wheresitworking?

Geolocation Coming to Facebook?

It’s funny to look back on this post I wrote just 8 months ago, about location based social networks and Google’s launch of Latitude. I didn’t even mention Loopt in the post, though at one point during late spring through summer Loopt looked poised to be a leader in the space.

But a fickle bunch we social networkers are. During summer, foursquare became the hottest way to tell your friends that you were having lunch somewhere. At least among the more geeky, or trendy, or connected, people I follow and communicate with. Meanwhile, Twitter has just rolled out geolocation through their API.

Jason Kincaid wrote a great post yesterday on how Facebook is poised to rollout and dominate geolocation. While I agree with him for the most part, it is hard to consider what will become of Loopt, foursquare, Gowalla (another up-and-comer with seemingly significant momentum), Brightkite (relative old-timer in the space), or the other networks that have sprung up and have some traction. Will their users abandon them for the major networks, or will they be acquired by the bigger players for their customer user bases and individually unique features? Obviously it will be a combination of these things, but I’m guessing a lot more of the former than the latter.

One final thought: what is Google doing with Latitude? Definitely not sitting still; just recently geohistory and some other new Latitude features were pushed out. Seems like with Google’s massive penetration in the mobile phone space, and their recent push of Google Profiles and various other networking components, they are an impending giant in this space.

Tags: brightkite, foursquare, geohistory, Google Latitude, Loopt

Seesmic Desktop Adds Support for Facebook Pages

Those of you that spend a lot of time on Twitter likely use some type of desktop client. This space is crowded with a variety of different apps that all have some similar features. But many have differentiating features that make them a better fit for certain things. I was a Twhirl user and never really liked Tweetdeck much. I use Tweetdeck on my iPhone, but the desktop client just didn’t appeal to me as much as Twhirl. When Twhirl was essentially “phased into” Seesmic Desktop, I began using Seesmic.

I have always felt that Seesmic was a better user experience. It easily allows me to switch between Tweeting in my personal account (@wheresitworking) or the SwellPath Twitter account (@swellpath), or making updates to my Facebook profle. The one thing that wasn’t possible was updating Facebook pages, like the SwellPath page.  Well, those days are finally over, as Seesmic now allows you to update those pages from the app. This makes it a lot more convenient to make updates to Facebook pages. Often, I’m tweeting something for SwellPath, and think that it’s relevant for the Facebook fans, but neglect updating the status because I don’t want to switch to the browser, load up Facebook, navigate to the page, and update it. Now, I just check a box, and the update syndicates.

In addition to this great new feature, Seesmic has many other features that make it (in my opinion) the easiest way to manage your Twitter and Facebook conversations remotely. The one missing piece, which Tweetdeck has, is the iPhone app. But it’s coming next month, according to @loic (Seesmic founder) and the Seesmic crew. It won’t be a moment too soon, as it will be great to have access to the same great features and settings while away from the desktop. So give Seesmic a try, and hear about the new Facebook page features straight from Loic himself here.

One last thing about Seesmic. Seesmic.tv is the former Seesmic.com. It is a video microblogging site. Inevitably all this functionality will be rolled into the Seesmic Desktop Client at some point. This will position Seesmic nicely for the future of microblogging, when we’re all recording short videos and posting them, rather than fumbling with typing. Don’t think that’s going to happen? We’ll see.

Tags: Facebook Pages, Seesmic, Twitter Desktop Apps

Jungle Disk versus ZumoDrive for iTunes and More

Late last year I had a realization: all my stuff (i.e. data) should be on the cloud. An extension of this realization: so I can rebuild or duplicate a “machine” easily without external drives and other hardware. If you’re unfamiliar with all the products below, they basically function like this: you install an app that monitors usage of the storage space, and then you can use your storage space just as if it was a directory (Dropbox) or a drive (ZumoDrive and Jungle Disk) on your machine.

So, I now use Dropbox for all my files (except music and video) and I actually imported all my old emails into Gmail. That basically means: if you steal my laptop, no big deal, I can rebuild the thing in about 8 hours and not miss a beat. But one thing I couldn’t quite dial in was music and video, because the files take up so much storage. I got around to dealing with this final hurdle in the last month, and here are my findings.

My first thought was whether Dropbox could handle this amount of data. I think Dropbox (current limit of 100GB) will be well into the 1/4 TB (250 GB) level soon, but that wasn’t my problem. Dropbox syncs with files on your machine, so you have to have comparable storage on your HD. My MacBook has 150GB – not enough to store my video and music and all the other stuff I need on my machine.

Enter Jungle Disk. I thought Jungle Disk would be the answer to my problems – it stores all your files on Amazon’s servers, and allows you access through Finder/Explorer. But I ran into several problems with Jungle Disk, mostly related to how it worked when I limited its ability to cache files locally on my machine. Jungle Disk is super convenient for backing up your machine, and I’ll end up using it for backups and other needs in the future, but it wasn’t terribly user-friendly for general file usage. This was an issue because ultimately I intend to share many of these files with “less savvy” users. Ultimately though, the pricing structure of Jungle Disk didn’t seem conducive to my needs. I didn’t want to pay for data being uploaded and downloaded, I just wanted a flat monthly rate for a set amount of storage – like Dropbox.

Enter ZumoDrive. ZumoDrive is very similar to Jungle Disk in terms of functionality, but it is a bit more user friendly. I also feel that ZumoDrive handles large upload processes cleaner.

ZumoDrive runs much better when you provide it with a cache that is equivalent to the amount of storage you’re using. In other words, if you store 25 GB of music on ZumoDrive, you give up 25 GB on your local hard drive for the cache. That obviously didn’t work for me, or else I’d have stuck with Dropbox. Once you limit your cache, you see slowness accessing files, but I can deal with that.

One of the best things about ZumoDrive for my purposes was the iPhone app. It essentially allows you to access all of your music from anywhere, and play it on your iPhone (or iPod Touch). It’s hard to say how much this influenced my decision to use ZumoDrive, but it was major.

I ended up with the 100 GB account on ZumoDrive. With Dropbox, this brings my monthly storage fees up to about $30 a month. A steep price to pay on a yearly basis, but a small price to pay for piece of mind, not having to deal with backups of critical files anymore, and shared music and photos for my family. I’d be curious to hear how others have dealt with similar needs, and their experiences with respective products.

Tags: cloud storage, Dropbox, iPhone applications, iTunes, Jungle Disk, Zumo Drive

Analytics App for iPhone – Mobile Google Analytics

My first review of an iPhone application has to be Analytics App.  Just last week I was sitting in a meeting and a client was asking about historical analytics data.  I had only been engaged with the client for a short time, so I wasn’t sure about some conclusions they were drawing from the data.  We were at a location where wifi wasn’t available, so there was no way to access the data.  It was frustrating to say the least.  Had I access to Analytics App on the iPhone, I could have pulled up the client’s account and had access to the data within about 30 seconds.  This application is a must have for any analytics consultant with Google Analytics accounts to manage; if you’re a real analytics freak, it truly gives you reason alone to have an iPhone.

The interface itself is simple but highly effective.  You have access to all your accounts and profiles from the introscreen.  Switching between profiles that belong to multiple account is actually easier than it is in the GA interface.  Once you are in a profile you see a menu of options.  The first is Today which is really handy for just quickly checking in on account to get a read on traffic.  Below that are the rest of the reports you’re used to seeing in the Google Analytics interface.  You can navigate quickly between sections to see the data that’s important to you.

Once you’re in a specific area, you can the basic data from those respective sections in Google Analytics.  If you want to modfiy the date range, this is another feature that is actually faster and easier in Analytics App then it is in the GA interface.  You have access to the same slot-machine-like date interface that is used in the iPhone calendar application.

Without a doubt, you’ll quickly get to a point where you want to dig deeper into the data, and you’ll be unable to in Analytics App.  However, the application isn’t for hardcore analysis, but rather for exactly what it does: offering you a very quick and easy way to monitor your basic analytics data from anywhere.

The one thing that would make this application way more effective is if GA had real-time data: but that is obviously in the hands of Google, and not Michael D. Jensen (@mdjensen) the creator of Analytics App.  Pulling in data from an application like Clicky or Woopra that has real-time data would be really cool.

Overall, pretty impressive and well worth the $5 it costs.  Thanks to Michael for creating such a great app.

Tags: Analytics App, Google Analytics, iPhone Applicaitions