Grafedia (www.grafedia.net), suggests hand-chalked e-mail addresses as an alternative. Spot a blue underlined phrase on an object in the street, and, with a late-generation phone, e-mail the phrase with the suffix “@grafedia.net”. By return, you’ll receive a message in the form of text, video or sound file, depending on how the tagger chose to personalise the location. “Every surface becomes potentially a web page,” the New York-based team behind Grafedia explains, “and the entire physical world can be joined with the internet.”

This is just the start. If you want a collaborative, up-to-date travel guide, point your cameraphone to the barcode-like tags starting to appear on landmark buildings. These are “Semapedia” tags (semapedia.org), which link the place to its entry in the Wikipedia online dictionary. To leave messages hovering in mid-air for strangers or friends to pick up, a program called Socialight (socialight.com) will tie that data to your phone’s physical co-ordinates and make it available to others when their phones move into proximity. Siemens, meanwhile, is developing a service it calls “digital graffiti” that will let advertisers join your friends in sending you location-aware text messages.

That’s the trouble with living in the real world. You know that sooner or later it will become just another quirky byway of the internet.

Gabe McIntyre of XOLO.TV posted a video interview with Michael and Dan conducted at a hotel bar during Digital Lifestyle Day in Munich last week.