Keep tabs on Brightkite, the location-based social network
Joe Lazarus made a Brightkite Badge Widget using Yahoo Pipes. This easily configurable widget can be placed on your blog or web page and it will show your recent notes and photo posts.
We do have official Brightkite widgets in the works but meantime this is a great interim option. Thanks Joe!
You can now see places from street level if Google has “crawled” the street.
We recently added KML support to every Brightkite place page. To find it, just replace the .rss with .kml on the place page RSS feed.
For example: http://brightkite.com/places/77de68daecd823babbb58edb1c8e14d7106e83bb/objects.kml
Over the past few days we have been having a lot of fun visualizing live Brightkite activity by plugging network KML files into Google Earth.
You can visualize Brightkite place feeds in Google Earth as well, here’s how:
Download the following Brighkite Universe KML network file and open it in Google Earth:
brightkite_universe.kml
Here is another example showing activity from the Colorado place page:
brightkite_colorado.kml
We recommend only viewing one network feed at a time and changing your Google Earth “Fly Speed” to around 1.3.
We found this at Patchchord.com
Yesterday evening we quietly released a generic mobile version of Brightkite. Cheers to Tony for whipping out this alpha version in a couple days. We haven’t yet tested it on every device so if you encounter issues on certain devices, please tell us, and specify the device.
You can find the mobile version of Brightkite at m.brightkite.com
In addition to the mobile version, we have been working away fixing some of the major issues discovered in the past few weeks. Things to look for in the coming weeks: improved mapping functionality, improved friend discovery, improved profiles, refinements to the iPhone app, and fixes to many other little issues such as the login cookie annoyance.
This afternoon we released an alpha version of the Brightkite iPhone application. To use it, just visit Brightkite.com on your iPhone.
There are some features missing and it’s possible some things are broken, but hey, it’s alpha. Let us know what you think here, we are listening.
You can now check in by joining friends at a location. This is how the JOIN command works:
Say you are meeting a fellow Brightkite user at a location. This user has already checked in there. When you arrive you can simply text JOIN username to 80289 (For example: join brady). Brightkite will then check you in at the same location as the specified user.
Thank you for all feedback on Get Satisfaction! If we haven’t responded to your entry yet, please note we do read all the feedback. Our plate is pretty full right now but we will try to respond in a timely manner.
Over the past two weeks we have added a handful of new features and improvements. Many of these have been a direct result of the great user feedback we have been receiving. Your feedback has been improving the product (we hope), so keep it coming; we are listening!
Below are a few of the new features we have added:
Brightkite GeoRSS Feeds
Place streams, user streams, and the Brightkite Universe stream now have GeoRSS feeds. The “Around Me” feed is coming soon.
Here is an example of my Brightkite GeoRSS feed:
http://brightkite.com/people/brady/objects.rss
Now here is a user feed if you only want to see only a user’s photos and notes:
http://brightkite.com/people/hiro/objects.rss?limit=100&filters=text,photos
Here is an example of a Brightkite place feed:
http://brightkite.com/places/356a192b7913b04c54574d18c28d46e6395428ab/objects.rss
If you throw your GeoRSS feed into the search box on Google Maps you’ll get markers for each post and checkin on the map. Look at this Google Maps example, or view your Brightkite GeoRSS chronologically. These are just a few examples of what you can do with Brightkite GeoRSS. We are excited about the many interesting possibilities around visualizing Brightkite GeoRSS feeds.
Business & People Search
You can now search Brightkite users by username or real name. Brightkite business search allows you to browse and check in at businesses.
Around Me Radius
You can now configure the radius of your “Around Me” stream. See activity around your location at varying degrees of accuracy.
Nearby Notifications
You can now set the radius of your nearby notifications, choose friends only or turn them off completely.
Twitter Geolocation
With Twitter sharing enabled, your Brightkite location can now update the location in your Twitter profile rather than potentially annoying your followers with constant check in updates.
Keep watch this week for the iPhone application and more details on the developer API.
As you can see we have been really busy and could use some help. Come work with us! We are hiring a Rails Developer, Flash/Flex Developer and Product Evangelist.