Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond: Foursquare

Showing posts with label Foursquare. Show all posts

Friday, February 03, 2012

GPS, data caps and a crushing blow to location based services

For the first time ever I have received a warning that my smartphone data usage was coming close to my monthly limit.

It’s actually only the second month I’ve had a data limit – part of the joys of a new contract with O2 on an iPhone 4S.

I was assured when taking it out that my data usage was well within the limits they set. (A quick check of my records reveals I used no more that 175mb/month in the 3 months previous to the new contract).

I thought nothing more of it.

Until I got a text on Jan 31 telling me I’d used 80% of my 500mb limit and it wouldn’t be reset until February 7.

I hadn’t been streaming radio or video. I had maybe shared a handful of images the whole month. My iCloud settings were set to synch only when on wifi and the phone is plugged in.

In fact I did all the checks and there seemed little out of the ordinary.

In short I had used my 4S pretty much as I had the 3G it replaced and it was eating 3 times as much data.

O2 (via twitter) suggested it may be apps I’m running in the background. But of course apps don’t really run in the background, they only activate when called on (at least any built for IOS4).

I checked anyway. Cleared out loads of stuff in there.

The critical ones, it may be, are those which require GPS – ie location based stuff. The two key culprits for me; Googlemaps and Foursquare.

I’d rather like to leave them on, for the obvious reasons.

And I suspect the nascent location based services industry (which the telco's would also benefit from) would rather like us to leave them on, too. Because, unless I’m very much mistaken, the new limits on data use the telecoms industry seems so keen on look ready to strangle it at birth.

Don't know about you but I feel like I'm paying so much more for so much less. In the meantime, I guess this is what Onavo.com is for - download it free at the appstore.

And talking of App(le) Stores, O2 ended up setting up an appointment for me at my local Apple Store. They say they have had cases of iCloud using 3G for back-up even when it appears to be set to Wifi. They also, kindly, added a free data bolt-on to cover me this month while we investigate.

But if Apple can't find an issue with my phone (and I will update this when I have a result) then O2 and other providers may have to face up to the issue that their data limits are woefully inadequate to support today's smartphones and the ecosystem they promise to deliver.

UPDATE (Feb 3, 2012 2pm): The Genius bar at Cambridge (UK) could offer little advice other than try resetting the phone in the hope that perhaps one of my apps is incorrectly installed and continuingly calling on data when it shouldn't be. This (after the traditional 2 hours or so of back up and synching) I have done.

IF this does not work (ie reveal a significant fall in data use compared to previous, then Apple suggested I take it up with the operator who may be miscalcuating data (they've seen rare cases). And if that fails they'll try me with a new phone... Will keep you posted.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

10 ‘trend type things’ you really won’t care about by the end of 2012

Image courtesy: powerisastateofmind.blogspot.com

I've learned over the (many) years not to take predictions too seriously. Or lists. So here's mine for Christmas 2011. I offer them if only to help you learn not to take predictions, or lists, too seriously.

10 ‘trend type things’ you really won’t care about by the end of 2012

1. FourSquare
Seriously. I’ve just spent a week using it in a half-hearted manner and find myself close to the top of ‘my friends’ leader board. Checked in at London’s Kings Cross station the other night. Just me! Not saying location based won’t matter. Am saying FourSquare won’t.
2. News breaking first on Twitter.
Come on – it’s commonplace now, the battle is over. Which gives traditional media a clue about what it should do next. (Hint, relevance = news)
3. The number of voice minutes in your mobile phone package.
Bet you already have loads more than you actually use.
4. Google+:
There, I said it. I know lots have people have ‘joined it’ by how often do you actually go there? Add a year and think how it’ll look from there. (Buzz, Wave...Plus)
5. Big Data:
Because we’ll have started to figure out the important bit – getting the insight out.
6. Influence:
At least as a static 'you’re influential for one, you’re influential for all,' thing. Folk might finally work out that what they actually mean by that is: ‘famous’. Peer to peer distribution of trust on a moment-by-moment, context-by-context basis will become more valuable – and finally seen as such. The flock rocks. So...
7. Klout.
I’ve stopped caring already. So have you. Haven’t you?
8. Text to vote.
Who needs it? I Always said the X-Factor should be decided by who gets the most down-loads anyway.
9. Using digital as a channel to manage costs
(we’ll be participating in social to create value instead).
10. Social Business (I hope).
I hope we can talk more about Open Business instead. And if you want to know why – click here.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Foursquare and the impact of an information revolution on privacy

Some time ago I decided to continue my experiment with FourSquare without hitting the 'share with Facebook' or 'share with Twitter' buttons.

I didn't want to irritate those who chose to follow my tweets, for example, but hadn't opted in to be my FourSquare friend.

I also thought there was some wisdom in limiting the people with whom I was sharing such precise, personal real-time geo-location. (image courtesy Robert Couse-Baker)

So I was a bit miffed to find that if a friend of yours is in the same location and you are both checked in, and he chooses to auto-tweet his FourSquare update, then the default is that he will share in Twitter that you are with him, too. ("Y is at X with @davidcushman).

And if his tweets aren't protected, (whose are?) then your location, who you were with and when, becomes, by default, public domain - and plenty searchable.

Whether or not the unintended sharing of my real time geolocation against my preferences matters or not doesn't sound like much of an issue - until you want to do clandestine stuff. An adhoc job interview, political deal making, affairs of the heart, etc.

Now of course in those circumstances, the wise man may choose not to geolocate themselves within or without FourSquare.

The problem though is that we may be mentioned in a tweet or status update by who ever we are with.
I don't blame FourSquare for this. I don't even seek to single them out. We are still scrabbling for the social etiquette of all this. I rarely ask, for example 'do you mind if I tweet who I'm with?'

Mostly we have the good sense to know what is right and what is wrong - when to seek permission and when to just go ahead (Antony Mayfield's excellent book, Me and My Web Shadow discusses some of this - I'll be reviewing it in detail before too long - disclosure, Antony and I sit together on the board of CitizensOnline).

But we are going through an information revolution; not just in who controls publication, distribution and user experience, but also in the volume of what has hitherto been viewed as personal, private and, to anyone other than our peers, trivial information.

In revolutions it's fair to say there's plenty of stuff that needs living in and through before we start reshaping definitions of wrong and right.

Indeed in a networked, group-forming world it's perfectly reasonable to expect niches of etiquette to emerge. One man's over-sharing may be another man's under-sharing.

If etiquette is the aggregated social conventions of a society, then 'societies' (adhoc communities of purpose) will be manifold, niche and global. One size won't fit all.

Which is all well and good when what is shared about you is shared by people you know. But that's just part of the issue.
Take a look at the picture below (that's Tory leader David Cameron at Starbucks at St Pancras).

What if either party hadn't wished to be known to be in the presence of the other, or to share that they were at x location at y time (google streetview, anyone?).

This picture was taken by someone neither of us knew and published to people that we (at least I) did.

I'm not objecting (at least not on this occasion), merely pointing out the reality of concepts of privacy about geolocation in a connected world.

Privacy seeks to obscure truth. Often to an individual's personal benefit.
Perhaps we are just going to have to get used to living in a state of truth - with the wider - by necessity less personal - benefits that may offer.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Make maps relevant: Redraw the world niche by niche

I like FourSquare. As a predominantly iPhone-using mobilist I find it user friendly and quite compelling.

The fact that colleague Laurence Borel is (was, heh heh) Mayor of 90:10 at 17 Percy St provides a great location-based nudge, for example (the more you check in at a location, the more points you accrue - you may even get to be Mayor... ah hem, I guess you have to be there).

I like the way tips can be delivered with both positive and negative power:

'ask for Joe he makes a mean cocktail'
'avoid the soup - it tastes like dishwater'

And I think there's a further two potentials likely to emerge. The first is for a wikifixing of venues and locations: A kind of brand tags.net for shops, bars, restaurants, offices, airports etc. (image via handmaps.org)

The second is an extraordinary potential to redraw the WHOLE map niche by niche (by each niche and for each niche) wresting control from the centre to the edge. It's our world, we should map it.

By following the emerging folksonomies FourSquare and those that will follow it (right up to and including ubiquitous augmented reality - Minority Report all around us) have the potential to disrupt the mass production version of the world - the one with a shared taxonomy on a centrally quality-assured (agreed) map.

These are two quite distinct plays: The brandtags version allows people to name a venue based on how they feel about it. The number of people who check into that location under its new title will indicate how much others agree.
In brandtags, consumers share keyterms for how they would describe a brand. On Foursquare if I label London's Kings Cross Railway Station, with, 'The Slough of Despond' it's likely a number long suffering commuters will check into The Slough.
A restaurant which serves bad food could get renamed by disgruntled diners and if others agree, the check-ins at Chez Crap will rise.

That's the crowd wikifixing individual locations then.

Then there's the greater opportunity of the long tail of mapping OUR multiple niche realities.

The maps we are used to are a view from the centre. They are an iconic example of a world view literally (super)imposed on us.

Buildings get given their official names - not the ones we use. I wonder if you can find Big Ben or The Pineapple on an OS map of London?

And those are just folksonomy terms everyone uses. How would the people in your office direct you to a nearby Thai restaurant? In the way a sat-nav would? Or like a human - 'just past the sandwich shop, opposite the pub and left past the bank'
Couldn't this kind of folksonomy be built in to deliver a world view (map) of shared usefulness to your particular niche? We would create maps of relevance with our own naming conventions and iconography.

Relevance always beats quality. You can have the most 'correct' map in the world, but if its icons and taxonomies mean little to me then I can't use it. We create meaning through our use in communities of purpose and in the context of our communities of purpose.

Great location based services and geolocation will enhance our experience of the physical world. Making our understanding of it more relevant for each community of purpose.

It's an important and symbolic example of the network disrupting anything that functions from the centre, out.

Now you can not only have your own world view, you can draw it and put a name to it.