- Geoloqi Blog

Posted

Wed Apr 13 2011, 9:21pm

Categories

BarBird launches a Geoloqi layer!

We’re happy to announce that BarBird, an app that allows you to see the nightlife scene in your city in real-time, has published a layer in the Geoloqi app!

If you go to the Layers tab in your Geoloqi app, you’ll see the “BarBird” layer there if you’re in one of the cities they cover! Currently, they are in over 30 cities in the US, including New York City, London, Chicago, Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Portland.

If you subscribe to the BarBird layer, you’ll get notifications of the top-ranked tweets about bar specials that are near you! Only the best tweets are selected for sending out, so you may not get a tweet right away.

When you click on the layer in the app you’ll be able to see a list of tweets from local bars! If you click the “on” switch, you’ll start getting notifications about the tweets that are a few blocks away.

When you get the push notification on your phone, you’ll be able to tap “View” and see more information about the deal from the BarBird mobile website.

If you’re using the Android version of Geoloqi, you can still subscribe to this layer by following this link: Subscribe to BarBird’s Best Deals on Geoloqi!

Posted

Sun Jan 2 2011, 7:19pm

By Aaron Parecki

Categories

API

Tagged

Minor API Changes for Anonymous Accounts

If your app is creating anonymous accounts using the Geoloqi API, there is a minor change rolling out to the API in the next couple days.

Previously, access tokens returned from user/create_anon would not expire, so no refresh token was returned. This is changing to more closely match the user/create method.

Now, access tokens will expire after the default amount of time, so you will need to store the refresh token that is returned from the create method. If you have a good reason for not wanting to manage refreshing the access token, you can request a permanent access token by using the account/permanent_token method.

Note: As with access to the create_anon method, your application will need to be pre-approved to access this method. Please email us at [email protected] to request access to this method.

Posted

Thu Dec 9 2010, 10:10am

By Aaron Parecki

Categories

Press

Forbes.com: Name To Know: Geoloqi, Foursquare’s Biggest Threat?

Geoloqi was born from its founders' experimentation with location tracking.

Meghan Casserly writes: “Lost grocery lists. Late to work. Forgotten restaurant names. All things of the past when Geoloqi launches in the first weeks of January. Grocery lists will be texted to your mobile when you enter the Whole Foods. Your boss will be emailed when the clock strikes nine and you’re not in the office—letting him know your exact location and ETA. The name of the French bistro where you met your wife will be sent to you each time you enter the right neighborhood. Anniversary awkwardness cleverly avoided.

And so, harboring a secret disdain for foursquare, I was intrigued.

A geonote from co-founder Amber Case.

Geoloqi is a fully customizable GPS-based application that lets you set your own reminders, rules and notes based on your geographic location. Think FourSquare without the exhibitionism. Geoloqi, the brainchild of cyborg anthropologist Amber Case and her partner Aaron Parecki, will use GPS technology to map users, but not broadcast their locations to the world—only those they choose to share it with and when.

The app lets you decide how long to share your location.

“I’d like to share my location with a client if I’m meeting them somewhere, so they can know when I’ll arrive,” writes co-founder Parecki in a web presentation on the faults of other location-mapping products including Foursquare, Dopplr and Gowalla. “But after our meeting, I absolutely don’t want them to access my location. This is often true even with friends. Friends’ location is not always relevant to me. Current location-sharing systems are currently all or nothing.”

The secret of Geoloqi is that it’s a completely customizable experience. Once the app is downloaded, a user can set geonotes (SMS notes that are received when you enter a specific location), create layers (be notified anytime an apartment listing meeting your criteria is nearby), subscribe to existing layers created by other users (“For example,” Parecki says, “I’m currently subscribed to the “USGS Earthquakes” layer which means I get a text any time an earthquake happens within 200km of my current location, wherever I go.”) and, most importantly, share locations and notes at the user’s discretion—for a specific period of time.

Choosing a location to leave a note.

That information can be shared with other Geoloqi users, or a link emailed or posted to Twitter or Facebook, and anyone who has the link can see your location for a limited amount of time.

“This is a very different approach to sharing than most social networks take,” Parecki points out, “Since we don’t limit to sharing with other Geoloqi users.”

The Portland-based pair of Parecki and Case has so far received no major financial backing, and Parecki says all design and development has been done by volunteers who are helping out because they are “very interested in project.” Pricing for the application, which will be released as a public beta in January and will be available at the app store has not been finalized.

With no millions of VC money to prop them up, I wondered to Parecki how Geoloqi hopes to be self-sustaining in the year to come, and his response was far from the advertising-based answer I expected. “We plan on licensing the iPhone software development kit to developers who want to integrate location into their own apps,” he told me. “Also we will likely charge developers for heavy application programming interface access if they go over a certain threshold.”

Read the full article on forbes.com.

Posted

Wed Dec 8 2010, 10:10am

By Aaron Parecki

Categories

Press

Wired.co.uk: TED Women day one: Where’s the ‘tech’?

Christine Ottery writes: “I caught up with Amber the day before the conference started. My head almost exploded. I think her project Geoloqi.com has the potential to be the next big thing after Facebook. It launches early next year. She told me that people who are self-mapping and self-tracking exist on the fringes of society — but they are bringing this to the mainstream”.

“This is self-actualisation cubed. For example, the essence of Geoloqi (although this is not all it can do) is “send messages to your future self”. When Amber was little, her dad taught her about space and time, wormholes, and she used to record tapes for her future self. Aaron (her business partner) did the same kind of thing but by mapping trips on his holidays (analogue style). Also, Geoloqi operates a very interesting business model: volunteer driven and crazily ambitious. So no multi-million dollar investments — just some properly passionate geeks in the US. Geoloqi differentiates itself massively from Foursquare and the rest by amping privacy to the max — it’s meant to be a seamless addition to our lives so it is time management driven rather then reward driven — but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun if you want it to be.”

Read the full article at wired.co.uk

Posted

Sun Oct 3 2010, 10:22pm

By Aaron Parecki

Categories

Events

Tagged

Apps built at the Tropo + Geoloqi Open Gov Hackathon

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Open Gov Hackathon today! We’re proud to announce the winners! The best app using the Tropo API went home with a Sonos Wireless Music System, and the best app using the Geoloqi API went home with an iPad!

The judging began at 6:30Pm, and everyone stopped programming. After all of the presentations were done, we discussed each app with the Tropo team and Rick Nixon of CivicApps. It was a tough decision, as the entries were extremely creative and useful!

Thanks to everyone who watched, participated, and cheered on the developers. We owe the greatest thanks to Tropo and the City of Portland, who were great supporters of the event. This won’t be the last hackathon. We will be doing this again in the future as soon as possible. If you’re interested in partnering with us for another hackathon, let us know!

Heritage Tree Quest

Winner: Best use of Tropo by @trisimon

Like PacMan for heritage trees! You go around town finding trees and collecting points. You get bonus points for collecting all trees in a neighborhood. You receive your score via an SMS from Tropo. When you’re near a tree, you can call Tropo and it will quiz you to identify it, getting you even more points! It was this clever use of the voice recognition capabilities of Tropo that made this application stand out.

Don’t Eat That!

Winner: Best use of Geoloqi by @reidab

“Don’t Eat That!” pulls health inspections from the county web page. If you use Geoloqi, you can subscribe to notifications of scores under a certain threshold for restaurants within 100 meters of your current location. You’ll get an SMS that says “What ho! You might not want to eat at Backspace, their last inspection score was 93!” That way you can gawk at dirty restaurants near you! This app will also post links to the reports as tips on Foursquare!

BarBird

Honorable Mention. Finds all the bars in the business license dataset and matches them to Twitter feeds by searching Twitter lists. The map shows notification icons on the map and shows the latest tweets from every bar. A future mobile version could use the Geoloqi API to track your location and receive Geonotes for specials at bars near you.

Tweedopt.com

Honorable Mention. Finds pets available for adoption from the Multnomah County Animal Services database and petfinder.com. You can read the descriptions of the animals and send out a tweet for them. Using the Tropo API, the non-technical foster homes can call in and ask for a short update about the pet, so the shelters aren’t required to know how to use Twitter. On “Woof Wednesday” the dogs that are looking for homes will tweet their latest updates or a random pet.

We are thrilled that everyone was excited to come out and join us for a day of hacking! And special thanks to Tropo for co-sponsoring the event and to CivicApps for the great support.