Share your location with Brightkite… Brightkite is a fantastic social-location sharing platform and much more! I first started using Brightkite’s mobile service on my Nokia N95 (Symbian S60) device. The app was useful although the UI was not terribly friendly on the s60 device… that’s all changed on the iPhone though (and Android platform as well I might add). Brightkite is a social app, with much functionality similar to twitter – users create a profile and get connected with friends. What really sets it apart from other apps though is the support (and tight integration) for sharing location information.
To begin, you must have an account, then the fun starts. Simply fire up the application on your iPhone (the app is free from iTunes shop) and the app will then start searching to detect your location. Once the service geocodes your location you can then accept the default location presented to you (for example… 100 First Avenue, Windsor, Colorado) or then “pick a place” which then searches a POI database of places that are at or near your current location (for example, Loodles Coffee Shop, Windsor, CO) select the desired location and then check in… what’s way cool is that you can check in and also include a note and / or a photo. Over time you will build a nice record of places you’ve been… I highly suggest attaching a photo with every entry to make it fun!
Finally, to really enhance your Brightkite experience users can integrate/connect their bright kite account with Twitter… this will then force a Tweet whenever you check-in. Also cool, Brightkite users can also login to their account via face book connect which results in updates (and photos) being sent to the user’s face book status update.. Also very handy! A Flickr connect is also available enabling you to quickly and easily share you media via your flickr stream as well.. When all your services are setup and connected correctly, you should see some decent traffic/hits on your uploaded media! Perhaps the best think about connecting brightkite to your Twitter is that you’ll build out your Geo-RSS feed which then provides a host of opportunities to you, for example, you can copy your flickr Geo-RSS feed address into Google maps (or Earth) and view your photos on the map!
Brightkite is likely THE best and most used location-aware service that I use on my iPhone! See www.brightkite.com
