So, you leave the house and text public to 80289. You’re out for some coffee/tea. As you arrive at Argo, you text @argo to the same number. You then receive a text saying that there are two others at your location. !hello fellow argo people, you text. Both of the other users at the argo immediately get texts on there phones. You get to chatting a little and decide that one of these people, hipster123, is really cool and the other, douchebag123, is annoying. You text block douchebag123 … send, and then … m hipster123 omg, douchebag123 is a real douchebag. You and hipster lol a bit about it all and decide you’re friends. friend hipster123 …
What’s going on!?!?
You’re using brightkite–a location-based social networking service.
Here’s what just happened above. First, you changed your visibility on the network by texting public to the brightkite shortcode 80289. You can always go private again by texting, you guessed it, private. Next, you had the keyword argo setup in your “placemarks” so it knew where to check you in. If you hadn’t had this placemark setup you’d get a text back asking you which argo you wanted to checkin at — 3135 N Broadway or 2485 N Clark. I suggest setting up placemarks for places you frequent. If you don’t, it’ll always be guessing and while it’s guessing is supposed to be based on your last checkin location it’s not perfect–it thought I was in CA when I told it @melrose yesterday. So, back to the above story, you had “nearby notifications” turned on, so that’s why you received the text about the other brightkite users at your location. Turn on nearby notifications by texting nn on to the bright kite number. You change your nearby notification settings quite easily via texts … text nn friends to receive only info about friends near by or text nn all for info about any bright kite users near by. The radius of these notifications can be changed with the following commands: nn close, nn block, nn neighborhood, nn area. If you don’t like having the nearby notifications turned on, you can always manually check to see who’s near your location by texting who. So, anyhoo, you then posted a message to the location — !hello fellow argo people. If you’d felt like it you could have also taken a photo and posted it the location (instructions for that are on your account settings page — different for every user, or text postphoto to get instructions texted to your phone). Back with our story above, you blocked douchebag123 (block username) and then directly messaged hipster123. (m username message). friend username sent a friend request. There are other things too that you could have done which are fun–For instance, want to see everyone who’s ever been to that Argo? Or see if any photos or messages have been left there? Text pastvisitors and find out.
Pwhew. Yeah–alot to remember but there’s a nitfy little pocketguide if you want it: http://brightkite.com/brightkite_pocket_reference.pdf
Tags: friends, technology
Posted by shana on Feb 12, 2009 in
weather alert I have a Chicago Tribune news feed on my home page, among other things. Yesterday, after a lovely bike ride home from work, I opened up my internt browser and saw the following headline:
There was, somewhat ironically, an actual article attached to that headline, instead of just a picture of the beach and a temp reading. But I didn’t read it. I don’t think whoever wrote that headline actually wanted us to.
Rohn also wanted to go outside and play.
Ah yes, it was beautiful. Shirt sleeves and warm breezes sitting by the lake at sunset…
(no snow!)
We knew the weather gods were just teasing us. We knew it wouldn’t last. But wow, those 30mph rainy winds this morning sure hit hard.
Tags: weather, wishful thinking
Posted by shana on Feb 12, 2009 in
photo shoot ’cause it’s been a couple days:
Tags: cats
Posted by mac on Feb 5, 2009 in
photo shoot
Tags: cats, photos
Posted by shana on Feb 5, 2009 in
our family Mac has posted a photo album of Rohn’s arrival to Facebook. But you don’t have to be on Facebook to see them, you can just click here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=213543&l=36abd&id=551590472
Though the first few days were kind of rocky, all of us, Ammy included, are really starting to enjoy our new little buddy.
These are the ways in which Rohn is very much like Amarok:
- he loves feathers. loves.
- he prefers napping on the white swirly chair to napping on the couch
- he likes to take walks across my computer keyboard
- he wants you to pay attention to him all the time
- he is very smart and very clean
- he is very aware of how cool he is
And these are the ways in which he’s very different from Ammy:
- he likes people food, more than just kalamata olives and whiskey, and particularly enjoys licking the bottom of the bowl after I’m done with my cereal in the morning
- he has a habit of picking up objects in his mouth and running off with them, like, for example, ticket to ride trains, or Mac’s camera
- he likes to help us get out of bed in the morning by walking around our respective night stands and knocking things (like glasses of water) to the floor
- he knows how to answer the phone (though he has not yet learned to politely respond when I say, “is this Rohn??”)**
- his vertical jump is only at about one foot. We’ll work on that.
Enjoy the pictures. More to come.
** true story. I’d seen him chewing on Mac’s phone the day before, so when the phone was answered when I called but no one said anything, I had my suspicions… I called the home phone and got Mac and sure enough, he found Rohny sitting on the floor next to an open, drooly cell phone…
Tags: cats, photos, ticket to ride
Posted by shana on Feb 3, 2009 in
didn't know this about me did you February 2.
Friends and loved ones far and near called to console me on this the most horrible of horrible days in the year, the day in which our nation, for some totally incomprehensible reason, celebrates those little critters, the very mention of whose name gives me the shivers…
Groundhog’s Day.
Actually, just one friend called, and it’s a good thing too, because I myself had forgotten. Seems I’ve been living in cities for long enough that groundhogs are no longer forefront in nightmares… wow, who ever would’ve thought!
(Those of you who know me only through Mac and were unaware of my groundhog phobia probably found this post slightly disconcerting. My apologies.)
Tags: holidays, phobias