Jaiku and the Concept of Location
Anyone who is interested in Jaiku, particularly in their new beta client for Nokia, should go read Ken Camp’s post on the new beta client. It doesn’t reveal the whole shebang, but it gives you a good starting point. Meanwhile, I want to elaborate on a point made in Ken’s post about location, namely the fact you can specify the location in the client.
While I have not tried this in the beta client as of yet, so this isn’t specifically related to the beta, something I did notice in the current production client for Nokia Series 60 2nd and 3rd Edition devices is that as you move around the mobile phone network, Jaiku will refresh the “location.” If you’ve never been to this area before, the information may be blank. For example, when I was at the office last week in Mountain View, CA, my location string was Mountain View, CA, USA. When I went to the airport in San Jose, the location field was empty. I updated it to say San Jose, CA, USA. When I got off the plane at SeaTac, the location was empty again, so I updated it to say SeaTac, WA, USA (yes, there is a town named SeaTac). I went through a couple of location “changes” before I got home as well.
Presumably, the concept of “location” is tied to what towers I am connecting to in the mobile phone network, or at least “areas” of towers. While I haven’t experimented with this yet, the “neighbourhood” could be tied to the specific tower I am connecting to whereas the “City or Region” could be tied to the specific area of towers. If I remember from looking at the field test mode on some of the older Nokia phones, all of these things are accounted for. I will try this later today and update this post with the results.
I agree with Ken that Jaiku, particularly with this mobile client, is a fundamental shift in the social networking landscape. I am still trying to wrap my head around what this means, but I think I like it. A lot. Meanwhile, for those of you who aren’t lucky enough to be in the beta, wait until July when the beta is more public. Or you can download a copy of WidSets (which works on mobile phones from a number of manufacturers) and add the Jaiku widget. It’s not as full featured as the Native S60 client, but it is still very usable.
