Joshua Guffey

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Tech startup Placethings is doing what I’d hoped augmented reality would do, putting user-generated media into physical locations using the multimedia and geotagging capabilities of today’s mobile devices.

The service will capture any type of multimedia; such as pictures, video, audio and text and will ‘place’ this content in a physical location by linking it to GPS coordinates for others to view and interact with.

The company presented at the Mobilize 2008 Conference [video here].  At the conference they discussed how you will have the ability, with your mobile device, to create ‘persistent media’ which will remain tied to that location for others to view and even reply to.  This could transform the way we interact with venues around our home towns, help us to meet interesting people in our area, learn more about our environment and share relevant information about any place any time.  Think of it as writing on an ‘invisible’ wall, anywhere.

It’s a compelling idea that opens up a lot of possibilities.

You could post pictures of concerts, leave messages in places you know that your friends frequent or play location-based geotagging games.  Businesses could keep tabs on what sorts of activities are taking place local to their business and adjust their offerings or other aspects of their business to make better use of this information.  There are a million uses for adding an informational media layer to our existing experience. Not to mention that it’d be loads of fun!

In their presentation the co-founder, Dean Terry, mentions that there’s even a ’secret message’ function so that you could leave a message at a specific location for someone.  When that person visits that location they receive their message.  This immediately makes me think of leaving digital love notes for my wife, but I’m sure you could think of some less nauseating examples.

I actually see services such as Placethings as poised to become more popular than the check-in trend happening right now with Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Buzz and the like.  Without going to far down the rabbit hole, my thinking on this is that check-ins are real-time; and for location-based services this could be a problem since it’s kinda like saying “I’m not home, please rob me“.  All of these services could likely do well to have a delay built into them for safety.

As for Placethings, I cannot say if it is real-time (likely it is) but the shift of focus from geotagging as person-centric to location-and-media-centric may be a healthy direction to take things.

What uses would you find for this? How would you use it or like to see it used?

Lying in bed tonight I was thinking about my Twitter stream (yes, I know that’s weird, it’s part of why I don’t sleep) and asked myself “what’s missing?”

I didn’t mean “what’s missing from the service?” I meant “what’s missing from my use of it?”

Today I asked a question about car seats and received a reply from three blogger moms that I follow within five minutes.  The responses were useful and nearly instantaneous.  Amazing!  Amazing and yet this happens every day on Twitter.  And to be fair, it happened on Facebook too when I got advice on the same topic from some moms that I know offline and stay up with via Facebook.  Since Facebook is still a sort of a closed system and the ladies aren’t really promoting themselves, I’m not going to list them here.

All of this gets me thinking.  Everyday.

What’s most amazing to me about platforms like Twitter is that I’m meeting intelligent, funny and talented people whom I would likely never meet otherwise. Very often these people are very apt to provide assistance in their areas of interest or expertise.

The service is also transforming the application of customer-centric service, primarily for companies that do not have a brick and mortar business model.  Tonight I sent this tweet to Timebridge and received a reply within the hour (after hours).

I’m learning a lot on Twitter every day; about a variety of topics of interest to me: tech trends, mobile computing, location-based shifts taking place in the social media space, web design, festivals I should be going to and a whole barrage of things that lift my skirt.  I’m connecting with a real community and even learning a few things about human interactions.  And I share the best of this stuff out to those following me.

What sorts of experiences have you had like this?  Leave a comment on the blog to add to this discussion.

So here’s my thought. Tell me if you think I’m wrong. Or right.

“If you follow out of obligation, you’ve not helped anyone.”

Here’s my argument for this:
Does following someone who tweets primarily about fly fishing in Alaska really create meaningful connections. Does it help you to stay current in your field? Who are you actually benefiting if you follow out of obligation?

I would argue that the power of a network is not merely in it’s numbers, but also in its loyalty and its relevance to a central idea, pasison or value-set.

If I have a number of regular tweeps in my stream who actively tweet things that have no relevance to me they gain nothing. Not only that, but I’m now not seeing a more relevant tweet for every one one that ISN’T relevant to me. That sucks.

Furthermore, I’m following out of obligation and am annoyed by their six hundredth tweet about Alaskan bass. A negativite emotionality may develop with them and the whole of the Twitter platform as a result. If my irritation prevents or delay my participation on the network, the entire network potentially looses out from my absence.

Yeah, I’m that crazy.

Meanwhile all this same stuff is going on for the other party too. They can’t unfollow you because they’re afraid that you’ll unfollow them and end their world. Or loose a sale, whichever comes first.

Anyway. We all loose. Nobody wins. Just follow what’s relavant. The end.

And be sure you don’t follow me on ‘the Twitter’ at @JoshuaGuffey

Your thoughts?

Not at South by Southwest this year? Wish you were?

Well, now you kinda can be.  This page is streaming live pics in from Twitter which contain any photos from any of the popular Twitter picture sharing services that also reference SXSW. You can get a great sense for what’s happening there by watching this live stream of Twitter photos.  Just don’t blame me for what you see there.  It’s a party, you know what goes on.

Have fun!

[NOTE: If you're on an iPhone or otherwise can't see the above Flash, view the RSS feed]

Live pics from SXSW: (click the picture links, they’ll load in a new tab)

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Today I had to move some of the people I follow on Twitter into a list entitled “oversharers“.  They post great stuff so I don’t want to unfollow them, but having them in my main Twitter stream kills.  Now I can go check out what they are posting about anytime I want without having them population my main stream.  Just a quick note about these tweeps…they both share each item multiple times.  As of now it’s just @QuadMedia and @Minervity, but as all things do, I’m sure it will grow with time.

You can make lists for anything.  I also have one for health and wellness and one for funny tweeps.  They each only have one tweep right now, but again…that’ll change.  The nice thing is that you can follow other people’s lists if they’ve made them into public lists.

You can follow my Twitter lists above by clicking on the associated links.  Or you can follow me on Twitter and see what I have to say.

What good uses can you think of for Twitter lists?