rodbegbie's dashboard

????

Although I can see how this new system works for many, it still doesn't work for me or anyone dealing with a mixed-use development with one street address. In my case I live in a large building with retail and restaurants on the ground level. I'd like to be able to check in publicly to a restaurant or gallery but not my actual residence. If we had actual private placemarks, this would work fine. Unfortunately, the setting of one (my residence) overrides another (a store) because we share the same address. I really hope this will be resolved in the future. This would seem a potential hassle for many folks. Thanks for taking the concept this far.

I would still really, really love to be able to toggle the Twitter feed easily *without* having to go into private mode. I don't actually care whether anyone knows where I live; I just don't want it pushed to Twitter every time I return home and dutifully check in. I also may go somewhere like a grocery store where I'd like to check in publicly but don't think the Twitterverse would care. In a perfect BK world, activity at certain placemarks could also be designated as being fed (or not) to Twitter (and perhaps future services), independent of privacy settings.

We are considering adding the customization options to set your Twitter location, like we do with checkins, notes, and photos. In the meantime, if you check in while in private mode and have your "everyone else" settings at city level, only your city/state will be sent to Twitter. I just tested this by checking into Brightkite HQ while in private mode and it set my location to "Denver, CO" instead of "Brightkite HQ". – Lesley, on August 20, 2008 20:13

I like the fact that the Twitter location attribute gets updated by Brightkite, but is there a way to make it set just the city, rather than the exact location? For example, right now my location on Twitter is "Starbucks," which isn't too useful, given that someone looking at my Twitter profile has no idea where on the planet I am. I'd rather it just set the city/state/country.

Yes, that's true. It's not the most ideal, given that both services support varying degrees of precision and should be able to work out a way to share them more accurately and transparently, but it's not a bad work-around and isn't without its own benefits. I'll definitely try it out (while waiting for a better solution down the road) :-) . – Thom Watson, on August 16, 2008 00:04

One thing you can try, which is actually what I do, is to set the accuracy level of your location yourself when you check in. I'm always in public mode, so whenever I need to check in to a sensitive location, I simply don't check into an exact address. I will check in at street level or using an intersection, then I placemark these locations. I am always in control of what information is shared with FE and Twitter and don't have to rely on the privacy controls. I realize that this is not a desirable option for everyone, so it is only a suggestion, but it could help keep the Brightkite/FE combination useful for you. :) – Lesley, on August 15, 2008 23:59

Lesley, I'm glad at least that you're going to make what you do clearer, but it actually means that Brightkite and FE together just isn't useful for me. If I need to go into FE and change my privacy setting there each time I check into an always-private location in Brightkite, when otherwise I want my location in FE to be public, then why should I even use Brightkite? The alternative is that I set FE to show everything at an imprecise level, which also is less than desirable.

We apologize for any confusion. If you have FE sharing enabled, we will send your exact location to them and then within FE you can modify your privacy settings for what information gets sent out to any other sites. We realize that this is not made very clear in Brightkite, so we will go in and revise it so people know their exact location will be shared when they update.

This is back to there simply not being enough options. And maybe its an issue of options on Fire Eagle's end, but the two options it gives when syncing with Fire Eagle are exact location or zipcode (there are more options, but less specific). On the one hand, for Fire Eagle to be useful, they need my exact location, but on the other hand, since I have told BrightKite not to give that information out, they shouldn't give it out. It should look as if I checked in at a zip code or city, not an address. It doesn't seem like that should be to hard.

I've noticed that when checking into a location that's marked "Always Private," like my home address, Bkite appears to send the exact location to Fire Eagle, not the inexact one that it's providing to other Bkite users. FE then displays information about my exact location, and provides it to other apps that poll FE. When I twittered about this last night:

@brightkite If I have a place set to always be private, what info does it provide to Fire Eagle? Looks like it's sending the full location.

Bkite's response was:

@thomwatson FE does not have the granularity of privacy controls available in Bkite. We share the publicly available location with FE.

Wouldn't the "publicly available location" for a location marked as always private be the inexact version? This seems to be what they say they're sending in response to my inquiry. However, my personal experience suggests the opposite, that they are sending -- at least as recently as last night -- my exact location even for a private location.

Uploading photos these days is completely useless for many people, myself included. There could be a "import photo from flickr" feature, or any other photo hosting service, there could even be the option of BK updating the photo's geotag

glad to hear this is on the list, as it's been my 1 barrier to using Twinkle as my primary twitter client.

I'm having the same problem. I can upload photos from the website, but not from my iPhone. I have tried several times. The email is moved to sent folder, but does not appear in brightkite

Hi Uncle Foobar, it looks like your emails were getting caught in spam. Your posts should go through okay now, please let us know if you continue to have problems. :) – Lesley, on August 04, 2008 17:37

1 Aug 08; still having issues. Also sent Test message with no photo and it did not post. Your server worked in the past but started eating photos sometime in the last month or so. Using iPhone.

Foob

That sounds awesome! – Chris J, on July 30, 2008 03:00