plundr.playareacode.com

Plundr is a browser game (Mac/Windoze, no linux yet) where you make-believe that wifi access points are islands, with unique resources to exploit. Visit different access points during the day to ship goods back and forth.

brightkite.com

Andrew suggested that we try Brightkite. It's a location based mobile social networking app. It does a good job of doing what others do, letting you "check-in" at different locations and then make notes about each location. Checking in lets your friends track you; and you can see where your friends are.

Unfortunately, all these sites still suffer from the problem of figuring out what "your location" means. Pretty much the only thing I can match on is an address (although once I do that, I can give it a shorthand name) and I just don't know the address (or fancy spelling) of places like University Towne Centre [sic].

The problem of figuring out what "place" means to a user is gonna get solved ... it just hasn't yet. (And GPS is not a solution in itself.)

dodgeball.com

This is a really interesting proof-of-concept. People don't seem to be grooving on the idea of leaving a GPS signal running on their phones all the time, but they do seem to be willing to say "hey I'm going to such-and-such bar right now" and have it automagically SMS'd to all their friends.

However, I'm told that after Google acquired the company, they started to just strip it for parts, and the whole staff of Dodgeball quit on a Friday the 13th in disgust.

I wonder what it's gonna take to get location based phone stuff to be accepted by people. There's gotta be some killer app that'd get folks to feel safe using it.

rabble.com

Mobile blogging. Seems to have good features for checking one's popularity at a glance. The early adopters are pretty depraved, but I think the next couple waves will be more mainstream. Let's hope...