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Geomicroblogging, Buzzword or Reality?

An anonymous reader writes "The iPhone 3G and Android devices are coming this year, opening the mobile world for rich applications, while sites like Fire Eagle and byNotes are ready to move your blogging habits into the geospatial world. Are we going to watch the next boom when those devices and geospatially enabled sites get combined? Sure, the posibilities this would open are endless, but are users going to embrace these services?" I don't see how it can't change the world ... it has 'Micro' and 'Blog' in the name, and I'll always know where I was when I twittered to tell everyone I was in the john.

36 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. buzzword hell. they just keep coming .... by unity100 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "geoonlinemicroshitting" - look ! we have another a new one ... "socialmicrobuttwaggling" whoops !! theres another one .... "cyberonlinepantsironing" - i guess there is no endin sight to this ....

    1. Re:buzzword hell. they just keep coming .... by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 2, Funny

      Just imagine...if we all had geospatially-enabled Slashdot: geommicroslashdotting!

  2. Seriously by dreamchaser · · Score: 5, Funny

    If anyone ever uses the word 'Geomicroblogging' with me in conversation I might just break several of their bones. When will the madness stop?

    1. Re:Seriously by saider · · Score: 3, Funny

      Buzzwords are one method geeks use separate venture capitalists from their money. I think this is a "good thing".

      --


      Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
    2. Re:Seriously by corbettw · · Score: 3, Funny

      Ooh, I bet you could get their address by mashing up their MySpace, with a whois query on their IP address, and then tie it into Google Maps! Then cross check that with Twitter, and bam! You've got an interactive slide show of their every move.

      (If you're a VC, please make the check out to 'Creative Applications Serving Humanity'...CASH for short.)

      --
      God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
  3. Oh, FFS! by R2.0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nobody gives a rats ass about where you are when you tell the world what you are doing...Unless it's hilariously unintentional.

    "JUST BANGED A HAWT GURL BEHIND THE CLUB!!!!!"
    Location: Mom's basement

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
  4. I twittered to tell everyone I was in the john by Gat0r30y · · Score: 4, Funny
    --
    Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
  5. Re:To answer the Headline: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Key word in there is VOLUNTARY...

  6. I suspect this is a good time for this by 427_ci_505 · · Score: 2, Funny

    English, motherfucker. Do you speak it?

  7. The Nokia N95, E61 etc by Colin+Smith · · Score: 4, Informative

    Already have GPSs on board, already have mapping on board, already have photo and video, already have a "lifeblog" on board to sync the phone info up with your favourite blog.

    What I'm saying is, it's been done already, you guys are so 2005.

     

    --
    Deleted
  8. Re:To answer the Headline: by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You beat me to it. There is a world of difference between voluntarily giving your position and other information about you and your current activities, and the Government of Industry tracking your position and other information about your activities without the ability to opt out.

    That being said, I'm not interested. If I want people to know where I am going to be I'll tell them if they need to know, not post it or have some 'micro blog' tracking my every move. I don't need to blog it or broadcast it. Maybe I am showing my age but I am really finding all of this stuff to be getting increasingly silly.

  9. Next greatest blogging product! by jhfry · · Score: 3, Funny

    I have the next new big product in blogging... its called "aLife". aLife is currently not available where you are sitting now, but for the low price of $1,000 you can order yours today! aLife includes adventure, romance, excitement, and best of all it includes a lifetime guarantee! If you want a blog that everyone on the internet will read, simply get aLife and you might just find that you acutally have something interesting to write about!

    I understand blogging, I don't do it because I think I'd rather live my life than write about it, but I get it.

    I just don't understand why so many people are so excited about being able to blog in so many different ways... if it doesn't improve the quality or the value of the content what good does it do?

    I don't know the figures, but I know that at least 99% of all blog traffic is to less than 5% of the blogs on the internet, and I know why that is... CONTENT! Give these bloggers a tool to create better content!

    --
    Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
    1. Re:Next greatest blogging product! by Gat0r30y · · Score: 2, Insightful

      simply get aLife

      But will I have to leave my mom's basement?

      --
      Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
  10. We have lots of words for the same things by Cathoderoytube · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A good example is the word 'stupid'
    Just off the top of my head I can think of quite a few synonyms

    Idiot
    Moron
    Nitwit
    Simpleton
    Asinine
    Fool
    Jackass
    Rum-dumb
    Dense
    Oaf
    Thick
    Unintelligent
    Witless
    Geomicroblogging

    --
    I have nothing compelling to say
  11. Re:To answer the Headline: by Kelbear · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd say there's an important difference in there. If person A wants to take a part of their personal life and make it public, that's up to them. The problem is when person A wants to keep something private and entity B decides that person A doesn't have a say in the matter.

  12. Build it in to glasses by Lord+Ender · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Seriously. I want to look at an object and get information on it (hovering above the object in the font of my choice). I want to digg up or down and see comments to things like carnival rides, tourist attractions, and those nice ladies in the windows in Amsterdam.

    I want to leave a comment on EVERYTHING and I want to see the comments others leave. GPS + glasses with HUD will change the world.

    --
    A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    1. Re:Build it in to glasses by idlemind · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes! I was thinking about this the other day. My idea was that people could tag stuff in real life with messages. They could be private or public messages. Then you bring up the camera/display interface and it shows you what messages are attached to whatever object you are pointing it at. Your glasses + HUD idea would be awesome.

  13. It's all about ego by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 3, Funny

    The type of people that invent/mashup these names on their blogs etc have a dream of one day standing in front of a crowd of people while being introduced as "the father/inventor/visionary of microcyberblugblurging".

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  14. I can't wait to blog from the summit of Everest! by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I mean, why enjoy the peacefulness of nature or the majestic view when I could be tapping away on a fucking keyboard?

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
  15. Other applications... by GWLlosa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There are other people who care nothing about this 'twitter-micro-geo-blogging' phenomenon who are looking forward to this technology. For starters, you install some crap on your kid's phone, and it lets you live-track where he is, and emails you every time that little SOB hits 90 in YOUR car...

  16. Re:To answer the Headline: by rmadmin · · Score: 5, Funny

    I will have to agree with this. I could broadcast my life online too, but whats the point? No one in their right mind would give a flying shit what I waste all of my time on.

    7:00AM - Woke up
    7:10AM - Started coffee
    7:30AM - Drank some coffee
    8:00AM - At work
    9:00AM - Still at work
    10:00AM - Why are you still reading this?

  17. Re:To answer the Headline: by R2.0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "I'd say there's an important difference in there. If person A wants to take a part of their personal life and make it public, that's up to them. The problem is when person A wants to keep something private and entity B decides that person A doesn't have a say in the matter."

    I think what the GP had in mind were not those people who are concerned about vountary vs. involuntary exposure, but the situation where a person wants their information to be concealed from only SOME people - eg. getting upset at employers who read Facebook profiles. Folks now have wider circles of people they are comfortable sharing privledged information with, but still don't want that information known by specific others. So where once a "secret" was information shared by a small number of trusted people, now we have information that is to be HIDDEN from a small number of UNTRUSTED people. This is a patent impossibility, but still people expect to be able to do it.

    My wife is a substitute teacher, and got a Facebook profile and added her nieces and nephews as friends. And now she knows to within a few days the exact time that one of them lost her virginity. How on EARTH she expected to keep that information from her family, while simultaneously allowing access to everyone who wanted to be her "friend" is beyond me, but I do know that she wanted it kept secret - her profile page was sanitized shortly after my wife joined.

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
  18. I think we're headed for another dark ages by blhack · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Has anybody ever considered that possibility that we will reach an over-saturation of information?

    Sometimes its good NOT to know if a restaurant is good or not without visiting. People ARE individuals. We need to ability to make our own decisions about things.

    Think about even the difference between my generation (i'm 21) and my parents. My parents had to go out and experience things first hand to get any sort of idea about them. I carry around a nokia 770 with wikipedia on it, and a net connection to wikihow. I can get on google local and read the comments to determine wether I want to go to a club or not. If something doesn't exist to me on google maps, it doesn't exist.

    I know, i'm the guilty party here, but this wasn't a conscious decision. I did not come to the realization at some young[er] age that I could either embrace a technologically rich existence, or not.

    Imagine what my children will experience, or their children, or their children all the way down. I rapidly see people losing their ability to think independently of their peers. Even the people who consider themselves intellectuals are virtually inable to come up with an original thought.
    I completely blame this trend on the availability of information. Believe it or not, there IS such a thing as knowledge being TOO easy to get.

    --
    NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
    1. Re:I think we're headed for another dark ages by dreamchaser · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, your parents actually talked to real people, their friends, neighbors, relatives, etc. Word of mouth was literally word of mouth then, and guess what? They didn't always *have* to visit an eatery to see if it was good or not. They could often find that out from someone they knew and trusted rather than some anonymous author of a review on a website.

      It is entirely your fault and it *was* a conscious decision. Don't bemoan your choices; either embrace them or change them.

  19. Re:To answer the Headline: by Xtravar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Privacy is a product of your life, as is your work and other byproducts. In a free market, the products of your life belong to you. This is inherently fair and makes sense.

    I trade work hours for money from my employer.
    I trade my money for items I want to buy.
    I trade certain measures of privacy for social benefits.
    I also trade certain measures of privacy for compensation from businesses.
    If any of these transactions do not turn out to our mutual benefit, the dissatisfied party is free to discontinue the trade at anytime.

    Essentially the government is trying to 'tax' our privacy for 'the greater good', just like they tax our economic transactions... for the 'greater good'.

    Political ideologues on both sides of the spectrum don't quite understand this concept - they arbitrarily pick what's right and wrong when it benefits them.

    But the smart monkey will realize that the reason people get so upset about these things is that it is inherently unfair to take another's personal products without their consent. Do you own you and your byproducts, or does the "greater good" own you? And how can you trust that the "greater good" is so great and good?

    --
    Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
  20. Whatever losers by D.McGuiggin · · Score: 4, Funny

    I geonanoblog, which is easily a thousand times cooler.

  21. Re:To answer the Headline: by jahudabudy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dude, what the hell happened at 10:15 AM!!??? WHAT ARE YOU HIDING?

    --
    ...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
  22. Shill by s.d. · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder if the anonymous submitter works for Fire Eagle or byNotes, since there's no content to this story but saying how these sites are going to change the world.

  23. It's not that simple by D.McGuiggin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What happens when a large number of people who are either directly or indirectly associated with you begin volunteering information that they don't know/think encroaches on your privacy, and may not actually encroach on your privacy, but when aggregated, gives a clear picture of activities that you'd like to avoid making public?

  24. Let me get this straight... by Relic+of+the+Future · · Score: 2, Insightful
    So we've put all this effort into all this technology to make the world a "smaller" place; to make every bit of information reachable and searchable from everywhere; to make location, distance, space itself, as irrelevant as possible; and somehow the idea of going back and tying information to a physical location is suppose to be... good?

    Maybe I'm just misunderstanding the point?

    --
    Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
  25. Privacy is a social agreement by spun · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Privacy is NOT the product of your life. It is not a natural right, like you being entitled to the fruits of your labor is. Privacy is something that you may have on your property, if it can be physically arranged.

    But privacy is making demands on other people, "Don't look at me!" What gives you the right to determine what I can and can't experience? I mean, the light and sound waves coming off your body aren't yours. If those light and sound waves happen to enter my eyes and ears, they are MINE.

    Now, if you and I have an agreement, "you don't look at me and I won't look at you" then that is fair, and that is what we generally have in society. But it is because we agreed to that, not from some inherent right of ownership of all sensory phenomenon.

    This is what I hate about libertarians. All they have is the hammer of property, so every problem boils down to ownership. It is ridiculous.

    --
    - None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
  26. It is not intended to catch on by ghjm · · Score: 2, Funny

    Nobody would call anything 'geomicroblogging' if they planned for it to be routinely used by millions of people. Can you imagine? "Hi, did you see my geomicroblog the other day? I posted some stuff about geomicroblogging. I'm sorry, the reception isn't very good on this cell phone - the address of restaurant we're going to is on my geomicroblog. No, I said geomicroblog. GEO MICRO BLOG! Oh never mind, it's Andy's Bar And Grill, which is the same number of syllables anyway."

    If by some random chance this actually caught on, the word would immediately be shortened (see: "blog" from "web log" from "personal content management system").

    I propose "gumble."

    -Graham

  27. Dear Sir, by Cajun+Hell · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No one in their right mind would give a flying shit what I waste all of my time on.

    I see you are a coffee-drinker. Please accept this coupon for 50 cents off your next coffee, good at the Harbucks at the corner of nth and xth street, which you walk by every day at 7:52am.

    Seriously, did you know MySpace uses the crap people put on their profiles, to select the ads to show to those people? Every bit of seemingly-useless crap you spew, can be used somehow.

    --
    "Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
  28. Re:To answer the Headline: by Dogtanian · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My wife is a substitute teacher, and got a Facebook profile and added her nieces and nephews as friends. And now she knows to within a few days the exact time that one of them lost her virginity. How on EARTH she expected to keep that information from her family, while simultaneously allowing access to everyone who wanted to be her "friend" is beyond me, but I do know that she wanted it kept secret - her profile page was sanitized shortly after my wife joined.

    And this includes two reasons why Facebook could soon be jumping the shark if it hasn't already.

    Firstly, the inherent problem with social networking sites of managing your different groups of friends and keeping them separate (assuming you know how to do so) gets to be more hassle than it's worth as (a) your groups of friends and (b) the amount of people using social networking in general grow. (This wasn't my idea, but the person who came up with it pinpointed the "more hassle than it's worth" saturation point as the reason for CB radio's downfall).

    Secondly, the "everyone's using it including your [from a kids/teenage point of view] parents' generation" factor is going to rob it of most of its coolness. Not that this guarantees its downfall; it does depend on how large a factor coolness vs. social usefulness plays however (and how willing people are to switch).

    Remember 13375p34k? Used to be everywhere on the net? I realised recently that I'd barely seen any of it in the past couple of years- not since around the time that newspapers started printing guides explaining those strange words your children type.

    Coincidence? Hmm...

    --
    "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
  29. Re:To answer the Headline: by epp_b · · Score: 3, Funny

    Did you shower? We need to know.

    You're new here, aren't you?

  30. I respond ... by unity100 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Geonlineresponsing ...

    (Note | This "Geostationaryonlineposting" Post was posted with AMD 4800+ Dual core/PlainOldEthernet IBM PC Compatible tool, from coordinates 3242.3384, 2265648.55384603 - [Livingroomores Cajoles] 138 Antalya 24 (96 Boulevard Rigavigsdak) - TR - 07.07 AM, from approx 3.5 m distance to the loo. (margin of error ± 50 cm)

    Geostantionaryonlineposting - brought to you by the same internet which introduced you to Megaonlineshitting. stay tuned.