Alexander Kluge’s Foursquare by WeePlaces.com.
Back in 2005 I tried to visualize my travel actvities by using Plazes and its IndyJunior maps. Still ask myself when I see new services like Facebook Places: where the hell did Nokia bury Plazes and why.
New Plazes Beta greets me with:
* Member since May 2005
* Plazed 6851 times at 164 Plazes in 64 cities and 12 countries
In addition Plazes shows all my activities on a world map. I like that feature coming back now. In the good old days of Plazes they had an maps integration with IndyJunior. Now we have a nice Google map.
Can´t wait to test the new Plazer which will be released soon – hopefully.
Update: 4 hours later the New Plazes is live.
When I first discovered Plazes back in 2005 I immediatly liked the idea of a „navigation system for your social life„. I became a kind of heavy user and blogged many times about my Plazes experience. Meanwhile Plazes logged 175 places I have visted all over the world and tons of activities. It has become a huge map of my social life. But unfortunately many users from my buddylist disappeared in the last year, some stopped using Plazes at all, and lots of other companies seem to be out there ready to start similar services.
Now today in the morning Plazes announced a deal with Nokia. Nokia acquires Plazes. Congratulations, Plazes Team! I love this news not only because I like the idea of Plazes but because you are a Berlin based company.
I hope we will see now fresh innovation, a new fresh Plazes which is in Beta now – and a new Plazer 🙂
Plazes unveiled the brand new Plazer 😉
Hope to see the real new Plazer after all these months, too. The last announcement Stefan made was in September 2007.
FireEagle opened into private beta today:
FireEagle is a system that brokers location information. It is designed to help users safely share information about their location with sites, services and people on the internet.
So, what is my point? Yahoo is building a tool which Plazes provides for years now. But Plazes got stuck somehow in the middle. There is still no update for the Plazer. No information about upcoming releases, no public announcements on blog.plazes.com. So whats happening over there? I still would rather use a service provided by Plazes – especially because it is a Berlin startup. But what happens if Yahoo delivers what many Plazes users wait for?
Since I was pointed to the Plazes service back in 2005 I was very enthusiastic about this idea. I wrote about it. I invited lots of friends. I used it every day.
Since the Plazes team updated the web frontend (which I like) and the Plazer I am getting tired of all the problems. The new plazer is still buggy, it still crashes or hangs when changing locations, especially when using a proxy. There is still no simple buddy list like in the old Plazer. Yes, Stefan, I know the answers. We are working on it. And rumours say you are working on something really big. But adding the people radar and the web plazer to your site is not the solution!
The point is: I don´t even want to think about plazing myself. Like in the old days the Plazer should detect my location, submit it to the Plazes services, and thats it. No user interaction, no web login, just a silent task in the background. If it is a new location, a popup notifies me and I enter the new location data – like in the good old days. Doesn´t work now anymore.
Today after my third restart of the Plazer I looked at my buddylist: 27 contacts, most of them inactive users since many months. There must be a reason for it.
I know you guys at Plazes are really busy. But you should better communicate what you are working on – and give the Win32 Plazer users back their hope before they leave.
Update: 24 hours later I received an updated Plazer. There seemed to be a problem with the Skype integration. Thanks for the fast response!
Felix invited some Plazes users to test the next generation of Plazes. First, UI looks much better now. I liked the old design, but I was not able to find information I was looking for right on one click. Second, I like the new Web Plazer. Now you can plaze yourself from the web frontend, no need for the Plazer. You simply login on Plazes website and plaze yourself. Third, Plazes goes Twitter. When you plaze yourself on the Plazes website you can answer two questions: Where are you? And what are you doing there? I realy don´t see any value in using a Twitter-like tool yet. But it seems this could be fun.
Another interesting new feature: You can not only register and enter your current Plazes, you can plazes yourself on plazes you will visit in the near future.
Finaly Plazes will get a new claim: Right Plaze, Right People, Right Time. Am I wrong or is this claim not really invented by Plazes?
Marco just sent me one small file called ebf.sameplaze. Put it into Lotus Sametime plugin directory, restarted Lotus Sametime, and voilá: Plazes integrated into the Lotus Sametime client:
It even gives you the ability to overwrite the location information from Lotus Sametime:
I had some trouble with the Plazer switching between locations with and without proxy settings. Plazer crashed every time. On the other hand location information provided by Lotus Sametime functionality was poor. So both together fits perfect for me.
Thanks, Marco.
This kept me away from going to bed earlier then the last nights: Plazes and Google Earth. I downloaded the Plazes KML, updated my Google Earth from 3.x to 4.x, logged in to my Plazes account from within Google Earth and voila – I can fly virtually over all Plazes in Google Earth.
You can select what you want to see: Your Plazes buddies, all Plazes by category or „who is online“ at a specific Plaze. Its just a prototype, like everything what we see in „beta dot plazes dot com“, but anyway: it works great and is fun to use.
In den letzten Wochen konnte ich ein wenig mit dem neuen SMS Service von Plazes spielen. Wie es sich für ein in Beta-Phase befindliches Start-Up gehört, ist der Beta-Dienst eines Beta-Dienstes im Alpha Stadium. Dennoch funktioniert er erstaunlich gut. Meine Versuche, mich in der Mongolei oder in Peking einzubuchen, um meine Geschwindigkeit ins Unermeßliche zu steigern, scheiterten leider.
Aber im alltäglichen Leben funktioniert es ganz gut:
(2.11 18:58): On motzstrasse in berlin
(2.11 18:58): You’ve been plazed on MOTZSTRASSE.Or did you mean:
1) at Montevideo on Viktoria-Luise-Platz 6(5.11 21:01): At haus der berliner festspiele in berlin
(5.11 21:01): You’ve been plazed at haus der berliner festspiele.(5.11 22:54): At manzini in berlin
(5.11 22:54): You’ve been plazed at manzini.
Und so nebenbei stoße ich dann noch auf die interessante Story von Plazes beim Elektrischen Reporter.
btw: Meine tägliche Durchschnittsgeschwindigkeit ist wieder auf 143 km/h gestiegen 😉
Plazes updates its Plazer. Finally Plazer reconnects automatically. So no „Plazeless“ status for me anymore.
Update available -> here
I know this is a way to get off vowe´s buddylist. But I have to test this out:
Plazes new Plazer has a new option: The Plazer is able to plaze a mood message with your current location in Skype. Yes, I know, people with mood messages like „save the whales“ are so off my buddylist, but I like this feature. So anybody about to remove me from his buddylist showing my location?
Just a few weeks ago I discovered Geobloggers – and started tagging some of my pictures on flickr manualy. Until yet Geobloggers did not pick up the rest of my pictures via the RSS feed, but they are working on it. Meanwhile Steve has published a script that automates the tagging of pictures, based on the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox. So lets wait for Europe beeing available in Google Maps – in the meantime my European pictures will still remain right in the middle of nowhere.
There is another service I discovered while reading about geotagging. Plazes , the „navigation system for your social live“, is a cool site that allows users to register access points to physical locations. Plazes will come out with a flickr integration, featuring automated adding of geo-coordinates from the Plazes Launcher and annotating it to your pictures.
In addition, Plazes has just added a tracking features that uses IndyJunior maps to visualize where you’ve been based on locations from which you have logged into Plazes. The result is a documentation of my current trips through Germany:
Well, this feature is really funny – but it scares me too. The vision of 1984 was the total control by the government. In 2005 we can see very clear: Its not the government. We give away our data without beeing forced – and very often we do it unsolicited and voluntarily.
Teilnehmen, Mitmachen, Diskutieren mit Experten und Praktikern rund um #DigitalWorkplace, #NewWork, #ArbeitVierNull. @berlinDWM
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