Back in 2007, MySpace was still formidable competition for Facebook, and Friendster was going the way of the pager (“pager,” i.e. a small electronic device assigned to a telephone number which alerted device-holder that a person was attempting contact; holder could then respond using one of those pay-phoney-thing-a-ma-jigs). Also in 2007, Twitter was but a fleeting twinkle on the net, and Brady Becker was just some hipster nerd in Denver, quietly concocting a little thing called Brightkite. Once unleashed, however, Brightkite took flight.

Unlike the standard-issue social networks, Brightkite doesn’t cater to the generic hogwash to which others  are prone. Closer to the up-and-coming Foursquare and the now-defunct Google acquisition Dodgeball, it’s a free, location-based networking site that’s also comparably sparse, user-friendly, and a superbly designed must-have communication tool.

Brightkite’s site is like a slap in the face for all of us networking zombies. Our eyes have literally adjusted to finding relevant areas on browsers. Brightkite’s homepage is so amazingly NOT complex, it literally makes you feel like the page must still be loading. (Coincidentally, as I write this, I am searching for “home” on Facebook’s horrifically redesigned page. Facebook is sure as shit joining its predecessors; it’s only a matter of time before it becomes as tainted and overrun with crappy bands as MySpace). Brightkite’s site is simple, it’s clean, and with the absence of seizure-inducing advertisements, it’s totally inviting.

You “check in” when you land at the corner bistro/dive bar/after-party, and it automatically posts your location to your Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr account. Take a picture of the obese hippie wearing butterfly wings at Whole Foods in Union Square, then post it on Brightkite so we can all enjoy the image of a fairy guzzling a Kombucha!

Below is my compelling and hard-hitting interview with Brightkite founder, Brady Becker.

Read the rest of this entry »

So, there I was, sending a message on MySpace (please quell your laughter) to a friend. I was ready to send it off, hoping that the user would check his account before the end of 2009 when, lo, a small icon labeled DotSpots popped onto the screen suggesting that I create a “Dot” of the message content. Earlier in the week I’d downloaded the program (currently available in beta version via the FireFox browser), wondering if this was the fourth coming of the ancient Project Xanadu. To test my theory and out of sheer curiosity, I figured that it was time to take the Dots for a test drive.

DotSpots, under the wing of co-founder Farhad Mohit, formerly of BizRate and Shopzilla.com, was first launched at the TechCrunch50 in 2008 to rave reviews. The Dots of DotSpots are annotation devices that can be distributed to equivalent copies of semantically similar text on the web. In many tech and social media forums, the format has drawn comparisons to Snipd and Diigo, both services in which the public can link and annotate existing subject matter on the web, but lack semantic matching capabilities. Mohit strongly believes that the purpose of journalism should be to frame issues, investigate issues from all sides, and to provide eye-witness accounts in investigative reporting. Unlike the aforementioned services, Mohit and company intend to enrich news media content by getting a few thousand high quality citizen journalists, bloggers, and activists into the fold as early adopters. This will allow them to enhance formidable news sources using Dots, causing mainstream media outlets to address those three areas. When this occurs, the DotSpots team will approach news publishers with a server side solution to turn DotSpots on for everyone, without the need for the plug-in which is now required to use the service. Read the rest of this entry »