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Dodgeball: Text Your Location To Friends

Posted by timothy on from the marco-polo-marco-polo-marco-polo dept.

iseff writes "I was listening to NPR yesterday in the car and they ran a piece about this new service called Dodgeball. It's essentially a social networking site, except it's based pretty extensively on text messaging. When you go out for the night, you txt the main dodgeball server your location. It then txt's your friends where you are so they can meet you. It can also tell you who is close-by where you are and how you are connected to those people. It seems like a more 'sticky' and applicable use for social networking when compared to Friendster or orkut (which are always very popular when they launch and then quickly fade). Could this maybe be a decent use to social networking that will last? Or will this bust just as fast?"

2 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. it's much more than just that.. by enrico_suave · · Score: 5, Informative

    I saw these guys presentation at Oreilly's etech conference in Feb... and it does a whole host of geolocation type services.

    IT's really quite slick the little sms/email query system they came up with.

    It has access to geocoded data, so if you tell the service about your location, besides telling your friends where you are, it can tell you that their's 50 cent drafts down the block... or you can ask it where the closest bar with a pac man or pooltable...

    Obviously, this makes the most sense and is the most useful, in a dense urban area filled with younger/hipper crowd with a mobile phone less than 3 years old =P

    There are a lot of cool geolocation based social implications... cool spontaneous flash mob type stuff.

    In short, I wish I thought of it =( bastages!

    e.

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  2. Re:Ring them? by bentfork · · Score: 5, Informative
    GPS? it almost does. Remember WAP/WML and our friends at http://www.openwave.com/?

    They have this thing called a 'location server' and if you (wap developer) pay the service provider ( verizon, telus... ) they will add a extra header your wap/wml requests that contain your current location. ( accuracy depends on positioning methods that are being used, cell-id, EOTD (enhanced observed time difference), AGPS ( assisted GPS ) and can range between 1000 meter to 5 meters.

    I thought it would be a blast to play with, but I have not found any way to get the info for free without using their 'simulator' deck viewer.