Flying cars and GEO apps on my iPhone
Today it dawned on me, the future is now!
Who needs flying cars when you have an iPhone. I was doing 50km/hr on my bike when I got the idea for this blog.
My phone was dutifully tracking my bike ride home through GPS satellites and modern wizardry. It got me thinking about all the GEO data that I’m pushing through to the inteweb tubes and the drivers behind it.
So here goes…
Runkeeper
Runkeeper is a wonderful multi platform app that has captured the data nerd and is pushing me harder than any gym teacher during my school years. It is a wonderful website with all sorts of maps and stuff, but the key here is the iPhone app that does a brilliant job at tracking my cycling activities. I press go, put the phone in my backpack and cycle like a maniac knowing where I reach max speed and which time I need to beat. Now I know that I burn roughly the equivalent of a Guinness pint cycling to work. My main goal here is to maintain beer consumption while loosing the gut.
Here is an example report from today:
This app does a brilliant job of marrying web and phone and has smooth social features where I can compare my progress to the active geeks in my network.
Foursquare
You won’t get this one until you really try it yourself. Foursquare has cracked the GEO app space and captured an audience like no other company.
This video has some insight:
But for me it’s just a brilliant addictive game. I feel like I’m playing real world Monopoly while engaging in new ways with my network and discovering new places to eat. Heck, I try out new places just to collect badges. You can check out my profile here. But more interestingly, here is a Google map with my latest checkin history:
I also recommend Fourwhere.com, it’s doing a pretty good job at mapping all the happening places in Reykjavik.
A while back Twitter introduced GEO tagging for updates. So any updates I do from my phone are tagged and you can find out where I’m Tweeting from. Using the same trick as with Foursquare, you can take the RSS feed URL and paste it into the Google Maps search field to get something like this:
Where am I going with all of this? Not sure, but you’ll be able to track me…
I guess the future is now and who needs a flying car when you have a good bike?