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buddycloud's social location server

Buddycloud

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Buddycloud enables users to broadcast their location to their friends. Users maintain a list of placemarks and the Buddycloud service "snaps" them back to their placemarks whenever they they return.

buddycloud's social location server enables socialness

The buddycloud social location server brings more than just location to your product. "Social Location" means that users see that their friends are at Home or Work or The Pub. Putting a users location into the context of a place rather than simply on a map is powerful stuff. In the case of the Buddycloud mobile client it's shown to really increase user cohesion.

The following slides show how Buddycloud is able to power a mobile product and push the output to existing social networks.

Benefits of buddycloud's social location server

  • Buddycloud adds meaningful context to interactions by describing locations with short textual labels. Now users know that their friend is "On the road in Soho" or at "Home" rather than just at "38.897605896, -77.0365219116"
  • Buddycloud is safe: users are never snapped to embarrassing locations saved by other users. Each user gets to choose the places that they use to describe their life. Be it "Paradise Lounge" or "Springfield Nuclear Power Plant Safety Office".
  • Buddycloud chooses the right level of detail. When a user is moving she is described by the suburb. Whey she stops she is placed near or at one of her palcemarks. Simple to understand context. Instantly.
  • Buddycloud enables excitement. Users can choose the places that describe their life. Be it "Home", "My Castle", or "My Dump" or "My Girlfriends House".
  • Buddycloud is simple enough for everybody to understand. Just bookmark and the location engine automatically puts you back at the right palcemark every time you return.

 

Buddycloud social location server features

  • Buddycloud delivers "social location": places have meaning and relevence to a user's friends.
  • Buddycloud adds intention broadcasting. Being social with location is not just about where you were and currently are located. It's also about the name of the place you are going to next. Or what you plan on doing next. A user's intention is authomatically pushed to all their trusted friends mobile devices.
  • Buddycloud delivers contextual relevence: knowing whether their friend is at Home or Work helps users decide whether or not to call that friend.
  • Buddycloud runs off a since long-lived TCP connection with a warm restart mechanism that saves Bandwidth. Typical usage is around 30KB/24h.
  • Buddycloud uses Bluetooth to leverage the combined capabilites of all users nearby. So when one user has a WiFi enabled phone, another only has Cell-ID access and a third has GPS, all benefit from eachother's combined capabilites. Places are better defined and time to fixing a location is improved.
  • Buddycloud enables the rapid deployment of mobile location products. No need to write a social location engine. Library code is also avaliable to help jump start product development.
  • No software to install: Buddycloud's location server runs as a service with guaranteed service levels.
  • Buddycloud enables accurate positioning of places without needing a GPS and without the power requirements that a GPS places on a background service.
  • Buddycloud lets friends share placemarks. Friends can add eachother's placemarks to their own list and automatically be placed back there in the future.
  • Buddycloud is standardised. Buddycloud belives that you shouldn't be locked into a particular provider of location and are championing efforts to share location across products and services. Buddycloud is also championing a standardised mechanism to query and share location between friends. That means that if you don't like the Buddycloud place server, just swithch it out for another.
  • Wifi and CellID work well indoors. GPS doesn't. That means that Buddycloud's location engine is able to place users inside buildings and "urban canyons."
  • Buddycloud has built strong privacy controls that lets the end-user control who sees what.
  • Buddycloud provides a realtime event streams. Users are placed at distinct places "home, The Pub, Kebab-shop, Pharmacy rather than being a dot on a map.
  • The Buddycloud bluetooth synchronising let's user remember who they met and when. This can also be used by social networks to show you more information about the people that you are really spending time with rather than someone you didn't want to offend and so added as a friend on Facebook.
  • Buddycloud has privacy levels. For what places you share with others and what level of detail they get to see.
  • Buddycloud shows nearby geo-tagged objects. Currently a user can see nearby tagged places and people. These could be coupons, pictures or videos
  • Buddycloud includes adapters that push your place, status and who you meet, to Twitter and Facebook. Additional adpaters can easily be added.

 

What buddycloud's social location server doesn't do

  • Turn by turn navigation
  • Not a “where am I” lookup
  • Not a google maps replacement

 

buddycloud's social location server - operational mode

buddycloud's social location server offers two operational modes.

  1. Location Butler: The location butler service offers location, place and nearby managment services.
  2. BCS is a managed services deployement that is designed to with existing products and services. BCS can be hosted both on-site or off-siste and includes additional place and user managment features. For more details contact the Buddycloud sales team.