buddycloud

You may already know that Buddycloud integrates with the microblogging service Twitter. Well, now we also support the use of Nanoformats.

Once enabled (opt-in) your buddycloud status messages will be published on Twitter on the form 'Helge is blogging about nanoformats L:Home'.

Here L: is the nanoformat indication that what follows is location. Not exactly a giant leap for man kind, but hey...

Two weeks ago my phone died (RIP ye olde N95). I decided that to be as good reason as any to get a Nokia 5800, touted as the Finnish iPhone killer. To anyone who still thinks that: It's not. Note even close. BUT it is also not even close in price, so if you take that into the equation the 5800 is absolutely worth considering. And after several days of getting used to the full screen touch keyboard, I am really starting to like it. It does not do anything fancy like multi touch and smooth zooming and scaling. Also it is not amazingly intuitive. It's a Nokia as we know them, just all touchy feely.

Now just in case someone from the Nokia UI design team should happen to read this, here are some things that needs fixing:

When rotating between portrait and landscape mode, DON't make the screen go black before switching layout. This gives me the jeebz every time (my N95 died of screen cancer). I know you don't have the processing power to do it iPhone style, but just keep the old screen visible until the new one is displayable!

Also when opening a text input dialog, why not go straight to the keyboard? As it is now, i have to tap in the old no-touch-style text field before it appears. Seems unnecessary.

Oh, and of course Buddycloud runs on it too. Ross has out-done himself and added touch support in a matter of days. To be released any minute now I expect.

Buddycloud was invited to meet with the guru's of the LBS world in the Vienesse Woods.  We were situated out in the country and away from distractions in a small Suburb outside Vienna called Pressbaum.

It was a great honour to spend time with people like Georg Gartner, Professor of Cartography at the Vienna University of Technology and editor of numerous LBS journals, Michael Borras, Founder of Tupalo and Sean Owen, Google Phone designer and Author of Mahout.

The point of the workshop was to work closely with Deutsche Telekom's Products and Innovation team and come up with interesting uses for LBS.

My key takeaways from this workshop was how LBS will really be a contributer to other products and services.  Nobody uses LBS for LBS's sake.  Location will just become an ingredient in all apps, phones and dating websites.  (and a heap of business cards that I'm keen to followup on).