You know about the GeoGraffiti service.  You know about the magic phone calls, the Voice Marks, the super cool social service… but do you know who makes this possible?  In this post we will take you behind the scenes and get up close and personal with the each one of the magic monkeys that make GeoGraffiti possible.  Enjoy.

Monkey 1: Adrian

Q: What music is playing on your computer right now?

A:  Tech House.  John Digweed’s Bedrock 11 track 3 (Babylon ft Santos) to be exact… it’s my favorite track… just bloody sick!

Q: In the past week, what is the best dish you have tried and can recommend?

A: Haha.  Hrmmmmm… well I had lunch with my sister yesterday.  We had pupusas, an El Salavadorian dish.  Those things are damn good!  But mannnn are they also bad for you!

Q: Dogs or Cats?

A:  Dogs.  I have an English Bulldog named Latte which you will also meet in this article.

Q: Team Edward or Team Jacob?

A:  Team Edward

Q: Aside from GeoGraffiti, what do you love to do?

A: 2 things.  Muay Thai and House Steppin (dancing to house music).

Q:  Why is GeoGraffiti cool?

A: Voice baby!  It expresses a hell of a lot more emotion than text can and it’s great for mobile phones.

Q:  Inception the Movie…was he dreaming?

A: Well I can tell you this…I’m the one that was dreaming.  I was so tired from working on GeoGraffiti that I fell asleep during the movie =)

Q:  Do you have a person who inspires your work?

A: There isn’t one particular person.  There are a lot of people who inspire me to do things.  It’s not just people either.  General random things can inspire me.  For example, I’ll be stressed and go take a walk.  During the walk I’ll see some amazing looking object like a beautifully designed car, sign, lamp, etc and that makes me want to keep going.

Q:  Foursquare or Gowalla?

A:  I can’t choose.  I use all 3.  3?  Yup!  You forgot Facebook Places.  Foursquare definitely has the users and more activity.  Gowalla def has the best aesthetically pleasing design out of all 3.  Facebook places is cool because every one of your friends has it so it’s a bit more personal.

Q:  What stress busting tip can you share with the readers?

A:  Run!  If I get to a point where I can’t concentrate anymore, I will stop and go run sprints and other drills.  Usually the more explosive stuff is better if you want to release endorphins quick.  Endorphins are yummy.  So are KKKOOOOOOOOKKKKIIIIEEEESSSSS!!!

Monkey 2: Chad

Q: What music is playing on your computer right now?

A:  CNBC :)

Q: In the past week, what is the best dish you have tried and can recommend?

A: home cooked salmon prepared with olive oil, spices, and baked in tin foil wrap.

Q: Dogs or Cats?

A: Dogs.

Q: Team Edward or Team Jacob?

A:  Jacob – just sounds cooler

Q: Aside from GeoGraffiti, what do you love to do?

A: lose money in the stock market

Q:  Why is GeoGraffiti cool?

A: because i thought of it

Q:  Inception the Movie…was he dreaming?

A: yes.  he’s still stuck in level 3

Q:  Do you have a person who inspires your work?

A: dad

Q:  Foursquare or Gowalla?

A:  neither…i didn’t think of it.

Q:  What stress busting tip can you share with the readers?

A:  a fist in some dry wall

Monkey 3: Yannell

Q: What music is playing on your computer right now?

A:  Hype Machine:  Titus Andronicus!! :-D

Q: In the past week, what is the best dish you have tried and can recommend?

A: PUPUSASSSSS!!!!! Where have you been all my life?!

Q: Dogs or Cats?

A:  Monkeys. :-)

Q: Team Edward or Team Jacob?

A:  Ahahahhaha.  That’s just weak…where are the good vampires?  Lestat :-) mmmm… Lestat…

Q: Aside from GeoGraffiti, what do you love to do?

A: DESIGN! DESIGN! DESIGN! Annnd photography!  I’m always on the computer doing something — illustration, touching up a photograph, website changes, posters…AND drawing… love charcoal.

Q:  Why is GeoGraffiti cool?

A: GeoGraffiti is cool because going to end up being a phenomenal tool for marketing – awwwwwhhhh…I can see it now – it’s like GOLD.

Q:  Inception the Movie…was he dreaming?

A: I say he was dreaming…maybe it was Maul’s dream because the totem isn’t his…it’s hers… I don’t know.

Q:  Do you have a person who inspires your work?

A: Yes yes!  The STENBERG BROTHERS – awwwwhhhh the russians are amazing.  Or or Chip Kidd or or of course the wonderful Paula Scher or the innovation from IDEO.

Q:  Foursquare or Gowalla?

A:  hehe…Foursquare duuhhhhhh!!

Q:  What stress busting tip can you share with the readers?

A:  I would recommend a high dose of caffeine and walking into an art museum.  It’s the best!  It really is.  Just seeing all the visionaries–it feels good to think.

Monkey 4: Latte D’Bulldog

Q: What music is playing on your computer right now?

A:  Wooly Bully!

Q: In the past week, what is the best dish you have tried and can recommend?

A: Yes!  Salmon and Herring Food from Evo.  That or my poppa’s Turkey sandwich.

Q: Dogs or Cats?

A:  Dogs of course!  I’m a dog!  I eat cats as snacks.  RUFFFF!

Q: Team Edward or Team Jacob?

A:  Team Bulldog.

Q: Aside from GeoGraffiti, what do you love to do?

A: I love to chew on plastic bottles and take naps.

Q:  Why is GeoGraffiti cool?

A: B/C my poppa works on it!  RUFFFFF!

Q:  Inception the Movie…was he dreaming?

A: I’m not allowed in the theatres!  Those jerks.

Q:  Do you have a person who inspires your work?

A: I get inspiration for my head of security position from the US Marines.  I’m their mascot.  HUA!

Q:  Foursquare or Gowalla?

A:  I haven’t used either of them because I’ve been too busy biting the people trying to steal our secrets!

Q:  What stress busting tip can you share with the readers?

A:  I recommend that you get your poppa’s water bottle and chew the cap off.  It’s a whole lot of fun and you can do it for hours!

about, adrian, behind, chad, latte, meet, scenes, team, yannell

Hello!  We have some very exciting news for you!  We have collected a lot of feedback from our users about our website and are pleased to announce that we have completely redesigned it.  We listened to your suggestions, complaints, and tips, and our mad scientists went to work…

Why Redesign?

• Aesthetics
  • In short, the old site was just not very pleasing to the eye.  Our users and even us just didn’t have that warm fuzzy feeling when we landed on any of our pages (except for the map page which was redesigned a while back).  We studied the effects of an aesthetically pleasing design from the redesign of our iPhone App during the past year and we knew it was a no-brainer.  Users were simply happier and more willing to use GeoGraffiti if it looked, for lack of a better word, pretty.  We want you to know that we take design very seriously and welcome every suggestion you may have.
• The Social Web
  • The web as we know it is advancing at an astronomical rate.  Innovative minds across the world have created many great and popular products such as Facebook and Twitter.  Most of our users are active on these social networks so we wanted to provide them with a way to share our site with the world.  All pages on our site now include Share buttons to share to all social media services.  We have also Facebook OpenGraph-enabled every page and Voice Mark on our site.  You know that “Like” button you’ve been seeing on every site across the web that lets you “like” something on Facebook?  Yup… it’s now included on every page AND on every Voice Mark you listen to on our Voice Mark Map Did you just listen to a Voice Mark that you liked and want to share with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, etc?  Simple!
  • 

    You now "Like" stuff on GeoGraffiti

    

    You can play GeoGraffiti Voice Marks within Facebook

    

    OpenGraph Facebook Sharing of Voice Marks on Facebook

    

    "Like" a Voice Mark on Facebook

    

    Share Voice Marks on Social Networks

• Social Experience on our site
  • So we have our Like buttons and Share buttons in place ready for you to click on, but what about OUR site itself?  Users were telling us that they didn’t feel like the landing page was very social and that there wasn’t a way for them to find interesting content upon landing on the site.  We have the beginnings of a more socially interactive site in place now!  From our landing page, you can now observe recent Voice Marks that have been created by users on GeoGraffiti.
    

    Recent Voice Marks Widget

    You can also look at recent users that have joined the GeoGraffiti community.

    

    Recent Users Widget

    We have also included Facebook social plugins.  There’s the ever-popular like-box so you can see our Facebook page feed right from our site.  Another more interesting plugin we have enabled is the Facebook recommendations plugin.  This will take into account what your network of friends have shared about GeoGraffiti and make personalized recommendations for you on our page.  We think that is pretty nifty and will really help personalize your GeoGraffiti experience for you.

    

    Facebook/GeoGraffiti Personalized Recommendations

    We have created a Twitter timeline widget so you can see a few recent mentions of GeoGraffiti on Twitter.  It’s Twitter @Anywhere enabled so you can hover over the user names who mentioned us and view more info on them and/or follow them if you want.

    

    Twitter Widget

    

    Follow Twitter Users Directly from GeoGraffiti

    You can even search directly from our landing page now!  Look at that slick looking search bubble!  Just type in what you are looking for (e.g. Food) and where you are looking for it (e.g. los angeles, ca).  [HINT:You can type in names of cities, states, zip codes, intersections]

    

    Search from main page

    This is just the beginning so we hope you enjoy what we have put together so far.

• Setting up for exciting new upcoming features
  • We have many new features in the works that we are working hard to complete.  A lot of these do involve social aspects of the site and better serving our users so we HAD come up with a nicer design that will work with these features.  You can be the first to know about these features by signing up for our newsletter here.

First Name

Last Name

Email

Lessons Learned

In short, let the designer do their job!  It’s important for the team to constantly communicate.  However, several website owners, founders, etc have it in their heads that everything should be done their way.  It’s actually quite strange when you think about it, right?  Why the hell did you hire the designer in the first place?!  Well I certainly have learned to give our Creative Director, Yannell, room to do what she thinks is best in terms of anything creative.  When you combine that with the other strengths on the team, something synergistic happens…thoughts and ideas begin flowing at a phenomenal pace and, in my opinion, contributed to our the redesign we are presenting to you today.  Looking back at our original plans, what we produced has waaaayyyy more features and is much prettier than we had envisioned.

In Conclusion

We want to thank our users and friends who provided the suggestions for the redesign.  There is no way we could have done this without your candid feedback.  As always, we want your continued feedback so please let us know what you think at any time by Contacting Us Here.  Remember to sign up for our newsletter to stay up-to-date on our latest and greatest features.  AND, remember that all subscribers are automatically entered into a monthly raffle for a gift card! What’s the best thing about being the monthly raffle winner?  YOU get to pick the gift card you want… well not the amount… =), but you know what we’re saying… you can pick the place you want it from! You can sign up for our newsletter here. So, go check out the site already at http://www.geograffiti.com/ and let us know what you think by contacting us OR by following us on the social web.

design, newsletter, redesign, social media, widgets

After a great conversation last night with one of our users in British Columbia, Canada, we decided that this is the perfect time to start the GeoGraffiti Liaison program.  We will be building and refining the program over the next few months in order to get the word out about using Voice Marks as both a Social and Business Tool.

So what does a liaison do for GeoGraffiti and what do they get in return?  Aside from some sweet cash compensation (for those liaisons that sign up businesses in their area for our Small Business Point-of-Interest Voice Mark advertising product), liaisons will get to participate in our planning process where we plan out the next set of features, they’ll be given early access to bleeding edge features to try out, and they’ll even get GeoGraffiti goodies like t-shirts, mouse pads, etc.  This program is meant for people who want to stay on the bleeding edge of technology, people who find GeoGraffiti genuinely useful and want to spread the word in their area, people such as students who want to try out their PR & Marketing skills for a new technology, and many more.  Does this sound like you?  If you’d like to get involved simply contact us here , send us a message on our Facebook Fan Page, or send us a message on Twitter.

We now introduce you to our first GeoGraffiti Liaison.  His name is Ty Smith and will be our liaison for British Columbia, Canada.  He is the National Marketing Manager for Dirty Dog Canada, Cofounder and blogger for BCSKATEBOARDING.ORG, and an avid Umapper map creator.  You can become his fan on GeoGraffiti, check out his Umapper profile and follow him on Twitter if you’d like to keep up with his updates.  We are very excited to work with Ty to spread the word about GeoGraffiti in Canada.  Welcome aboard, Ty!

Community, compensation, get involved, liaison

Today we celebrate Ada Lovelace Day 2010 to honor Women in Technology! In the past year we have gone through quite the journey revamping the website, our look & feel, and our iPhone app. It was one of the biggest roller coaster rides we have ever been on and we couldn’t have done it without our two women furiously working day and night to make GeoGraffiti a better service.

Yannell, the brains behind all the creative design at GeoGraffiti, has been an immense asset to us. She helped out last year so much and did such a great job that we decided to fly her to Los Angeles to lead the entire design effort for the Voice Mark iPhone app this past summer.  She quickly started the design effort to make the Voice Mark app “sexier” as soon as she arrived to work her first day.  Her creative mind led to a really slick looking iPhone app that received positive feedback from several users.  Check out the comments section at the bottom of the Voice Mark App page.  While most of her effort went to the design of the iPhone app, she did spend plenty of time fixing up our identity package (logos, business cards, etc).  That’s just the way she works… if she sees something ugly, she wants to fix it and makes it, in my opinion, pretty damn sexy!  While she has returned to Texas to finish her undergraduate studies in 2010, she continues to consult on all the design work that is required for new features on the GeoGraffiti Voice Mark Map and the Voice Mark iPhone App.  You’d be amazed at what kind of crazy stuff a creative designer and an engineer can come up with together!  One of the best things we love about Yannell is how ruthless she is when it comes to design.  If we cut corners, she basically slaps us on the wrist with a ruler.  I can think of so many times when she stopped work and told us to sit down and told us why what we were doing is wrong and why it will produce and ugly looking graphic, logo, etc.  Thanks to her we now know that a font is actually a typeface and that we should NOT distort types!  We learned just as much from her about design as she did from us about building web apps and iPhone apps.  She continues to excel while still working on GeoGraffiti … she recently won 1st place at an art show at the University of Texas El Paso for her photography exhibits and had some of her work featured in an ad!  Yannell, we thank you for all your hard work and wish you luck as you finish your undergraduate studies in May!

Gisselli, the goddess of data at GeoGraffiti has been helping us out for a few years.  Initially her responsibilities were mainly part-time as a PA, but have since grown to be the gatekeeper of our data.  With the release of the Voice Mark iPhone app, the amount of data we have, has grown to the point where we can’t handle it AND our other responsibilities… so we gave Gisselli the job.  We spent a few days with her this past summer dumping our knowledge of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and GeoSEO (Geographic Search Engine Optimization) to let her take control the data.  She scans all our Voice Marks making sure that they are legit and removes anything that might violate our terms of use.  This is the easy part.  One of our main objectives at GeoGraffiti is to let anyone gain a web presence by simply talking into their phone.  We take SEO very seriously.  It’s something we see as very valuable to our users and business users.  What Gisselli does is makes sure all the data for each Voice Mark is accurate.  She checks to make sure the transcriptions are as accurate as possible, and then make sure all geographic data is precise (think latitudes, longitudes, postal codes, phone numbers, area codes, etc).  Once that is all done, she goes through a set of heuristic processes where she applies the SEO knowledge she has gained in order to optimize EVERY Voice Mark so that our users have the benefits of an optimized Voice Mark.  This becomes incredibly powerful for all business users using Voice Marks to advertise their promotions and specials and Voice Marks that deal with information about venues.  Did you know that on her spare time, she blogs about fashion?  Yep… she’s pretty creative when it comes to fashion and she will soon release her very own fashion blog!  She taught us that wearing 2 different types of prints, like zebra and snake, is a fashion faux pas!  So not only has she made our data pretty, but made US pretty!   Gisselli, we thank you for all your hard work keeping all our data legit and valuable and wish you luck as you finish up your sophomore year at Cal State Northridge!

Again, thank you both for all your work!  We ask our readers that you make sure to share this blog post with your friends to make sure the GeoGraffiti Women are recognized for all their hard work in technology!

#ald10, Ada Lovelace, AdaLovelaceDay2010, Voice Mark, Women in Technology

The brand new Voice Mark App is now available on the iTunes App Store! It was previously called GeoGraffiti, but we have since  rebranded it to Voice Mark by GeoGraffiti. It has been a roller coaster ride building this new app for our users because we decided to rebuild it from scratch.  Why did we do this?  We spent many months collecting feedback from users and friends about what the new Voice Mark App should be able to do.  We ended up with a huge list of features that, after careful analysis, indicated that users basically wanted ALL the functionality of the GeoGraffiti Voice Mark Map within the iPhone App.  We were able to build most of the functionality in for this initial 3.0 release.  The features we were not able to complete will be coming to our users in the 3.1 version which is a very short time away from release.

One of the biggest complaints from users and friends was the App’s design.  It just wasn’t “sexy” or “pretty” enough.  How were we going to solve that problem?  Simple!  We decided to hire a very talented summer intern, Yannell Rodriguez, who would lead the graphic design of the new app.  As you will see in the video and screenshots, she did a fantastic job!

So let’s get right to it and start you off with a nice demo video that was produced by our friends at Scraster who also published a nice blog post about the new Voice Mark App.

Get the App Now

Key New Features

• Google Maps Mashup Interface
  • You can now create and browse Voice Marks using the familiar Google Maps interface.
• Facebook Connect Single Signon
  • To customize their accounts, users can now sign in to the Voice Mark App by using their Facebook account.  This eliminates the need to remember yet another username and password.
• Twitter Account Linking for Voice Tweets
  • Link your Twitter account and now every Voice Mark you publish will automatically update your Twitter status with a link to your Voice Mark that your followers can listen to.  It’s essentially a Voice Tweet!
• Email and SMS Notifications
  • You can configure your account to notify you when you have a new Fan/Follower and when someone responds to your Voice Marks.
• Social Sharing and Bookmarking powered by AddThis
  • Sharing Voice Marks has never been easier!  Clicking the “Bookmark and Share” button for a Voice Mark will let you share the Voice Mark using hundreds of social sharing services such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Digg, Delicious, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and Yahoo Buzz.  You can also forward Voice Marks to your contacts in your address book via email.
• Create Voice Marks by inbound telephone call or iPhone Microphone
  • Voice Marks can be easily and quicklly created using a standard inbound telephone call (we call you and your phone acts as the microphone).  You can also create Voice Marks using your iPhones built-in microphone in situations where you want to capture something immediately (e.g. breaking news) and can’t wait for a phone call or when the phone lines are busy (e.g. New Year’s Eve).
• Customizable User Profile
  • Create a user profile with a profile pic and other information such as User Name, Birthday, and Location.
• GeoTag Voice Marks to any location
  • You have the option of using the iPhone’s GPS to GeoTag your Voice Mark to the exact spot you are standing at or to a remote location that you designate via Search/Google Maps.
• Search for Voice Marks in any location
  • You have the option of searching for Voice Marks around you using the iPhone’s GPS or Voice Marks in a different location via Search/Google Maps.

Before & After

Old Version 1 & 2:

All New Version 3:

To view more info and screenshots of the new app, visit the product page

What Users are Saying

“The new app is so much sexier!” — EJ Liao

“Voice Marks are truly powerful” — Cordell Kennedy

“Extremely handy & innovative app.  Very user friendly.” — Karina Amezaga

“A quick and easy way to share info on locations I’ve been to” — Ben Graham

“I updated and wow the entire interface is different! Not bad.” — Eva Cheung

“I love hearing real people talking about their favorite restaurants and bars.  They give me a better idea of what a place is all about” — Luis Sotomayor

“Great way to share without typing!” — TJ Thinakaran

“An awesome informative app when on the go and need to know!!!” — RC Villareal

“I love the new design and add ons to this update.  The whole voice networking concept is definitely a great tool for tourists and education.  I like how this app has the yelp-fiend effect except through voice reviews.” — Gisselli

“I love being able to hear the genuine emotion in people’s voices … something I can’t get through reading reviews on my phone.” — Stephanie Kim

So there you have it folks … our brand new Voice Mark app!  We’ve enjoyed building this and look forward to improving it in the coming months.  Please let us know what you think and if you have any suggestions for improvement.  We’d like to thank all our beta testers for the time they spent testing the app and offering suggestions.  We couldn’t have done it without you!  Thank You.

Follow Us

• Facebook Fan Page
• Twitter
• YouTube

iphone, iPhone App, iphone voice app, ipod touch, twitter, twitter integration, voice 2.0, voice app, Voice Map, Voice Mark, voice tweet

This is the 2nd article of a three part series. This one covers how GeoGraffiti Voice Marks can be seen on Google Earth.  If you haven’t read the previous article, read it here:   GeoGraffiti now has Twitter Integration.  

This Google Earth Integration is mostly for your enjoyment.  Whether you are new to Google Earth or a current user, you will have the pleasure of being able to hear the latest and greatest Voice Marks directly on your Google Earth :).  While not all the functionality of the GeoGraffiti Voice Mark Map is available, you will get the most important function — listening to the audio.  The Voice Marks have permalinks to the Voice Mark on the GeoGraffiti website in case you want to reply, create your own Voice Marks, etc.  

Video Demo

Links

• Download Google Earth
• Browse the Google Earth Gallery
• Browse the Google KML Documentation

Limitations

• Most content is in the United States.  Why?  Well… phone calls are horrendously expensive in other countries :)… but we have some alternatives.  We just need to find the time to implement it.
• Not all functionality of GeoGraffiti is available on Google Earth.  This isn’t that big of a deal.  You can listen to the Voice Marks and if you’re interested in more, there is a link to the GeoGraffiti Voice Mark Map in the balloon.

Please let us know if you have any feedback or suggestions!  

Cheers,

- Adrian, Chad, and Latte

earth, google earth, kml, placemark, placemarks

We’ve been incredibly busy during the past couple of months with a big GEO SEO project.  We can’t describe everything about it in one post so we decided to talk about a new feature every day for the rest of this week.

Our first feature we’d like to show is our brand new Twitter Integration.  The feature is really simple.  All you do is enable Twitter Integration on your GeoGraffiti account and any Voice Mark you create will result in a Tweet to your Twitter account.  So what appears as your status on Twitter when you create a new Voice Mark?  Here’s a screenshot of my recent Twitter updates.

Your new Voice Marks will update your Twitter status with a message similar to what you see in the screenshot.  So why not put the text transcribed Voice Mark as your Twitter status message?  Well… it’s just hard :).  We can’t possibly transcribe audio real-time in order to update your Twitter status.  This process still requires some human aspect to it so there’s just no way…right now…but soon!  So, you’ll get your nifty Voice Mark title along with a direct link to the Voice Mark where users can listen to the audio.

So why is this cool?  

There are many reasons, but I’ll list a few below

• Just because you are away from your computer doesn’t mean you have to stop Tweeting!  With any regular phone, anyone can call the GeoGraffiti TUI (Telephone User Interface) @ 213.221.3802 to leave a Voice Mark.  As long as you’ve created a GeoGraffiti account and enabled Twitter Integration, all your Voice Marks will be posted as Tweets!  You’ll run into situations where Tweeting is actually cumbersome or somewhat limiting (not because Twitter is bad, but because Twitter may not be the right medium).  Imagine you’re out and you find some interesting museum or hole-in-the-wall restaurant that you love.  If you want to talk about the places in detail, writing a review via text on a mobile phone will just take too long and you only have the 140 character limit.  Instead, just use GeoGraffiti and get on with your life :).  It’ll take a about a minute.  Plus, your Voice Mark will be there for the rest of the public to benefit from.
• It doesn’t matter how you create the Voice Mark… your Twitter status will always be updated.  There is no need for any fancy equipment!  Remember that GeoGraffiti is a platform and all our our end-user interfaces are simply interfaces.  All the magic happens on our servers.  This means that you can use GeoGraffiti on iPhone or TMobile G1 to create a Voice Mark and your Twitter status will be updated.  Your tech-challenged grandparents can use their plain ol’ mobile phone or land-line and their Twitter status will be updated (of course they might need your help setting up a Twitter account for the first time)… they might not even go on Twitter at all…all their tweets can be Voice Marks :).  
• People are apparently making money from Tweets…???  That’s what I saw on the news a few days ago.  Well… if that’s the case, then they too can keep earning $$ by leaving Voice Marks!  
• Our not-very-publicized Biz Marks (Business Voice Marks for free advertising) will benefit from this by using Twitter as a medium to spread the message.  Basically anyone interested in using GeoGraffiti for SEO/GeoSEO purposes will definitely want to enable Twitter Integration.  I’ll write about this in more detail in a blog post later this week dealing with SEO/GeoSEO.

So there you have it.  These are just a few ways to use Twitter Integration.  I’m sure you, the user, will come up with more and have better ideas.  Don’t be shy!  Let us know what features you’d like to see and we’ll crank it out :).  

Ok.  Enough out of me… here’s a short video to demonstrate how to enable Twitter Integration.

features, GeoGraffiti, tweet, twitter, twitter app, twitter integration, voice 2.0

Today, we are celebrating Ada Lovelace Day to honor the GeoGraffiti Women in Technology.  What is Ada Lovelace Day?  Taken directly from http://www.pledgebank.com/AdaLovelaceDay, “Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.”

Here at GeoGraffiti, we want to thank and honor the 3 women who helped bring the latest GeoGraffiti Voice Map Mashup to life.  Here they are in alphabetical order :) …

Eva Cheung, my beautiful girlfriend, has helped with GeoGraffiti from the start.  What is her role?  One of the most important roles in any user-facing technology is that of user acceptance testing.  No I don’t mean she develops test plans and test functionality according to some test matrix.  I mean REAL honest no-hold-barred user acceptance.  Basically after I develop some feature, I want honest feedback so she’s happy to offer constructive criticism.  I’m not looking for “This is a good value-added feature…blah blah blah“  I’m looking for what a user thinks and she has said stuff about some of the GeoGraffiti features like, “That’s ugly…“, “Mmmm… yeah no… I can’t use that…“, “It sucks…“, and the ever popular, “It’s just not pretty!“  While this may sound funny, it’s feedback that we take very very seriously!  After all, GeoGraffiti is for the the community so to have someone give you this sort of feedback is priceless.  This is the stuff you want and basically the root of what caused us to completely redesign the GeoGraffiti Voice Map Mashup from scratch.  I’m not the only person who thinks this way.  In fact, Guy Kawasaki, mentions a woman’s common sense as a valuable tool in producing a technology, business plan, etc.  In one of his books he mentions that if you have an idea, run it by 3 women and if they tell you “It sucks”, “It doesn’t make sense”, “I wouldn’t use it”, etc. then you’d better get back to the drawing board.  We take this to heart and really value this sort of opinion and feedback.  For your feedback and contributions, Eva, GeoGraffiti thanks you and honors you on this Ada Lovelace Day!

Gisselli Rodriguez, my youngest sister, has helped with GeoGraffiti since this past August when she moved to LA to attend Cal State Northridge.  What is her role?  Gisselli oversees all the GeoGraffiti Voice Marks and makes sure that all the data is accurate, corrects and updates our geographic data in order for GeoGraffiti to provide you, our users, the most accurate data possible, and removes any Voice Marks that aren’t exactly legal or violate any terms of service (there aren’t that many of those, but you’d be surprised with the kind of stuff we get sometimes).  Aside from her main role, she also requests feedback from her friends and ocassionally leaves a Voice Mark.  While this is just personal, I would like to thank her for taking some work off my hands when I was busy developing the Voice Map some months ago… no joke… I had a SERIOUS case of identity theft and she was able to take care of it for me within a month!  This is huge!  I had been battling this for over a year and within a month she had my record cleaned.  For your feedback and contributions, Gisselli, GeoGraffiti thanks you and honors you on this Ada Lovelace Day!

Yannell Rodriguez, my other sister, has helped with GeoGraffiti since Eva told me “It’s ugly…“  What is her role?  My creativity only goes so far when it comes to graphic design so I decided I should consult someone who has a passion for this kind of stuff.  Who better than your own sister?!  It’s been a long and grueling process to get the GeoGraffiti Voice Map Mashup to the state it’s in today (yes yes I know there are still bugs… don’t worry we’re working on them :) ).  Her talent is amazing.  I’ve sat down with her countless hours just spitting out thoughts in my head about what I want and what I want to experiment with and she’s able to take this and turn it into art.  She’s also been instrumental in keeping us from making graphic design mistakes.  Much like Eva, she too will gladly tell me, “You know… this stuff just looks like @!#$” or “What are you thinking?!  That’s not the way you should do that!“  Wow… I guess after picking on her as a kid, it’s her chance to get back at me!  Ok ok… just kidding.  Again, this feedback is priceless.  We love when people are candid and don’t try to rephrase their sentences into something more acceptable.  It just makes everyone’s life easier and gets right to the point.  It’s exactly what you need when you’re working at a startup company pace!  She’s currently helping design the next version of the iPhone and G1 apps so watch out for those in the next few months!  For your feedback and contributions, Yannell, GeoGraffiti thanks you and honors you on this Ada Lovelace Day!

Don’t forget to forward this around to make sure our GeoGraffiti women are recognized today!

2009, Ada Lovelace, AdaLovelaceDay09, Honors, Thank You, Voice Map, Voice Map Mashup, Women, Women in Technology

It’s done…well it is for now. GeoGraffiti’s new Voice Marking map mashup UI. I guess you could say it was a team effort, but really there was only one “man” behind the man who did all the heavy lifting. He was born to code, likes working the vampire schedule, but can occasionally ignore public guidance.

No seriously check out the new UI and features at www.geograffiti.com/map

Some of the most notable new features are:

• Search – We have enabled our Voice Map @ www.geograffiti.com/map with content search.  When a new Voice Mark is published, its title, tags, address information, and category will become searchable within within a few hours.  What does this mean for you?  It’s now easier than ever to find Voice Marks.  You can type in what you are looking for in the WHAT box and, optionally, constrain the search to a specific location by typing the location into the WHERE box.  The better part of this search comes into play within a few days (it could be as short as one day or as long as three).  That is, we index your Voice Mark audio content and it becomes searchable so you are able to search for Voice Marks where a person mentions, for example, “parking” in “Los Angeles,CA” and all Voice Marks related to parking will show up.  It’s not perfect, but it is WAY better than what we had before (nothing) :). 
  
• Social features – You now have the ability to view who your fans are, who you are a fan of, and view user profiles.  This can be done by clicking on the “My Account” tab on our Voice Map.  To view user profiles, you can click on a Voice Mark’s creator link or search for users by clicking on the “Search Users” link on the top right-hand side of the Voice Map page.  You can also upload a profile picture to associate with your profile by clicking on My Account.  We have also enabled a rough version of groups support.  We are still actively working on this feature so any input on what you want “groups” to do will be greatly appreciated.
• Notifications – This feature will allow you to keep up-to-date with the latest buzz.  You can now enable notifications for “users responding to your Voice Marks” and “users becoming your fan”.  To do this, you simply click on the My Account tab and then proceed to the Notifications section.  You can enable two types of notifications:  Email and SMS Text Message.  In order to have a text message sent out to you, make sure you select your Carrier in the My Phones section.  You will now be notified when someone responds to your Voice Mark (good for Voice Marks about help, advice, dating) and when someone becomes your fan.  Some of our users will be happy about the response notifications because they want to use GeoGraffiti Voice Marks to “hook up”.  Hook up?  It seems like plenty of users want to post a Voice Mark that functions like a personal ad (…looking for woman in …. that likes dogs…).  If someone is interested, they can reply and the user will be notified and the two users can take it from there.  Pretty cool, eh?
• A “prettier” look – You may have noticed that our Voice Map and home page have been redesigned.  We wanted to provide you with a better user experience so we redesigned everything… our company logo, the voice map page, color scheme… One of the best parts of the new Voice Map is the resizable map.  That has been a complaint from users from day one.  People with huge monitors or high resolutions were not able to see a bigger map.  This is all taken care of now.  The Voice Map will now stretch to accommodate your entire screen.  If you have any comments or suggestions about the redesigned look, email us using the Contact Page.
• Social Sharing – Every Voice Mark now includes a [better] Sharing feature.  You can retrieve the direct link (just like before), send to a friend’s phone, or share via Email,AIM,etc (provided by AddThis).  Our Send2Phone feature allows you to send a Voice Mark to your friends via telephone.  You type in their number and click Send.  Your friend will get a phone call (your number as the caller ID) and GeoGraffiti will say “GeoGraffiti will now play that Voice Mark that was sent to your by your friend” and then play the Voice Mark on their phone.  There is one catch though… YOU MUST be signed in and have a verified phone number.  This is to comply with the law and to prevent anyone from sending out Voice Marks as spam to annoy other users (remember YOUR phone number will appear as the caller ID on the other person’s phone).  The other sharing feature is provided by AddThis.  This will allow you to share a Voice Mark via Email, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and a whole lot of other services you currently use.  To try this out, just click on the “Share via Email” link on any Voice Mark on our Voice Map.

• Better URLs – Aside from this being a no-brainer must-have feature, this was inspired by a friend of mine that left a Voice Mark from his iPhone for a waitress at a restaurant.  But how would that waitress listen to the Voice Mark?  Prior to this release, you’d have to link to a Voice Mark like this http://www.geograffiti.com/gu/SearchMap.html?vmid=1. YUK!  That won’t help my friend at all because the link doesn’t even fit on a napkin!  Instead, you can now link to our Voice Marks like this:http://www.geograffiti.com/X or http://www.geograffiti.com/voicemarks/X where X is the Voice Mark’s ID.  For example,   http://www.geograffiti.com/2708 or http://www.geograffiti.com/voicemarks/3114What’s the difference?  Not much.  We provide the former style for scenarios like “I want to leave a Voice Mark for a guy or girl at a bar”  The latter style is what you should use when linking from a blog, website, etc.

GeoGraffiti is platform to publish a voice message and geotag the message to a location.  It is not a private voice mail service.  Rather, every Voice Mark message is made available to the public and accessible from anybody’s mobile phone (although the GeoGraffiti iPhone3G and G1 apps make geotagging easiest).  Everybody has local knowledge, opinions, advice and warnings that the rest of us can benefit from. It’s wisdom of crowds intelligence.

GeoGraffiti offers a public voice information exchange that all generations (Gen-Y to Boomers) can relate to and use because it just requires phone, an opinion and a voice message.  Our voice2.0 map mashup website interface is most convenient for setting notification preferences, joining social groups around a topic, and searching or filtering for specific content.  The phone interface (either from an iPhone, Android G1, or direct call to GeoGraffiti at (213) 221-3802) is available when you are mobile on location.  Why voice?  It’s expressive, personable and authentic.  We have nothing against text messaging and are exploring the idea of partnering with a text messaging platform, but our focus and goal is organizing location-specific voice content.

To hear a little more about the idea and use cases for GeoGraffiti, view a TechZulu interview with Chad taken right after our launch a while back.  Note:  Chad drank enough gin & tonics that our gin bottle was 3/4 empty :) … but somehow still managed to finish the interview.

– Adrian & Chad

geograffiti 2.0, geotagged audio, google maps mashup, local search, voice 2.0, Voice Map, Voice Mark, Voice Marks, voice mashup

We released our 1.0 version of GeoGraffiti on the Android Market two days ago on 2.11.09.  We are VERY impressed with the Android community!  Let me tell you how it went down…

Picture this:  It’s 8PM at GeoGraffiti Labs in Los Angeles and I (Adrian) am staring at some code wondering why it won’t do what I nicely asked it to do…you might know the feeling…sitting there frustrated with your hair looking like you just woke up, fist clenched, and veins popping out of your forehead…yup that’s the look.

Chad sends me an IM saying, “Dude?  I think we have traffic.”  I glance over at monitor 1 and 2 and whatttttdya know!… the logs are going crazy!  Request after request from “Google Android.”  That woke me up.  It was pretty exciting to see that within minutes of the application being made available, people were downloading it and trying it out.  5 hours later at 3AM and I’m still sitting here making sure everything is up and running and the amount of traffic has just slightly lowered…my head hits the desk with a thump….zzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzzz.

Well it’s now 2.13.09 and we are still getting traffic from Android users.  Our hats off to all of you!  We aren’t playing favorites here, but you guys have put the iPhone users to shame with the amount of VoiceMarks that were created and listened to.  Thank you all for trying the app out!  We received a bunch of feedback from users and we’re going to sort through it this weekend to plan our next set of features. If anyone wants to submit feature requests for the Android Version, iPhone Version, Telephone Version, or Website Version please let us know…send us an email, send us feedback, or just reply to this blog post.  We’d love to hear what everyone thinks and how we can improve GeoGraffiti for you!

Some of the major gripes have been about the lack of VoiceMarks in certain areas and missing features on the app.  We hear you!  This content is all community generated and we’re in the beginning stages of getting a community going so no worries…we’re only going to get better.  Anyone can help by spreading the word about the application.  You don’t have to be a G1 phone owner or even an iPhone owner.  Our application is accessible from the web @ http://www.geograffiti.com/map or even from a standard non-fancy telephone by calling 213-221-3802.

We have some very exciting updates planned for GeoGraffiti so stay tuned (subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed for the latest announcements).  If you want to talk directly to me or Chad you can even email us directly for an immediate response.  What are our email addresses?  Well…. read back up on this blog entry…. could it be our names @ our service.com???  I guess you have to try to find out!

Thanks again for trying out the application and for all your feedback!  We really appreciate it!

Here are a few of the VoiceMarks that were generated from the Android community.  Be aware that some of these could be stamped with “Parental Advisory:  Explicit Lyrics”… yep we heard that feedback item numerous times so we’ll be pushing that out soon.  For now, those of you who don’t mind listening…here are the direct links:

http://www.geograffiti.com/gu/SearchMap.html?vmid=2611

http://www.geograffiti.com/gu/SearchMap.html?vmid=2581

http://www.geograffiti.com/gu/SearchMap.html?vmid=2414

http://www.geograffiti.com/gu/SearchMap.html?vmid=2368

http://www.geograffiti.com/gu/SearchMap.html?vmid=2323

– Adrian

android, android app, g1, g1 app, maps mashup, phone mashup, tmobile g1, voice 2.0, voice mashup