Location Is The Missing Link Between Social Networks And The Real World Imagine a world where you sit at your computer and you never go outside. Where you never see another human being. This is the world that sites like Google and Facebook want you to live in. Though they’d never admit to such a thing, the reasoning should be obvious: The longer you’re at your computer, the more time you’re spending on their sites. Thankfully, we don’t quite live in that world yet. Social networking has been perhaps the most popular trend on the Internet over the past several years. Ever since the term was born, countless people have debated the implications of taking social interactions virtual. If you’ll allow me to be embarrassingly obvious for a second: Sitting in a chat room all day, even if all of your friends are in it as well, is not the same as being in the same physical room with them. That’s where location comes in. To the masses, most of these services still either don’t make sense, or are way too creepy. Social networking up until this point has been great.
Avec Flattr, Numerama vous propose de gagner et partager de l'argent En avril 2010, l'ancien porte-parole de The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde, avait présenté Flattr, dont le concept nous avait immédiatement séduit. L'idée de base était de permettre à ceux qui le souhaitent de remercier les auteurs des contenus qu'ils apprécient sur Internet, en leur faisant don d'une partie d'une "cagnotte", dont le montant est choisi librement par chaque utilisateur de Flattr. Grâce à un bouton qui fait office de compteur, chaque membre de Flattr signale les contenus qu'il a apprécié au cours de sa navigation, et la somme qu'il a décidé d'injecter dans la communauté Flattr se répartit ensuite automatiquement entre les auteurs de chacun des différents contenus. Si l'utilisateur décide de faire don de 10 euros, et clique sur 10 contenus différents, chaque contenu aura reçu 1 euro (ou plutôt 90 centimes, puisque Flattr prend une commission de 10 % sur les versements effectués). (suite après la vidéo) C'est ici que les choses sérieuses commencent.
GoWalla Worth Nearly $30 Million After Financing. Time To Make Your Move, Facebook. If you were gettin’ all antsy in the pantsies about yesterday’s launch of the LG Expo and it’s detachable projector accessory, you might be a bit bewildered right now. A full day later, AT&T’s still showing no sign of the handset. WMExperts did a bit of digging, and found out that the Expo has been delayed for at least “a few days” due to shipping issues. When this sort of stuff happens, it’s generally because a cargo ship coming from Asia had to turn around for one reason or another, or otherwise never left the port. There’s no word just yet on a new ETA for the handset – we’ll let you know if that changes.
Médicaments contrefaits : le contre-feu par… SMS ! A l’image de la France, la plupart des pays industrialisés se sont dotés de systèmes de contrôles pour leur marché du médicament. Ces derniers ne laissent théoriquement pas de place aux fausses molécules dans les réseaux traditionnels de distribution. En revanche, dans de nombreux pays en développement la situation est toute autre. A tel point que la contrefaçon médicamenteuse constitue un problème majeur de santé publique, à l’origine chaque année de dizaines de milliers de morts, principalement en Afrique et en Asie. Dans ce contexte, la mise au point d’un système qui permet d’authentifier les médicaments peut véritablement sauver des milliers de vie. C’est en effet ce que propose l’ONG M-Pedigree. La communication est bien entendu gratuite pour le patient. Pour l’heure, cette plate-forme fonctionnerait seulement au Ghana et au Kenya. Aller plus loin : Aide-mémoire n°275 de l’OMS sur les Médicament contrefaits (janvier 2010) © 1996-2011 Destination Santé SAS - Tous droits réservés.
The GeoAPI Launches For Places, Tweets, Flickr Photos, And More Location, location, location. With the growing ubiquity of GPS-equipped phones, there is a virtual land rush going on right now to put geolocation capabilities in every mobile app. Today, Mixer Labs, the folks behind TownMe, introduced the GeoAPI, aimed at developers who want to add geolocation features to their apps in a plug-and-play fashion. The GeoAPI is built on top of what was previously called the TownMe GeoAPI, which offered a reverse geo-coder for lat/long coordinates and geo-database of 16 million businesses and points of interest. So a developer who wants to build their own Foursquare/Gowalla-type mobile app with check-ins and geo-Tweets can build it on top of the GeoAPI instead of assembling all the underlying data from scratch. To get a basic feeling for how this works, check out these simple demos for geo-coded Tweets and Flickr photos in San Francisco. Mixer Labs co-founder Elad Gil was the first product manager for Google Mobile Maps.
J'aime (payer) l'info Parce que les lecteurs zappent les pubs qui ne rapportent déjà pas des masses, parce que les enquêtes et les reportages ne s'écrivent pas comme un bouquin de Frédéric «Crtl C/ Ctrl V» Lefebvre, parce qu'il faut éviter de se reposer sur d'éventuelles subventions, et pour bien d'autres raisons encore, la plateforme Jaimelinfo.fr a été lancée aujourd'hui. Cette initiative entend regrouper des sites d'informations «souhaitant s'appuyer sur leurs lecteurs pour se développer et lancer des projets» . Plus de 70 sites font partie de l'aventure. Chaque site est libre ou non de proposer des projets précis, le lecteur mécène (on dit crowdfunding , pour financement communautaire) pouvant se contenter d'apporter son soutien ponctuel ou régulier (possibilité de dons mensuels) à un site nécessitant des fonds pour fonctionner quotidiennement. Sur le même sujet : La presse en ligne en rangs d’union Lire les réactions à cet article. Alexandre HERVAUD
SimpleGeo Locates $1.5 Million And Many Big Name Investors There is a lot of buzz around SimpleGeo right now. The service, which participated in our RealTime CrunchUp earlier this month, also took home two prizes at the Under The Radar conference just prior to that. And that was a big deal for the company considering it won the audience award even though it’s not exactly the most consumer-oriented project. But people seem to understand that the location space is getting really hot right now, and SimpleGeo, which provides its geolocation infrastructure to other companies, offers one of the best models to capitalize on that. SimpleGeo has just closed a $1.5 million seed round of funding, we’ve confirmed. The two founders, Matt Galligan and Joe Stump, who are both based in Boulder, CO, used their time in San Francisco this month to close this new round. SimpleGeo is not the only company working to provide an easy way for others to tap into the location craze. SimpleGeo remains in beta for the time being.
« Les internautes veulent aider les créateurs » Face au concept de Flattr , deux types de réactions. L’incrédulité forcément, car un système qui permet aux internautes de payer sans aucune contrepartie semble voué à l’échec tant il est éloigné du modèle marchand classique. Ou l’optimisme, parce que c’est inédit et on ne peut pas savoir avant d’essayer. Qui aurait parié, en 2001, sur le succès d’une encyclopédie alimentée par les internautes et librement modifiable ? Flattr permettra de payer une somme fixe mensuelle. En surfant, l’internaute pourra appuyer sur un bouton «Flattr» sur les blogs, les sites d’artistes, ou sur toute autre plateforme de création. Comment vous est venue l’idée de créer Flattr ? Il y a environ deux ans, le débat en Suède concernant le financement sur Internet était très virulent, et personne n’essayait une approche différente : utiliser comme base de réflexion la philosophie même d’Internet. Y a-t-il un lien entre The Pirate Bay (TPB) et Flattr ? Oui, c’est à peu près la même chose. Non, pas vraiment.
The Great Location Land Rush Of 2010 Back in November, at our Realtime CrunchUp event, I sat on the geolocation panel with members of Twitter, Foursquare, SimpleGeo, GeoAPI, Hot Potato, and Google. At one point, I raised the question if location was going to be the next battleground between startups large and small, much like social identity plays (Facebook Connect vs. Google Friend Connect) and status updates (Twitter vs. I’m sure some of them would counter that because location data is fairly standard right now, and moving easily between services, all of them will win. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams writes today that “We will be looking at how to integrate the work Mixer Labs has done with the Twitter API in useful ways…” and notes that they’ll be working on adding contextual local relevancy to tweets. What Twitter likely won’t be doing is getting into the core location platform business anytime soon. Going forward, however, Twitter is likely to try and position itself as the main syndicator of location. Game on.
mappiness, the happiness mapping app Mappiness iPhone App Maps Happiness (Say That Three Times Fast) Officially launching today is Mappiness, a UK iPhone app that “maps Happiness” by pinging users with a survey in order to plot out their feelings during the day (happiness, in this case, is apparently user-defined). Using LBS, the app links responses and response locations to environmental data in an attempt to, according to lead researcher George MacKerron, “better find answers on the impacts of natural beauty and environmental problems on individual and national well being.” MacKerron, based at the London School Economics, elaborated on the idea of tracking happiness, “In the 19th century economists imagined a ‘hedonometer,’ a perfect happiness gauge, and psychologists have more recently run small scale ‘experience sampling’ studies to see how mood varies with activity, time of day and so on.” Mappiness is the first project of its kind to add location to the mix. Now, thanks to the iPhone, we might get a better grasp on humanity’s happiness habits.
Neer Hunch Tries Local Recommendations Recommendation site Hunch has been going through a reboot lately. Back in June, it stopped showing results to people who are not signed in, and earlier this month it redesigned its home page to offer personalized taste recommendations across a wide variety of categories such as dog breeds, U.S. national parks, camcorders, soft drinks, luggage, and film directors. Now it is testing out local recommendations on a map with a sidebar showing restaurants, nightlife, hotels, spas, clothing stores, and more. The restaurant recommendations it gave me are pretty decent for an early alpha. “It starts out looking at what your Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare friends like, and then gets smarter over time as people give feedback,” says Hunch founder Chris Dixon. Hunch took a hit when it started requiring that all visitors sign in.