Ian Benedict

I finally got my invite for the web 2.0 application BrightKite, so here are my initial impressions.

BrightKite is very much like Twitter, where you can post little notes to people on your friends list as well as the general public. Its main feature is the ability to also encode ‘where’ your posts are coming from. For example, if I had a GPS-enabled phone and I sent an update to BrightKite, not only will my post show up on the site but it will also show where I posted it from. Of course there are several privacy issues here (beware the stalkers!), but the site does provide a good amount of privacy features. What’s also pretty neat is you can view the public stream based on where you are, so you can see recent posts that originated from your area. For those of us without GPS-enabled devices, the option to add places manually on the site is there so we’re not completely left in the dark.

I can definitely see the coolness of using an application like this, especially when a lot of your friends get into it (with this being a social networking site and all…). You can set it to automatically update your Twitter with your BrightKite posts as well as add locational information to it, so you won’t need to message two different places if you have Twitter account too. Unfortunately, you can’t text message updates yet if you’re not in the US, but I imagine this will be rectified when it comes out of beta. I guess I have even more motivation to upgrade my phone now…

Check out my BrightKite profile here.

Exam week has started. My first exam is this Wednesday, with the rest not far behind. Studying is going well, though I’ll admit I’ve had a lot on my mind and therefore the studying isn’t as efficient as it could be. As well, I have a Kendo grading coming up in a few weeks. If I pass, I’ll be granted the 5th kyu rank, which is the lowest one. Ah well, gotta start small I guess.

I finally got myself to create a Twitter account, which you can view here. For the uninitiated, Twitter is a micro-blogging service. Basically, you can post really bite-sized blog posts fairly quickly from any cell phone or computer. Some of the common uses for this service are to post things you’ve been doing on a daily basis and to keep in frequent touch with people that you are following as well as your own followers. This is what I intend to use it for, so I hope I can keep at it. You may also notice that there’s now a Twitter widget on the sidebar of this site. If you happen to have an account, please feel free to follow me (don’t worry, it’s not as stalker-ish as it sounds). For those who don’t, try it out!