“Not since Google have we seen this.”

That statement definitely caught people’s attention. Sequoia invested around $25 million of the $41 million that Color received, which is about double the amount they invested in Google.

I’m no venture capital expert, so I’ll leave that discussion to the folks at TechCrunch and BusinessInsider, but  BusinessInsider did post a particularly interesting article about what we haven’t understood about the $41 million investment.

What I can discuss are technical limitations of new products, specifically the one very large obstacle I think Color might encounter – GPS.

Before I explain why, I need to explain the way Color works. Basically, you take pictures with your GPS-enabled mobile phone. Anybody within 100 feet of that picture’s location can see the picture, and it will automatically group pictures together within that 100-foot radius. This means that if you were at a concert, everyone taking pictures there would form a dynamic ad hoc social network, which does sound pretty cool.

Here’s the problem: if you’ve ever tried using GPS indoors, you know how inconsistent it can be (if it even works at all). When checking into a venue using Foursquare, I usually try to do it before entering the building because I can’t usually get a good GPS signal inside. Same goes for navigation – I’ll save the address and fire up Google Navigation once I have a clear view of the sky.

Since Color’s entire usage scenario revolves around a self-generated, location-based network, it all goes out the window when its users can’t get a decent GPS signal. Sure, it’ll work fine at outdoor football games or in a park, but what about restaurants, house parties, indoor concerts, indoor sporting events… you get my point. This may be less of an issue in warmer climates where more venues are roofless, but up here in the northern part of the country I can see this being a massive frustration.

After doing some research, I’ve found some vague information that the Color might be able to use things like ambient background noise and light to help identify groups of people, and, of course, there are always less-accurate geolocation methods like cell tower triangulation and WiFi-based location. These methods will never be as accurate as GPS though, and for an app like Color, that could be the difference between enthusiastic adoption or frustrated abandonment.

Image credit: Camilla Carlström

The post Forget the $41 million, could Color fail simply because of GPS limitations? first appeared on Techerator.

Checking your location into these websites – namely Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places – can unlock perks like free food at restaurants, help you find new and interesting places to visit, and lets you tell your friends where you are (well, it lets everybody know where you are in most cases).

With any new technology, there’s an acclimation period where society figures out exactly what to do with the new concept.  This is known as cultural lag, and yes, it can affect things as simple as social networks.  In this article, I’m going to cover how you can effectively use these social networks without driving everybody crazy on the internet.

How to Not Suck at Location-based Social Networks

Before I start, understand this: I’m not trying to be hypocritical.  I use these services too, and like everybody else, I’m learning how to keep them useful without being obnoxious.  Most of these tips will apply to Foursquare, but I’m sure you will find a way to apply it to your social network of choice.

1.  Turn off automatic notifications to your linked social networks like Twitter and Facebook.

One of the basic features in location-based social networks is the ability to connect your other social network accounts to notify your friends of your actions.  When you check into your favorite restaurant, you can notify sites like Twitter and Facebook  – but that doesn’t mean you should do it every time you go somewhere.  Instead, turn off automatic notifications (this can be done in Foursquare’s settings online, and usually in the mobile app as well).

Disabling automatic notifications lets you pick and choose which venues to publish to your friends, and maybe you won’t need to alert everybody you just got a car wash.

It’s tempting to check into every location you visit when you’re traveling or out on the town, and it’s perfectly fine to do so.  When I’m taking a road trip, I really enjoy checking into new locations (especially when other people have added tips – these are great when trying out new restaurants), but I only publish a small fraction of the venues I visit.

Besides, do you really want your Facebook profile to be a graveyard of old location check-ins?

If you’re truly set on publishing all of your updates to your connected social networks, that’s alright.  It’ll just give me a reason to write another article about filtering the noise from your social network feeds.

2.  Add a personal message to the default check-in notification message.

You know what’s just as important as your location check-ins?  Context. Sure, it’s interesting if you check into a restaurant on the top of the mountain or at an exotic location, but adding a personal message actually tells us something about what you’re doing and makes that notification completely justified.  Foursquare gives you the option to add a personal message when checking in, so do that instead of posting the default “I’m at ________”.

If you consistently post bland, impersonal check-ins, people will start overlooking your messages at a subconscious level – just one of the amazing perks of being human.  Entertain your followers, it’s usually why they followed you in the first place!

3.  Mind the network.

This will sound completely crazy to somebody who hasn’t been using sites like Facebook and Twitter (or both together, more importantly) – but social networks have etiquette.  On Twitter, updates are fast-and-furious and your annoying posts can easily get lost in a busy timeline.  Sites like Facebook, however, are more personal and updates tend to linger much longer (especially with Facebook’s News Feed that doesn’t display content chronologically).

Facebook prioritizes content that appears in your News Feed by your personal contact with other people, so if you’re posting a lot of junk, you’ll only be hammering your friends’ News Feeds with it.

4.  Don’t be the mayor of your own house/apartment/castle.

Actually – go ahead and be the mayor of your own place.  It’ll be that much easier for somebody to come over and convert your place into a two-way petting zoo.

5.  Don’t check into places you’re obligated to be multiple times a day. (Work, School, Jail, etc.)

I won’t go as far as to say you absolutely shouldn’t check into places you’re required to be, like work or school, but if you are going to do it – don’t do it every time you walk into a new building or come back from a break.  Having a feed full of check-ins at Work, Work, Home, Work, Home, Chuck E. Cheese, Work, and Home won’t look cool, and your co-workers will just end up stealing your fancy red stapler anyway.

6.  Use real, publicly accessible locations.

Sure, it’s hilarious being the mayor of your neighbor’s bathtub, but it defeats the arguable usefulness of these social networks.  Venues you add to social networks like Foursquare should be publicly accessible, and nobody likes the guy that creates a separate venue for his row at the Celine Dion concert.

7. (Bonus) Adding new venues correctly is a responsibility.

If you have the privilege of adding a new venue, please take the time to do it correctly.  This means adding its proper name (tip: search Google), the type of venue, and a somewhat-accurate address.  If you don’t know the address and your GPS isn’t accurate, the street name is still helpful.

And if you’re standing in front of a giant, blinking billboard with the venue’s name on it, at least take the time to spell it right.

Conclusion

It’s hard to say which way location-based social networks are going to go, but we might as well try to minimize their annoying tendencies in the meantime.  Now that Facebook has launched Facebook Places, we could see this trend becoming explosively mainstream – or disappear like so many other internet fads.  I like sites like Foursquare, both to discover new places and to interact with my friends, but there’s a fine line between celebrating a service and becoming totally ridiculous.

Oh, and there are always those pesky security concerns…

The post How to NOT Suck at Foursquare (and other location-based social networks) first appeared on Techerator.

We welcome all suggestions for future App Roundups – you can post them below in the comments section, send us an e-mail, or let Evan or me know via Twitter.

Kevin’s Pick: SDMove

One of the most welcome additions in Android 2.2, especially for those of us running phones with a pathetically small amount of internal memory, is the ability to offload applications to the SD Card. This still requires the developer to flip a switch to allow the move, and while some developers were a bit slow to adopt the feature, more and more are starting to realize that this is something people might want to use.

How do you go about moving your hundreds of applications to external storage? By default, the only way is to go through the applications list, click on each individual application, and click the ‘Move to SD Card’ button if it’s not grayed out. Thankfully, one guy noticed this limitation and created a simple, amazingly effective application.

SDMove presents you with a list of all the applications you have installed, color coded based on each application’s SD Card status. Green apps are currently located on external storage, yellow apps aren’t on the SD card but can be moved there, and red apps aren’t allowed to be moved either because the developer has specifically flagged it as unmovable or hasn’t bothered to set a flag at all. There are a few other colors as well, and a full legend can be found in the ‘About’ section of the menu.

It doesn’t pack much flash, but SDMove does what it advertises and can save you a lot of time and frustration. Best of all, it’s completely free (if you don’t mind looking at the usual ads)! If you recently updated to Froyo and want to see what apps you can move, or if you’ve already moved some apps and want to see how much more space you can save, scan the QR code below to be taken directly to SDMove’s Market page.

Evan’s Pick: Google Places (part of the new Google Maps)

This app is an easy recommendation because most of you should have it installed already (as long as you’ve updated to the newest version of the Google Maps app).  If you haven’t updated your Google Maps yet, open the Android Market, press the Settings button, select Downloads, and install it.

If you’ve ever used services like Yelp, Google Places is a direct competitor.  Google has eagerly jumped aboard the location-based service bandwagon, and Places gives you a simple way to quickly find restaurants, bars, hotels, gas stations, and entertainment.

When you open Places, it will automatically grab your GPS location (if you have it enabled), so picking any category or performing a search will show you a list of relevant locations sorted by distance.  A small compass will even show you the direction of the potential destination.  If you don’t see the category you’re looking for, simply perform a search or use the “+ Add” button to create your own category.

Selecting a location will give you details, including reviews, available cuisine, and features like “Quiet atmosphere” or “Wi-fi Hotspot”.  You can click the buttons on the listings page to show it in Google Maps, navigate to the location, or call the business’ number.

I used Google Places this weekend to find a great new sandwich shop for lunch that was only a few miles from me but I didn’t know it existed.  If you do any traveling, I’m sure it will be even more useful.  Google Places is included with Google Maps, and can be found in your Apps drawer.

The post Android App Roundup! SDMove and Google Places first appeared on Techerator.

From Twitter Support:

Twitter’s Geotagging feature allows users who opt-in to the service to selectively Geotag their tweets with their exact location and provide more context to users about their surroundings. This great new functionality allows you to join into a local conversation and annotate the world around you as you travel from one place to another.

So the next time you’re enjoying the food at a certain restaurant, you can let your followers (or anyone, really) know exactly where you’re dining.  Or if you’re at a terrible concert – same thing.  The geotagging feature will post your exact location with your tweets, allowing you to add additional location-based context to your tweets and connect with other users at a local level.

Sounds kinda scary, doesn’t it?  Unfortunately for the more private users, this feature is something that most popular social network sites are considering and many are already adopting.  The ever-growing Foursquare, a geolocation-based game, builds its entire premise on the fact that you will share your location with your friends.

Twitter’s Geotagging Is Opt-in

There are a couple things that Twitter has committed to that should put you at ease, at least temporarily.  First, geotagging is an opt-in feature and you must manually enable it before any applications can geotag your tweets. (To enable, click the “Enable geotagging” button on your Twitter Settings page).

Second, Twitter explicitly states “We require application developers to be upfront and obvious about when they are Geotagging an update”.  If you use an application that posts your location without properly notifying you, you should contact Twitter immediately.

This Is Just The Beginning

Whether this feature explodes in popularity or not (my guess is that it will), this is only a sign of bigger things to come.  Now that Foursquare has shown that people enjoy playing location-based games, companies like Facebook and Twitter are also eager to enter the geotagging market.

The number one concern in all of this is privacy.  We’ve seen several privacy disasters in Facebook’s history, so unless you carefully manage your personal information it could put you in a precarious situation.  Twitter already warns that even if you delete your location information after its been posted, it by no means is guaranteed to be removed from their partner sites (read: sites who clone and repost tweets).

As for me?  I’ll give it a try, but I’d be much more enthusiastic if you were able to customize the level of accuracy to your location.  I would feel more comfortable posting geotagged tweets if it gave my location within a mile or two, rather than to the accuracy of my mobile phone’s GPS.  This service is brand new though, so maybe that’s something we will see in its future.

How do you feel about geotagging your social updates?  Are you excited or afraid to let your friends (and stalkers) know where you’re at?  Share it with us in the comments.

The post Twitter Now Supports Geotagging (but you have to enable it first) first appeared on Techerator.