So a bunch of people have asked for links and description about GeoGraffiti. The main page is at www.geograffiti.com/map To register you can click on the Login link on the top right-hand corner of your screen. There are 2 ways to register. If you have a Facebook account, you can sign in through Facebook by clicking on the Facebook icon. If you don’t have a Facebook account you can register with GeoGraffiti by clicking on the Register link. What’s the difference? Not much. With Facebook sign-in you don’t have to remember yet another password and we offer some basic integration with your Facebook account. You and your friends will receive messages on the news feed and mini-feed about the stuff you publish on GeoGraffiti. Aside from that, nothing else is different.

Before you sign up, watch this video to get the basic gist of what GeoGraffiti is. I warn you, it’s a bit long, but worth your time since this concept is new and hasn’t been seen before. N.B. The UI has been updated since this demo was created but the basic functionality is very similar. We’ll have a newly updated demo soon.

GeoGraffiti Voice Mashup Video Demo v1.0

Ok. so after you register, you will be asked to verify your phone number so have that phone handy. GeoGraffiti will call you and give you a code that you enter on the site. Once the phone number is verified, you can continue and you’ll be taken to the map. Click down into the area you want to search for Voice Marks in. Right now all Voice Marks are in the Los Angeles area, but you can add them anywhere you want. Having trouble deciding what to contribute? Why not search for your favorite restaurant, bar, or club and say a few words on why it’s cool and unique. Maybe suggest the best hostess or drink to order. Seeee that wasn’t so hard! Feel free to browse, forward, and respond to other Voice Marks, etc.

Will my phone number be made available to the public?

Absolutely not! We ask for your phone number for internal reasons so our system can associate the Voice Marks you create with your GeoGraffiti user nickname. If you choose to activate the advanced notification preference, GeoGraffiti will call you or SMS a notification to your phone when somebody publishes a response to one of your Voice Marks, but this is an optional setting that is not active by default. To be clear, your number will never be seen or revealed to the public.

How do I get my Facebook news and mini feed stories to work?

First make sure you are signed in to Facebook and then click on this link http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=3344130540&ref=mf to install the application and register with GeoGraffiti. If you click on the GeoG application in your side bar, you may experience an error. We don’t know why Facebook is doing this yet…we’ll figure it out. For now, just click again and it should work. When you start the GeoGraffiti app in fb, we take you to the GeoGraffiti.com site since the fb canvas size isn’t big enough to support our google map-mashup, but all your Voice Marks will appear in your fb news feed so you can keep track of who is leaving new Voice Marks.

So what should I do after I create Voice Marks?

Because we released this yesterday, there isn’t a lot of content on there. We want to encourage everyone to make this work as a community much like the Wikipedia or Yahoo!Answers. The content will get better as time goes by and more users sign up. Please email info@geograffiti.com with your feedback and suggestions. We want to work hard to make GeoGraffiti work for you so send everything you can :).

Parting Words

Keep in mind that this is a new beta service so don’t go out and have a milllion people sign up…you’ll kill us :). We will adjust as the traffic and users grow to accommodate the load. Feel free to forward the link to a FFFEEEWWWWW of your friends…not your entire entourage…especially if you roll 1000 deep :).

Thanks for helping out! We really appreciate it!

Cheers,

The GeoGraffiti Chief Tech Monkey

getting started, howto, tutorial, video, voice 2.0, voice mashup