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Google Latitude Introduces Auto-Checkins

// February 10th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // android, Mobile

The location-based frenzy has gotten really interesting over the past 12-18 months, and gets more interesting almost daily, especially with the latest ‘check-in’ bonanza. However, current iterations, such as Foursquare, GoWalla, and GetGlue all require you to manually click the ‘check-in’ button. It requires you to do something to share your location with whatever group you’ve chosen.

Last Tuesday, though, Google upped the ante with a new version of Google Maps for the Android operating system, with a new version of Google’s Latitude location-based service baked right in. Latitude was launched a long time ago and allows you to share your location in real-time with chosen friends. Thankfully, there are granular controls, so for each specific friend, you can choose the accuracy to which they can see your location. I have some close friends who get my exact coordinates, while most anyone else can simply see the city that I’m currently in.

Until Tuesday, Latitude simply let you ‘be’ at a place – there was no concept of checking-in or any of that. Tuesday’s update, though, not only added the ‘check-in’ functionality, but went a step further to let you automatically check-in to approved places, get notifications if you’re nearby a place to check-in, and the ability to automatically check you out of a location when you leave.

1. Notifications – This is the first thing that I can see Google exploiting with its ad service. The application can now pop up a notification if you’re near a place, to see if you want to check-in. They’re currently pushing this as a reminder service, but it won’t be long before you see sponsored notifications – alerting you to a certain special or coupon for a nearby business. There are definite pros and cons to this, but that’s another post for another day.

2. Automatic Check-Ins – this is quite cool if you’re one who gets annoyed by people walking into a business and immediately dropping their face to their phone to check-in and alert the world of their whereabouts. Wisely, Google made this an opt-in feature, and only for approved places (home, work, your regular bar, etc).

3. Automatic Check-Outs - This is my favorite part, and the one that’s the most relevant to the location-based services industry, in my opinion. It’s also the one that Google is likely hoping you’ll use the most. Basically, because Latitude tracks you real-time, it knows when you leave a location, as well, and can automatically check you out. This adds a relevant time-based layer to check-ins. With Foursquare, for instance, you might be able to see that I checked into Rahr Brewery an hour ago. You’re left to wonder if I’m still there, or if I’ve already left. With Google Latitude, my phone would automatically update that check-in with the information that I’ve left, providing more useful information.

Don’t be fooled, though – Google wants you to use this to get an additional valuable piece of information – how long you stay at places. Google would soon know (and could sell this information to advertisers) that while males age 25-30 in the Fort Worth area spend an average of 1.3 hours at the Rahr Brewery on Saturday afternoons. The amount of time you spend there is nearly as important to advertisers as the fact that you’re there in the first place is.

I’ve tested this out a bit, but am hesitant to really use it without having a better understanding of who is seeing what. Location is a very powerful tool, and can also be exploited quite quickly and easily. It’s clear that this isn’t the first (or the last) example of location-based services toeing the line between useful and an invasion of privacy. What do you think of this? Are you excited about the possibilities, or more concerned for your private details?

Google’s Nexus One ETF Isn’t A Big Deal

// January 12th, 2010 // No Comments » // technology

Lots of folks are up in arms recently over the secondary ETF (Early Termination Fee) imposed by Google on those who purchased the Nexus One with a T-Mobile contract and then cancel the contract early. It has been ‘discovered’ that if you do so, you’ll pay T-Mobile’s termination fee of $200, as well as a $350 termination fee to Google, if you cancel your contract within 120 days.

You know my thoughts on ETFs to begin with. If you don’t want to pay it, don’t sign the contract, or just keep your commitment. I’m really surprised that people are so up-in-arms about this, too, honestly. In case you didn’t know, here’s two reasons for the Google ETF:

1. To prevent you from screwing them. You can buy the Google Nexus One for $530 without contract, or for $179 with a T-Mobile contract. If you cancel that T-Mobile contract, you’re in for $200, which is still $379 vs $530. Thus, Google’s additional $350 makes it so that it’s cheaper for you to just buy it unlocked in the first place, $729 vs $530.

2. Believe it or not, Google gets a commission when you sign up with T-Mobile. If you cancel or modify that contract within 6 months of activating it, T-Mobile has the ability to charge the commission back to Google. This is why online cell phone retailers such as WireFly and LetsTalk don’t let you mail in their rebates for 181 days (6 months + 1 day), and require you to keep your plan the same until then – to secure the commissions that made it possible for them to sell you the phone so much cheaper.

Thus, if you sign up for a new T-Mobile contract on your Nexus One, and then break it, Google is not only out the difference in cost from the unlocked model to the locked model, but they’re out the commission that made the price difference possible. Hence the additional ETF.

Last, I hate to sound like a broken record, but if you don’t like it, don’t sign the contract. T-Mobile is one of the few carriers in the country that allow you to easily sign up for service without a contract, provided you bring your own equipment. If you’re so against contracts and ETFs, then don’t agree to them. Of course, you won’t get the handset so cheap, but then again, you’re unwilling to commit.

A similar instance is apartment complexes. They typically offer you a specified monthly rate, provided you agree to a multiple-month contract. The month-to-month rate, where you haven’t committed, is higher.

First Impressions Of The HTC Eris And Android

// January 7th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // toys

Yesterday I received my personal HTC Eris from Verizon, which is powered by Android v1.5 currently (a v2.x upgrade is supposedly coming soon). This is my first Android-powered smartphone, and honestly, I’m kind of excited about checking things out on a personal phone. I’ve been solid Symbian since the Nokia 6620, with a few forays into WinMo, so this is my first real exploration outside the Symbian world.

Of course, I used the original iPhone, but even now, the lack of ability to multitask and the carrier lockdown are complete dealbreakers for me on that phone. I’ve also spent some time with the Palm Pre, though not my own personal device, and while that seems like a great smartphone OS for smartphone noobs, it’s certainly not powerful enough for me.

I use pretty much every single Google service anyways, so Android is a very obvious choice for me, though I’m already finding things that I miss about Symbian. I’ll have more thoughts on the two later. I likely won’t be doing a full-on review of the Eris, since it’s been around for a while. If you’re interested, you can read MobileBurn’s full HTC Eris review here.

I’ve spent half a day with the HTC Eris now, setting it up and customizing it and whatnot, and here’s the things I’ve noticed thus far:

1. The onscreen keyboard’s autocorrect is phenomenal. I normally don’t care for onscreen keyboards, as I find them difficult to use, but I was pleased to discover that no matter how much I butchered a word, the Eris’ autocorrect system was almost always able to figure out what I was trying to type. Excellent.

2. Setup was a breeze. I seriously just logged in with my Google account once and BOOM!, contacts, calendar, email, etc was all sync’d up. Freakin brilliant. I have this thing ready to roll and have yet to connect it to my computer (I likely won’t ever). Also, when I visit Google sites, I’m automatically logged in. Totally seamless, as it should be. Really pleasant.

3. Multitasking is a bit confusing. There doesn’t seem to be a surefire way to view the currently running applications, or to minimize an app and then recall it, really. Perhaps I’m missing something, but if I’m chatting with someone in Gtalk and I press home or back, I have to navigate back to the Gtalk app (or wait for them to send me another IM) to get it back. Makes me miss Handy Taskman quite a bit.

4. The HTC Sense UI isn’t all that great. It has some cool features, but it’s also quite cluttered, in my opinion, and duplicates a few Android features, like the email and such.I know how to disable the Sense UI now, but am trying to force myself to use it a bit longer before writing it off entirely.

That’s really about it for now – I’m still exploring this, so if you have any tips/tricks/suggested apps, please do leave them in the comments. I’ve also ordered a skin from SkinIt (camo, of course) and will review that with photos when it arrives.

How To Power Through 350+ RSS Subscriptions With Google Reader

// March 31st, 2009 // 7 Comments » // blogging

As a tech blogger, I have to be looking everywhere for new stuff to post on. Over the past few years since I’ve started using Google Reader, I have accumulated just over 350 RSS feeds that I keep track of, and no, I won’t share my OPML file with you. However, I do want to share how I am able to filter through this massive load of content to find the good stuff, and still find time to blog and do other stuff, as well. According to Google Reader’s Trends, over the past 30 days I have read 8,076 items. I’ve been on vacation for the past week, too. That’s an average of 270 items, every day, to filter through. My friend Ken Camp showed how and why he uses Bloglines, which works great for him, but not for me.

First off, why do I use Google Reader, among the other RSS readers out there? Easy – it’s everywhere, on anything. Since it’s web-based, I can access my Google Reader anywhere, be it a laptop, netbook, or even my S60-powered smartphone. What’s great about this is that my reading list is always the same. If I catch a few minutes to filter through 30-50 items on my phone, those items are marked read, so that I don’t see them again on my computer that afternoon, and vice versa. It really helps that I can access this from anywhere, anytime. I also like how it works and organizes stuff.

When I start my day, I open up Google Reader, press F11 (to put my browser in fullscreen mode) and press U (to toggle the sidebar off). I’m not sitting in front of a display showing ONLY my Google Reader items. So, how do I get through so many things without missing the good stuff? In a SNP, that’s how. I have my fingers on three buttons on the keyboard: S, N, and P. These are crucial. N is for next, and scrolls down to the next item. P is for previous, and goes back one. I use these to quickly scroll through, reading the headlines and any excerpt I have for every single item. The S is where the magic happens, though.

S is for star, and it marks the currently highlighted item as starred, and puts it into my Starred Items feed. Basically, I go through my RSS extremely quickly, only resting on each item long enough to read the headline and determine if it it’s something I’ll want to read or blog about later. If it is, I put a star on it and click next. I do this until I’ve cleared out all the unread items, just like that.

Now, I can go back to my Starred Items list, which is a filtered, condensed list of things that I want to spend some time on. Usually, I’ll go through this list, middle-clicking with the scroll wheel on my mouse to open each item in a new tab. Alternatively, you could use something like Better Greader to view them without having to open in tabs. I just like tabs, is all.

The process of filtering through is obviously going to depend on your ability to quickly determine the value of something, specifically when given limited information such as a headline or an excerpt. It’s also something you’ll get better at as you go along.

How do you manage the massive influx of information that is thrown at you each day? Any better tips?

New RSS Feed

// March 3rd, 2009 // 2 Comments » // annoying

I’ve been wrestling with Feedburner’s MyBrand service ever since they basically required me to migrate all my stuff to Google, and haven’t been able to get MyBrand working on this site’s RSS feed. Since I certainly don’t intend to hand all 29 of my RSS readers to Google, I’ve completely dumped Feedburner, and will instead use the built-in RSS features of WordPress.

As such, the 29 of you who are subscribed to my feed at feeds2.feedburner.com/rickycadden/posts will eventually not get any of my awesome updates, unless of course you change your subscription to http://www.RickyCadden.com/feed. Easy peasy. Thanks!