Alison Young

Mozilla is launching Firefox 3 and they’re doing so in style, by attempting to set a record for the most number of downloads during a 24hour period. This is a great idea to spread awareness and love of a browser that has gained quite a significant amount of awareness over time. The thing us Australians should pay attention to is the date, while stated everywhere on the website as June 17. The official launch time of 10am on June 17, Pacific Daylight Time is actually 3am on the 18th of June here in New South Wales. You can check the official start time for wherever you are here.

To get involved you can pledge your bandwidth by clicking the banner below.

I’ve been using the Firefox 3 beta release candidate since I upgraded to Hardy Heron and it’s grown on me. I’ll like it even more when they start supporting more of the extensions I used to use with FF2. On the other hand, it’s been good to clean out the extension collection to determine what I really use and what I can live without.

Mid week I received an offer from Jed White of itechne to speak at PubCamp in Sydney and Melbourne. Despite my initial hesitation, I accepted the opportunity to join such speakers as Stephen Collins and Bronwen Clune. I will be presenting a version of the Twitter talk I delivered at Sydney and Canberra BarCamps.

Nobody was more surprised than I when Jed originally contacted me; however I am pleased to have the opportunity to talk about something I’ve become increasingly passionate about, namely social media. The talk won’t be exactly the same but it will contain similar content. I’m still reeling a little by it all, having never dreamt that I’d become known as a speaker but somewhat pleased with the small ways I’m building a reputation.

If you’re going to be in Sydney or Melbourne and have an interest in the future of media and the web then come along. Attendance is free so register at the event pages for Sydney and Melbourne and we look forward to seeing you there. In the meantime if you’re on Twitter follow @pubcamp for all the latest information and speaker teasers.

Follow-up blog post covering both the Sydney and Melbourne events will be posted after I return from Melbourne. My trip to Melbourne would not have been possible without the generous sponsership of itechne. Thank-you! I’m very excited by it as I haven’t visited Melbourne for many years and also because I’ll hopefully get to meet more of the Melbourne Twitterati.

For the June long weekend I’d planned with my Mum to pay a surprise visit to her parents who live in Trundle NSW. Where you ask? Here is Trundle, home to only a couple of hundred people and my grandparents. It took approximately 6 hours to drive there from Sydney even though it’s only around 430km. There is no mobile signal for my Optus phone once and there is no internet at my grandparents place. I volunteered to deprive myself of my technological addictions for the weekend, mostly. I also thought I’d go one step further and not drink coffee until I get back to Sydney.

Just south of Trundle is another town called Bogan Gate. Australian readers may be amused by a town named after a somewhat derogatory named social class. To my great surprise and delight Mum told me there was actually a gate which the town was named after. She elaborated that it was in the middle of a field nowhere significant. None the less I insisted that I had to get a photo on the Bogan Gate else nobody would believe it. So here it is:

Saturday evening, we’d had dinner at 6pm and by 7.15p I was yawning and musing about going to bed. Feeling very isolated I had to repeatedly tell myself that checking my phone was a pointless endeavour and to stop thinking about what conversations may be happening on Twitter, Plurk, IRC and IM. It was odd once everybody had gone to bed and I was sitting up alone at 10pm drinking tea and reading a book I’d been meaning to start for a number of weeks.

It’s very dark and quiet out there. A stark contrast to the ‘not quite night’ darkness and noise that is part of living in Newtown. The air is cold outside but the house was centrally heated, so despite bemused friends commenting about how I’d freeze on my trip west, it wasn’t the case at all.

On a Sunday daytrip I did have signal for a couple of hours and checked my email, Twitter replies and managed to catch up with a few people who were around at the time. It amazed me quite a bit how much I depend on the feeling of connectedness with people who are located both locally and all over the world. I don’t need to be talking to these people all the time, but I do feel most at ease knowing that I can. Instead I found other ways of passing the time, listening to my Mum talk to her Mum about the people who grew up and currently reside around the area. It seems that people out here are getting married and having children but doing little else. Perhaps its the rural setting, with little else to do. But it isn’t a technological black hole. The exchange in Trundle ADSL2 capable, people out there probably have a better internet connection than I do. There is no reason why somebody out there couldn’t be as active online as anybody in a capital city.

Admittedly there isn’t the same opportunity to network face to face but that shouldn’t stop you. My friend Fiona is based in Cairns and is a very active member of a number of online communities. She’s travelled to cities and met with several other people. While I’ve never actually met Fi face to face, we regularly communicate through social networks, have text conversations, call each other on mobile or Skype and send each other sms’. In other words, we’re not different to any other people who are friends and living 1600km apart.

I’ve taken some photos around Trundle, I think fondly of this place after spending a great deal of my childhood visiting here. There are a couple of heritage listed locations and Trundle also boasts the widest street in the west. The reason its so wide is that ‘back in the old days’ there needed to be sufficient room to turn the bullock-drawn wool wagons. It’s a saying here that you can tell the difference between locals and visitors by who walks and who drives from one side of the street to the other. You can see some of the larger photos from around here on my Flickr account starting from here.

Self-described as “location-based social networking” BrightKite encourages you to check-in to a location and then post notes or pictures. I’ve been using it for several weeks now and have become quite fond of the ability to instantly photograph and share things occurring around me with others. The whole premise of the location-based social networking phenomenon is to be able to locate and communicate with other users in person as well as via the site. BrightKite is still in beta and membership is invite-only, however there is a growing user-base. Unlike many other sites in alpha or beta, invites are topped up so should you run out it’s only a matter of time before you acquire more to distribute as you see fit.

What can I do?

At present you are able to check-in, post photos & notes and a new feature unveiled just today allows you to comment on posts from others. In terms of friends list control you can opt to add others and also set a trust level for each friend which will determine what level of detail they can see regarding your location. There are a number of ways to set privacy options should you wish to give the site full address details such as street, or even street number. Personally I’ve locked down my posts so that un-friended and casual observers can only see my city, whereas friends can see the suburb and trusted friends the street details. When at home or the homes of others I check into only the street whereas if I’m at a restaurant or cafe I’ll use the full address and usually post a note identifying where I am.

How do I do it?

Checking in and posting can be done through the website and by sending MMS messages to your personal BrightKite email address which can be found in your Settings. Once becoming familiar with the symantics of MMS messages it’s very easy to post check-ins, notes and photos while on the go which is where I feel BrightKite really is the most fun. To make life much easier when on the go you are able to specify placemarks which can be used instead of sending the full address of places you frequent; common placemarks would be things like home, work, SydneyCBD, VicPark, and perhaps the names of favoured places to eat out. To check-in via MMS to King Street, Newtown I’d send a picture message containing the following text: @King St, Newtown NSW 2042, Australia. BrightKite is an international service so mentioning that you’re in Australia is useful, if you’re not sure of an exact address you might find yourself checked-in somewhere strange indeed. Of particular note was when a friend checked into Central Australia while trying to check into Central Station, Sydney. If in doubt create a placemark first then it’s as simple as MMS’ing @<placemark name>, eg @home.

I’ve configured my BrightKite account to sent notice of new posts and photos as Twitter messages which allows everybody in my timeline to see when I’ve posted a new photo. For an idea of what my personal BrightKite timeline looks like you can view it here. Timelines are also fully able to be configured in terms of friends and what you wish to see from each in terms of check-ins, posts and photos.

The other side of the fence

There have been a number of people who have raised concerns about the idea of publically identifying where you are, or more importantly, where you are not. This is a valid concern and if it troubles you to identify to a public or self-selected audience where you are then perhaps you might not enjoy what BrightKite has to offer. There have been a number of discussions about whether checking into a website is a privacy concern or not and how it might differ to the more traditional ways of informing people of your whereabouts.

Some things to keep in mind if you are interested but wary are:

• You only need to provide as much or little information as you are comfortable with. Checking into “Sydney CBD” is fine, if you wish to say you’re at “270 Pitt St, Sydney NSW 2000” then that’s alright too. This information is used to place a map pointer, obviously the more accurate your check-in, the more accurately the pointer placement is going to be.
• Only add people as friends if you know and trust them and are willing to share with them your whereabouts.
• Don’t have an open timeline just because everybody else seems to.

BrightKite isn’t going to suit everybody, but that’s true for any web application. Majority of the people who are involved in BrightKite or even just look at the pictures others post seem to enjoy the experience. Feel free to just look at postings from others and comment to them in Twitter. It’s all accepted behaviour.

Additional things to note

In my experimenting with the site I’ve found you can upload pictures of any dimensions you wish, to see a picture in fullsize from the picture page then click the image again. It is also possible to post notes and pictures to a location without being checked into it. Just search for the location or go to the relevant placemark and you will be able to post, however I have noticed that if you’re not checked into a location then BrightKite won’t post notice of pictures/notes that you’ve added to Twitter etc.

Already I’ve noticed a fellow, as yet unknown, BrightKite user who works in the same building as me from the pictures they’ve posted to the street I work on. Its very easy to swap timeline views from friends timeline, those around me, and everybody. It’s a fun way to see what others are posting and who else is checked in around you.

I have a few invites if you are interested in seeing what all the fuss is about. Otherwise have fun and I’ll let you all know when the site is released to one and all.