Spotted near Shop Around The Corner

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Location-based social search is no longer a theme for Hollywood films, writes Mathures Paul

Coffee prepared with condensed milk is best served in Bangkok, egg yolks prepared with jam is a must-have in Macau, kati roll can only be enjoyed at Nizam’s... While travelling we have difficulty in finding restaurants or markets that fit our budget and for tourist guides we are easy targets. Imagining a world without these nagging problems is impossible but there are ways to make journeys comfortable, like logging on to Fire Eagle (and sites supported by it) or giving Mozilla Geode a try.
First, an explanation of the concept. Let’s visit Rummble (in April 2008 the service went into limited open Beta), which is as addictive as FaceBook. The location-based social search and discovery tool allows users to “recommend content for a location”. Simply sign-up with a valid e-mail address and keep “rummbling”, that is, tag places near your house or office, your favourite hangouts, movie halls or restaurants. Provide a brief description of the place, perhaps the address and its photograph. Here’s a question: ‘Why should I take the trouble?’ Is there any particular reason why people smoke or drink? Call it addiction. Applications such as these can be added to FaceBook and while users are scrapping friends, they might even tell them about important places. Say, your friend from Coimbatore is travelling to Mumbai and she wants to listen to cool jazz or electronica. Mark a club like Blue Frog on the map, provide an address or contact details. Another question: “Does it matter if 10 people in America are rummbling?” Think again. Log on and find your best friend addicted to such applications. Millions are using similar applications and several important places in India have already been spotted.
Another popular portal is Liketribe.com, which sadly restricts service to a few US cities. But The Statesman’s ‘geek department’ tried the application by signing up with a mobile phone number. Voila, a message was sent from the US saying the user was near Maple Street (that was the information provided) and asked what he was looking for.
Yahoo’s Fire Eagle is a portal worth visiting which supports several applications. Using Google Map users need to identify his/her location (provide zip code or city). Next, add other applications.
Taking things further is Firefox’s Geode, a service that would send your location data to your Internet browser. “You pull out your laptop, fire up Firefox, and go to your favourite review site. It automatically deduces your location, and serves up some delicious suggestions a couple blocks away and plots directions there,” reads a note on labs.mozilla.com. “Future versions of Firefox plan on supporting the new W3C Geolocation Specification, which adds the native ability for websites to request, and you to optionally grant access to, your location. We’re still working out the specifics, but we’re hoping that location will be provided by one or more user selectable service providers and methods, example GPS-based, WiFi-based, manual entry, etc. You’ll be able to play with this in the upcoming beta releases of Firefox 3.1, as well as alpha releases of Fennec.”
Such applications have immense potential, cutting across sectors ~ banking to retail. Our lives are all set to become a little more dependent on technology and perhaps little less on face-to-face interaction.

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