Connected Well

I have an 8830 “world edition” blackberry smartphone from Verizon wireless and I have to note a few things I wish could be improved.

* There’s a GPS built into the device, but VZ disabled it so you can’t use it because Verizon wants you to pay an extra $20/month for their Navigation service. That stinks.

* The 8830 seems to have a severe memory management problem, dumping txts and email, phone and call logs without warning, a few times a week.

* Having no camera is bad enough, but not able to receive Picture messages without using the web browser is kinda dumb.

* Other devices allow YouTube and streaming video/audio but not so on the 8830, presumably so you’ll sign up for “vCast”.

* More of an “I wish” for Verizon itself, the fact that I can’t use just the data plan (or the phone+texting without data plan is pretty ludicrous. Its just money, after all, but while going with Verizon may mean great cellular service (reception) it also means a hefty bite from your wallet each month.

Hopefully, Verizon won’t leave 8830 users behind as they roll out software for the Pearl, Storm and other new Blackberries.

Update: It does appear I am not the only one reporting problems with the 8830.

Rahhb mobile 8830, blackberry, CDMA, mobile, problems, smartphone, verizon

My initial way to explain BrightKite is that it’s like Twitter (what you’re doing) + Location (Where you’re doing it), which I like. I am trying to determine how to use it (mainly because I use Verizon for my phone service, and it’s currently not supported).

But, I just bumped into it’s Map Friends feature, which shows you where your friends have last “checked in” and how you could find them. (See a screenshot, below of my current friendmap)

This seems to fit well with Brightkite’s vision to enable a social network that helps facilitate real-life friendships as well as virtual ones:

Wouldn’t it be nice to have social community around the locations you frequent? To actually meet new people, not Facebook-to-Myspace, but face-to-face? MySpace has done a really good job of facilitating meaningless cyber friendships with unprecedented ease. Ironically, Facebook does not easily enable face-time with friends at all. At Brightkite we believe tangible community has a place around real-world locations.

My current beefs with the platform will surely be addressed soon:

• Since I use Verizon, I can’t “check in” via mobile messaging yet.
• There’s no Mobile Web version (that would help)… but they’re working on it.
• My brightkite check-ins are reposted to twitter, but I want it the other way around, too (similar to my facebook status updated automagically via the twitter facebook app.
• I want to comment on people’s brightkite postings (ala FriendFeed), and allow comments on mine.

But I will say overall that my favorite, clear usage for this app at the moment is that it really does help you transcend just what people are DOING, and the conversation (which twitter does so well) and mash that up with actually understanding where people ARE, and what they are doing there.

If BrightKite doesn’t work for you, maybe you need one of these kittehs, instead:

Rahhb Social Networking brightkite, facebook, friends, geotagging, GPS, in_real_life, IRL, location, mobile, mobile web, Networking, real life, Social Networking, socialnetworks, socnets, status, twitter, verizon, when, where