It has been almost a year since geolocation services like Fourspare and Gowalla came into the iPhones of nerds (myself included) that made the annual pilgrimage to Austin Texas for South by Southwest Interactive. The Austin based Gowalla had a significant marketing presence at last year’s conference while Foursquare was stronger out of the gate, being the must have app for SXSWers looking for the hot parties and the who’s who’s of the tech world each night and filling out their badge sashes with the all-night benders that are a SXSW staple. Gowalla picked up steam throughout last year, and now many people (myself and most of my friends) use both apps whenever they remember to check-in somewhere.

My main complaint is as the use of these services have grown the quality of the location data has greatly decreased, especially in Foursquare, in my experience.  When I’m looking for the restaurant I’m eating at, I see all these other completely useless to me locations, like “The Batcave”, and people listing their homes on Foursquare and Gowalla. In addition to the overall validity of the locations themselves, there is a lack of important and really useful information about locations that people add. The teacher in me wants to complain about people’s pure laziness in not using proper caps when typing the name of a location, but more important information like the actual street address and phone number are rarely added. I think that in addition to badges or trinkets that people collect, that these services should also incentivize users to take the time and add more information about the locations that they visit.

This geolocation data is another layer in the virtual world to help us navigate the real world and quality, reliable information is important for users and the services themselves if they are going to continue to thrive.  Much like cities in the real world have city managers, so to do the virtual cities that we create need some management and curation. I think/hope in future releases of Foursquare and Gowalla that they will incorporate some sort of recommendation engine that would recommend new places for you to try based on where you and your friends go often; maybe this could be a source of revenue as for example the recommendation engine suggests trying the new Mexican restaurant down the street and the restaurant contracts with the geolocation service and offers you a free appetizer coupon on your phone.

Businesses are starting to see the potential uses of geolocation apps like Foursqare and Gowalla as some places offer discount or freebies for people who become the mayor of their place as a way to reward frequent customers, though it often seems like the mayors of locations are more and more an employee that checks in every time they come to work, which kinda ruins the “game” for everyone else. With Gowalla and Foursquare coming out with APIs, allowing other developers to access their data, the quality of that data will become more important.

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This had we wondering what if a blood thirsty red neck (hey, I live in Texas, we are not in short supply) that is tired of hunting game and tweets that they are going to be away for the weekend so they could wait for the would be burglar to break in.  The soon to be burglarized homeowner siting in his la-z-boy recliner sipping a lone star with one hand while the other perspiring, holding the loaded shot-gun with finger quivering on the trigger just waiting for the burglar to break in to take aim at his next kill.

Certainly this is all hypothetical, but it would make for a good episode of CSI.

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With the update to 1.2 also a new default Buddypress theme is released, and I immediately switched over. The new default theme was exactly the look I was going for when I installed Buddypress and tried to squeeze out of the old default theme. The new version is also easier to install and increases the social interaction features with greater support in the activity pane. It incorporates some twitter like features like @username support.

Download it and try for yourself at  Buddypress.org

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Enjoy some of these other classic Kosek weather casts.

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photo credit: mattbuchanan

Keeping in line with the biblical metaphor started with the release of the iPhone that some people called the Jesus Phone, the new Apple iPad was unveiled today in a worldwide simultaneous nerdgasm followed by softly weeping and feelings of regret. Chiropractors around the world rejoiced as hundreds of thousands of nerd’s heads all cocked to the left much like a dog when you call it’s name as Steve Jobs reveled that iPad was the blessed name of his new creation.

So to me it seems that there are two camps of thought on the iPad. There is the its just a big iPhone and then they begin a sting of maxi pad and tampon jokes and then there is the camp that sees the potential uses for the iPad and are somewhat disappointed that it didn’t have all the features that people like Jason Calacanis purported it to have, but are still setting aside the at least 500 bucks for the iPad. I am somewhere in the middle; I can see how the iPad almost destroys the rest of the ebook device market, and I’m more excited to see what developers do with the larger interface and I will be waiting for future releases to see what new features that Apple might add.

I think a big market for the iPad is in doctor’s offices where doctors already living the Apple lifestlye will want to move their office to Apple as long as developers are there with the software side of the solution.  Also there are the possible uses in education but that will have to wait for a later post.

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This brings an interesting angle hinting at possible markets for the new tablet like device. Some other bloggers have brought up the potential uses for such a e-book like device to hopefully make a huge dent in the textbook market, hopefully lowering prices. Apple already has a stranglehold in higher education as the glowing apple logo lights lecture halls around the world and iPhones are almost required materials for learning. Another potential market for the Apple tablet device is in healthcare, where PC tablets have seen fairly wide adoption and I think the right hardware with thoughtout software could be a huge success in the healthcare industry with the greater push toward electronic medical records.

Everything is mere speculation and hopes made with fingers crossed with little more than 12 hours till the big reveal, but I had to join in on the Apple speculation fun.

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Yesterday Wordpress released an early Christmas present for all us bloggers with the update to 2.9. The update is mostly chocked full of bug fixes and improvements to the wordpress code. Below is a breakdown.

1. It’s faster: Although not a listed improvement, many users, including myself, are seeing that sites are running faster with the 2.9 upgrade.

2. Built in Image Editor: Wordpress now includes a basic image editor including crop, edit, flip, rotate and scale images all available through the media library and when uploading/inserting images into posts.

3. Batch plugin updating: Now more updating each individual plugin site wide, under tools, in the update tab, a new option to update all plugins at once makes managing multiple sites more easy and the updater checks to make sure the plugin updates are compatible with your version of Wordpress.

4. Oembed support: no more embed codes for inserting videos. Just paste the url for the video on its own line inside your post and the video will automatically be embedded. Currently all the major players like Youtube are supported with more providers coming.

5. Sitewide Trashcan: No more accidentaly deleted posts or comments; the new trashcan saves the posts for thirty days.

Below is a Wordpress video highlighting some of the new features.

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