Specific, non-specific, and everything in between

One of the beauties of Brightkite is the layers of options you have with just about everything you do on the service.  When I “check in” at any given location, I can be as specific about where I am as I want to be.  For example, when I check in at home I simply check into the city in which I live.  I do not check into my exact address.  When I’m at a cafe, at work, or another public location I generally check in with as specific location details as I have available to me at the time.

My ‘Visited Places’ on Brightkite.

Also of note is that if you’re scared to give out your exact address don’t be naive to the fact that if someone really wants to find out where you live, they can – whether you use any of these location based social services or not.

Perhaps you’ll only want to check into Brightkite when your geography changes dramatically.  Maybe going to the grocery store down the road doesn’t warrant you switching your location before you share 140 characters with the world the way you do now.  Perhaps if you went on vacation to an island in the Bahamas, you’d like to check in so that your messages are properly stored based on your current location.

I’m a little more anal than that.  I want my locations to be stored as granularly as possible. Not for everyone else, but for the possibilities that arise because of it. Not only am I able to keep track of where/when/how and what for myself, but you never know when you might meet up with a fellow Brightkite user at a given location.

I’ve been poking around my history on Brightkite and I see that I’ve crossed paths a few times ((Sometimes within only a few miles or even at the same location but only a day or so apart.)) with other Brightkite users.  My friend and follow Viddler team member Brandice (who talked me into really kicking the tires at Brightkite) recently met up with a Brightkite user at her local Panera Bread. I’m hoping, like it has happened on Twitter so many times, that Brightkite makes this even easier for me to experience as well.

Using Brightkite as a Twitter client

Brightkite will update Twitter with any of your activity on Brightkite, but again, there are layers upon layers of options.  Remember I said that you don’t have to switch away from Twitter if you use Brightkite the way I do?  Here is how I have Brightkite set up to notify Twitter.

One of the most annoying things, I thought, about the way that Brightkite updated Twitter was all of the bkite.com/whatever URLs.  Every time you saw a message from a Brightkite user on Twitter you saw this link and I found it irritating.  It turns out that the Brightkite team has already thought of this.  Not only can you specify which activities on Brightkite update your Twitter status (including check ins, note, and photo posts), but you can also specify the information that Brightkite posts to Twitter.  I have customized the output of my notifications to Twitter so that my notes do not contain a link back to Brightkite.  This means that if I use Brightkite to post a note and it updates Twitter, those that follow me on Twitter are none-the-wiser.  However, when I post a photo to Brightkite there is a link from Twitter so that you can see that photo.  There is also a link when I check in at a location, though I’m considering removing this update notification from my list because some on Twitter may find it annoying ((Which I can totally understand.)).

So instead of posting to Twitter I post to Brightkite which, in turn, posts to Twitter for me.  No extra work on my part.  Some of the people I follow use services like Ping.fm to post to every single social network at once.  I’ve not gotten that deep yet but it is certainly an option.

Conclusion

Brightkite is a very promising service being developed by a team that obviously pays close attention to detail.  I like that.  I feel that the teams at both Brightkite and FriendFeed pay far more attention to detail than the team at Twitter, but then again all three services have very different challenges and goals.  When I see a service being as well crafted as Brightkite is, I’m going to stick around and see if I can make it fit.

I have a few invites to Brightkite.  So if you want one drop a comment and use an email address that I can send the invite too.

Web applications are different then the applications you run on your computer in two very specific and obvious ways. First, they are run completely in your web browser (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, etc.) and you do not need to download or install any local files for the application to function. Second, the data that the application stores or edits is not on your local machine but rather saved “on the Internet”. These may seem like very obvious differences but I’ve mentioned these two reasons because the paradigm has shifted overtime and Google Gears almost completes that shift.

One of the many mantras of “Web 2.0″ applications has been to freely allow users of these applications to have access to their data both via an API and being able to “export” their data into various formats. These APIs afforded many developers to blur the line between desktop and web applications – such as being able to geotag your photos in iPhoto using Google Maps – but these solutions still required an Internet connection for them to work properly. Something also to note is the fact that these APIs are mainly used by developers and not by the users themselves so even though the data was portable, this fact hasn’t been exploited by the average user much, yet.

Enter Google Gears – which provides developers with the needed technology to make their entire applications portable not just the data. The first example Google chose to show off Gears with is Google Reader (a really great example). Google Reader, up until a few days ago, was a way to read your favorite sites by subscribing to their feeds but its use was limited to when you were connected to the Internet. Google Gears allows you to use Google Reader, at least most of the application, offline. You connect to the Internet, download your latest feed subscription’s updates, get offline, and you’re still able to read the feeds that you’ve cached on your local system. What’s more is that you are able to flag those items and Google Reader will sync with your Google Reader account once an Internet connection is available.

In short; Google Gears brings your favorite web applications to your local computer and allows them to run almost like desktop applications.

Why am I excited? Because my main reason for not using some of the most popular web applications has been because I can not use them offline. I am a firm believer in having all of my data available to me at anytime. Unfortunately in some cases, such as my photo and music libraries becoming larger than my laptop’s hard drive, I’ve had to make sacrifices. However, when it comes to much smaller yet more important pieces of data such as email messages, bookmarks, and important documents I can not afford to make those sacrifices. As Google Gears is adopted and implemented in more web applications I’ll be able to begin using them offline.