I don't like location sharing applications
Like any proper nerd, I've tried out just about every location sharing application as soon as possible. I've even been thrilled about many of them. I have been the King of Finland in ContextKing, #1 in regional Waze top list, and a mayor of just about every local venue in Foursquare. I've been duly irritated because Google Latitude still doesn't work properly on the iPhone. But lately things have changed.
Maybe it's a personality thing. Even though it's fun to bump into friends while roaming around, I do not want to invite anyone to go out of their way just to meet me. I'm happy to arrange meetings old-fashioned way in IM or phone. I'm also very particular of my privacy and share my home location with only on the need-to-know basis.
As I'm pretty careful with the privacy settings and accept location sharing requests only from people I know (IRL or online), the often-quoted idea of burglars getting to know when I'm away from the house is very far-fetched. But I still don't enjoy the thought.
Even the services like Foursquare, that show your location only when you decide to check in, feel quite boring. Checking in and becoming a mayor of your local grocery store is fun for only that long. And registering to Dopplr only made me feel envious as my business trips are between two nearby cities while others seem to be flying around the world all the time.
So, the concept of location sharing doesn't offer much after the honeymoon with shiny new technology has gone by. Instead, in some cases, it has even started to get irritating and accident-prone.
When I'm uploading photos to the web, I need to check that they don't contain sensitive location information. With a right Twitter client you can upload your location while tweeting without even knowing it. I'm sure after Facebook implements location awareness, slipping away your location without really wanting becomes even more easier.
And privacy accidents can happen even while posting to the blog. The image above is a simple screenshot of Google Latitude containing fresh location info from my friends who have trusted me with their location data. I could have just uploaded unedited image, without giving it a second thought. But what if, for example, the person located at the Kuhmo on the eastern border of Finland didn't want anybody but the friends to know that (s)he was there instead of, say, Helsinki? Oops.
I still like location-aware applications though. I use Runkeeper to keep track of my dog walks. I happily share my driving habits with Navigon. I'm totally OK with emergency services locating my phone if I'm in trouble. I'm even tempted to get Mobile Me just to have Find my iPhone functionality. I just don't share. I'm not going to stop using Latitude, Foursquare and others either. But I'm planning to cut down the list of people I share my location with (for those who get cutted off - sorry about that, but now you know it's nothing personal).
So, am I getting old or coming into my senses?
YouLoc (http://youloc.net/) is an open source project and a service where you can upload your location from any GPS-powered device (laptop, Smartphones, Internet tablets, PDA etc.) and share your realtime location and track to other people as a file or drawn on the map.
Dear Samikki,
you're not getting old. You are coming to your senses :)
Great post. I strongly suggest continuing same line on Dukeville. This kind of blogs which articles are pre-tought well and have some kind of unique idea are the only way of blogging these days.
BTW: Why aren't you writing to a magazine?
You are getting older and coming to your senses - like eventually and hopefully we all are, some sooner and some later. :-)
Samikki, I share a lot of the same concerns. With the new Flickr photo page interface I was first worried as I wasn't sure where they had moved the photos' location data privacy settings in the public pictures.
I very much enjoyed this Matt Jones's post about sharing time/space info w/ the LBS at Magical Nihilism blog post (Exporting the past into the future, or, “The Possibility Jelly lives on the hypersurface of the present”)
http://magicalnihilism.com/2009/02/18/exporting-the-past-into-the-future-or-t...
But I also believe there are useful applications for location info as an ingredient of services. As Kevin Anderson, keynote speaker of our upcoming Spot on - locative media seminar (in September at Aalto Media Factory) puts it: "”Location is like RSS. As a technology, it’s invisible to most users but it opens up a huge range of opportunities for publishers and audiences. – There are new services and revenue streams attached to location technology”, says Anderson. ”Location is about enabling the delivery of more relevant information to audiences. In a sea of information, relevance is valuable to audiences and to publishers wanting to increase revenue from digital content.”"
Very good post. Location is very sensitive information indeed and many applications share this too easily. But sometimes it is the best metadata there is. It makes status update filtering 10x easier and enables fast comments foursquare-style since everything is already in context. But it does create huge privacy problems. For example if we had true open id... would your friend in Kuhmo really be able to hide her location from certain groups? She would have to be offline almost completely... unless OpenID would also include our groups and peers...