Image via Wikipedia

Using Tweeps Around a lot in Layar? Want to have a nice clean app icon or shortcut to place on your Android’s home screen?

Now you can: today the TweepsAround launch app has been released in the Android market.

TweepsAround Launcher is a real Android application, so you can place it anywhere on you Android phone. When activated, it opens Layar with the TweepsAround layer in Reality View, no more browsing in the catalog.

The app also checks if you have Layar installed. When not, you get a button which takes you directly to Layar in the Android Market where you can download it for free.

Want to give it a spin? The QR code below links to the app in the Android store, ready to install. Or you could search for “tweepsaround”.

Of course all feedback, hints and tips are welcome!

Update: you can find Tweeps Around in Androlib now.

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Tweeps Around 3D view

The popular Augmented Reality app Layar just got updated to a very exciting new version with support for a 3D Reality View and a couple of other neat features.

I’m proud to announce a new version of the Tweeps Around layer, with the following improvements:

• The images of tweeting people are shown in 3D in space, just as they are around you
• Support for the new native geotagging feature of Twitter
• You can now reply and post new tweets (status updates)
• Your tweets will be geotagged with your current location (optional)

Like to experience this yourself? Make sure you have the latest version of Layar installed in your iPhone (free download in App Store) or Android powered device (free download from Android Market).

You need a Twitter account with geolocation eneabled to send local tweets yourself (no worries, Tweeps Around will guide you through the process when you first log into Twitter).

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Local tweet in Tweeps Around

Right now Twitter released their long awaited Geotagging API and activated the user interface for every user: Think Globally, Tweet Locally!

This allows every twitter user who uses a (mobile) device that is capable of determining their location, to annotate their tweets with exact location. This makes Tweeps Around so much more useful! Up to now, the location had to be parsed from the user’s profile location field, which some clients indeed dutifully update with the location of the last posted tweet. But this is often rather inaccurate, as the last update is kept when no location data is available.

Twitter: mobile geo activation screen

So, we will get real exact locations and – as can be expected – many more location annotated tweets. That is, if users are willing to activate the geotagging setting and use the feature. It is switched off by default, for privacy reasons, so you have to manually activate it under your twitter account settings (the mobile settings lead to just one activate button).

Be sure to check out Tweeps Around the coming days and let’s see how fast this catches on!

BTW: in Tweeps Areond, the officially geotagged tweets are indicated with Distance 234m, whereas the guessed locations are prefixed with a tilde character, like this: Distance ~234m.

Direct link to Tweeps Around Layer (open from your mobile phone, iPhone or Android).

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Tweeps Around reaches Tokyo

Spotted via Twitter: looking at Shiodome over #layar browser with Tweeps Around in Tokyo. Nice to see this in international context just hours after the launch!

More info about Layar and Tweeps Around in my previous blog post.

If you’re on a mobile browser and have Layar installed: click here for Tweeps Around in Layar.

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Tweeps Around Reality View

Earlier today Layar announced the next all new version of their Reality Browser Application for mobile devices (also known as Augmented Reality application).

This finally lifts the embargo on my work for this platform: Tweeps Around, which adds an overlay of what people on Twitter are saying, right here and now!

Update: I added a short FAQ for Tweeps Around, be sure to check it out for more detailed information.

Basic principle

Suppose you have the all new Layar 2.0 app installed on a supported device (Android, iPhone awaiting Apple’s aprovement). You open the application and search layers for tweeps around (or just tweeps). Activate the layer and look around on the phone’s screen. You’ll see circles popping up, each representing a Twitter user (Twitterers also known as a “Tweeps”, hence the name), selecting it gives you all the details of their message and links to relevant references.

The Layar promise

While the Layar app in itself is already quiet exciting, the most important promise lays in its tiered distribution approach. In fact, the Layar app is indeed a browser which does not contain, nor limit reality content to display. This way, responsibilities are distributed over various parties in the industry.

Some roles include:

• Content owners: make sure the content is marked up with accurate geolocation information.
• Independent developers (such as me): build a wrapping API to interface between content (e.g. a geo database) and the Layar service.
• Layar: negotiate distribution deals with platform owners (Apple, Google, …) and Mobile operators (to have Layar pre-installed on devices).

I strongly believe in this strategy, where domain knowledge, marketing + distribution and development each are in the hands of the respective experts.

Branding and monetization opportunities

Layar allows for a quiet some customization of graphic elements, e.g. company logo and banner on top, custom icons for points of interest (POI’s) and action links to call a phone number, send a text message or go to any conceivable web URL. Here are some opportunities for monetization as well, e.g. by inserting advertisements, call premium phone numbers of have users sign up for additional web services and revenue shares with destination sites.

The future

Of course, this is just the beginning. The beginning of Reality Overlays on mobile devices becoming ubiquitous. The beginning of Layar as platform for easy access of geo information. Many exciting new applications are around the corner to be discovered and become “best practice” in less than no time. Distribution and localization can be local as well as worldwide (e.g. Twitter is a global phenomenon, while your data may well be focused on a single city or country). Any type of data can be visualized, as long as it is somehow relevant to a specific location.

I’m ready to dive into this exciting world with lots and lots ideas waiting to be tested and implemented. The Twitter overlay serves as a test case which was in fact surprisingly easy to implement for the Layar platform.

Please let me know when you have geo data waiting to be explored as reality overlay and we will work something out!

Note that there is no sign up fee for Layar until the second half of September, 2009. After September 15th a one time sign up fee is required (depending on company turnover).

Quick link

Open layar/tweepsaround

Use one of the barcode scanners from your Android phone to open the Tweeps Around layer in Layar: point your camera to this QR code (image to the right) and select “open in browser”.

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I just discovered and installed a very nice WordPress plugin, WordTwit. The main purpose of this plugin is to tweet your new blog posts on Twitter, together with a link to the new blog post.

So far nothing too shocking new, but the latest version (2.0.x) of the plugin adds the option to use your own blog as url shortening and redirecting service. Think tinyurl.com, is.gd or one of the gazillion alternatives out there.

Now that is really cool. Except it didn’t work for me.

Turns out that there was a little bug if your blog is not served off the root or your domain, but a sub directory instead (which is /blog in my case).

So, a patch (shortened link, noticed?) solved this and all should be set to go now.

Oh and this post is serving as a test post for the Twitter update…

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A common way these spammers try to get your attention, hoping you will follow them, is just start following your twitter account “at random”. Now one day I found the following two low lifers, with apparently opposite intentions, in sequence in my followers queue:

These followed me in sequence, too stupid to be true?

Now I’m pondering which one to pick, the pathetic diet promoter or the fat cheesy one?

Seriously, advice to those who create such spammy accounts: don’t waste the effort, you make me laugh at very best if I don’t outright block you.

Conversely, if you’re a human being and like to follow my sometimes random tweets, you’re still more than welcome to follow me (@jlapoutre) on Twitter!

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What the trend

Update: yes, there are more such services now, I just discovered tagdef.com which does more or less the same. And is much less complete as of late Aug. 2009. Their complementary twitter account is @newtagdefs.

Since Twitter search officially launched, Twitter trends have become an essential part to keep up with the service. These trends are shown on every search page.

Many trends are marked by the often cryptic hash tags (e.g. #www2009 stood for the WWW conference, 2009 edition.

But also regular terms emerge in the trends if people are using them often enough, for example names like Susan Boyle become real Twiter trends this way.

In many cases, looking at the trends will give you a quick impression what is hot right now in the world. But sometimes terms and hash tags are not obvious at first glance, if at all.

A new service, whatthetrend.com, has been launched to solve this problem. The site shows the latest trend terms, along with a small user-editable explanation what the trend is about. This looks a lot like the awkwardly named technorati experiment WTF (intended to be a funny acronym for where’s the fire).

Clicking on such a trend displays related tweets, news and photos, very neat.

Of course, whatthetrend comes with its own @whatthetrend twitter account which announces new trends and invites followers to explain them. And you can also use wttrend.com to save on your 140 chars limit.

I really like this service!

Some more random observations around Twitter trends

Timezones

The local timezone of an event is often very relevant for something to become a trend. Right now, #hksummit is trending (Apple event in Hong Kong, at local time somewhere afternoon). With Twitter becoming more and more popular, geographic restriction on search/trends might become useful for disambiguation and better signal to noise ratio when following local events.

Spam

Spammers are starting to abuse the popular tweet terms and post tweets with just these terms, together with their spammy links.

There is one twitter account (which I won’t mention here to avoid free publicity) which does just that: take all trend terms, convert them in a Amazon search query with affiliate code and post a tweet, many times per hour.

This was first discovered by the @paggr folks during #www2009. They are now trying to keep the spam out of their system, yet another arms race against spam has started.

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Using Twitter in Firefox? Want to easily follow everything which is contributed to your favorite subject (#hashtag)? And want to know who is participating?

Good, read on!

First: what are hashtags?

These are a convention to indicate that your tweet is about a certain subject or event, for example #sxsw is used for tweets about South by South West, and so on.

Now there are a few services which make using this convention really useful:

• Twitter Search – performs a live search on #hashtags and keywords
• HashTweeps – finds all users who used a certain #hashtag

So far so good, but Twitter does not link the hashtags in any way. Wouldn’t it be nice to have these services linked to the hashtag?

Well, that is exactly what my Greasmonkey userscript does.

It turns this line:

@jake will I be seeing you at #sxsw this year?

into this:

@jake will I be seeing you at #sxsw [+] this year?

So if you’re using Firefox, head over to Twitter Hash Tools on userscripts.org and hit the black install button at the right of the title bar.

Make sure you have Greasemonkey installed first!

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I just found out (not surprisingly, through Twitter) that Skittles turned their website inside out (so to say, in my words).

They replaced their content pages by what others are saying about them: their twitter stream (live search for #skittles), their entry at Wikipedia, their friends at Facebook and more (videos at Youtube, pictures at Flickr, you get the idea).

The own Skittles content is reduced to just one floating content banner, providing minimal information (as if it were a IAB banner box) and also functions as “glue” between all linked social sites.

The linked content seems not to be filtered, the Twitter feed at least displays profanity just as entered.

So what is this?

• A stunt which will last just for a day or so
• Crowd-sourcing at its most extreme
• The end of internet marketing as we know it…

In other words, is this indeed a brave move or just plain stupid? The Twitter jury is still out…

Update:

1. By now they have removed the twitter stream as home backdrop, got a bit too hot maybe.
2. It appears that Modernista was far ahead with this concept: Modernista! letting others define its identity about a year ago.

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