Boy's Nifty Stuff

Hey, do you have a Twitter account? Have you ever noticed those messages in which people tell you where they are? Pretty annoying, eh. Well, they’re actually also potentially pretty dangerous. I’m about to tell you why.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the whole location-aware thing. The information is very interesting and can be used to create some pretty awesome applications. However, the way in which people are stimulated to participate in sharing this information, is less awesome. Services like Foresquare allow you to fulfill some primeval urge to colonize the planet. A part of that is letting everyone know you own that specific spot. You get to tell where you are and if you’re there first, it’s yours. O, and of course there’s badges..

Foursquare

The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other  we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home. It gets even worse if you have “friends” who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That’s right, slap them across the face.

To raise some awareness on this issue and emphasize how easy it is to retrieve this information let me introduce: http://www.pleaserobme.com. Have fun and please don’t hook up Foursquare to your Twitter account, okay?

As you might have already noticed, my blog is still pretty empty. I am going to fix that in the very near future, I promise.

Currently I’m in the middle, well.. more like at the beginning (three weeks in) of my graduation internship @ Tam Tam. During my graduation I’ll looking into ways to improve social interaction on large scale open workplaces, like Tam Tam. Every day more companies are moving towards a more flexible working environment, without fixed desks and working hours. In the proces of becoming more flexible, social interaction suffers. Employees can’t find their colleagues, because they don’t know if they’re at the second floor, fifth floor or maybe even working at home. Employees who don’t drop by the office once in a while are losing touch with the people they work and are at risk of becoming isolated.

My concept uses a location-based application to gain insight into people’s whereabouts during worktime. With knowing where people are, I hope to reduce the distance between employees and stimulate non-digital social interaction. Creating location awareness, in short .