Where are my friends

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There needs to be a simple web app that quickly can show where one's friends are on a map, and what they are looking for. There are several projects that are trying to get to this idea, but few that really get to it simply and directly.

With Facebook Connect, OpenSocial standard, simple smartphones like iPhone and G1, GPS/triangulation of location are simple. Also, the integration with Google Maps and/or OpenLayers makes a simple "Where are my friends?" quite simple.

Contents

Use Cases

We should probably split this into two ideas; they are fundamentally different in terms of how it's used (though they sound similar at a technical level)

Local Scale

Jon is walking around SoMA after work, his brain hurts because he has been battling projects and friending all day. He would like to grab a drink, but since he travels so often, he doesn't know who is in town and is off work. He doesn't want to just call all his friends either. Instead, while he is walking towards SoMA, he takes out his iPhone and clicks "Where are my friends?" and immediately gets a map showing his location, and location of his other friends online. Other friends are also located on the map, with their latest status avaible quickly. Jon sends a message out via "Where are my friends?" saying, "First round is on me at ____." This is easy because Jon's favorite, most frequented bars are available on the map.

Global Scale

Rick finds out I need to go on a business trip to Singapore next week and has a weekend to kill there. He looks at a map showing where all his friends are, and sees that Alice is in Bali right now. He then selects the exact date of the weekend in question and sees that Bob will be in Singapore that weekend too. He then marks his own location as being in Singapore that week, and is notified that Charlie and Darlene used to live in Singapore. He emails Charlie to get some more info on Singapore, and Alice to see if she wants to meet up in Bali for the weekend.

Technical Specification

  • Social Integration
    • OpenSocial
    • Facebook Connect
  • Status integration
    • Twitter
    • Microblogging Spec
  • Mapping
    • OpenLayers
      • Google Maps
      • Yahoo Maps

Targets

  • low-fi website
  • Apple iPhone
  • Google Android G1
  • Possibly, facebook App

Similar Projects

TechCrunch:

I still like Dopplr better (other comparable services include TripIt, TravelMuse, TripSay and more), because it doesn’t make a distinction about which airline you’ve chosen to travel with—if you were in doubt, Bluenity only lets you share trips that includes one of Air France-KLM’s flights—and are open to include relevant information and multimedia content from third-party sources (e.g. photos from Flickr) rather than keeping the network a walled garden. Another major advantage to using something like Dopplr instead, is that the service leverages your existing relationship rather than trying to get you to hook up with total strangers.

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