• Does anyone care if I was in a swarm, visited Mount Rushmore or can administer CPR?
• Do we have to get jackets or sashes that we attach these digital badges to?
• Do you visit the pages of your friends to see what badges they have, or do you use some client just to see where they check in and have no clue what they earned?
• Can I get free services, coupons or discounts for having specific badges?  This isn’t mayorship, just an icon.

I begin to feel we reached a peak in the desire to achieve such things and are looking for true value in the services we are using.  Badges inherently were built for kids as a sign of learning and have now turned into a game with no winner.  Each time you get close to having all of the possible badges, new ones are announced.  The game never ends.

It becomes like a RPG that adds levels every time someone conquers all there is.  I have a badge for all of the sites giving out badges.  But it wouldn’t be appropriate.

While I could begin listing sites I have recently discovered value in, let me first make my quick list of what catches my attention:

• Does the site offer an informative About page?  How hard is it to give me some actual information, even if you have a closed beta.  Tempt me.  Draw me in.  Give me a want to apply for the beta, wait it out and then dive in
• Do you make signing up for the beta easy?  Most sites are good at this with a large box asking for your email address with some follow-up email
• Do you show me samples of what the UI might look like or screenshots of your dream look?  I know it isn’t finished.  Hence the beta tag.  I do not like not knowing what your idea of the site I am about to use will look like.  If you are so early in beta you haven’t gotten that far, let me know.
• Provide me a way to get in contact for press/blogging/podcasts to get visibility for your site and ask questions.  If you are not ready, that is fine, just give a way to let me ask.  Most of the time I want to have some early talks to blog or podcast about your site.  I know screencasts may not be possible due to the beta, but some early talks might be.
• Provide a good feedback system or link to one that is made for that purpose.  Some new btea sites make this mistake while others invest in GetSatisfaction (as an example).  An email black hole does not leave any type of impression a user wants.  I need to now you take feedback serious and will comment, reply and note if the suggestion was helpful or even already in the works.
• Have someone assigned to work the forums/feedback in a reasonable time.  Too often I go to sites to read if someone had the same issue to find that questions have gone unanswered for months.  Not even a tag that is has been considered.
• Update a simple screenshot or two as the beta progresses
• Involve your highly active beta users in small group forums/discussions
• Think superusers to allow you to manage/monitor without investing in more employees (Foursquare did this and fell flat after the first rollout)
• Post reasonable updates via a blog or newsletter.  Keep my interest.
• Make the launch exciting and bring in comments and highlights profiles of your top users.  This makes users want to be involved.

I think that is a good summary and high end of what I look for.  If you are building one of these launches, maybe some of those will help.  I enjoy testing the sites, finding ones to enter into my workflow and hopefully promoting you along the way.

We are sorry to notify you that Twones is closing from 9 July 2010.

The engineering team, founders and technology are now a part of
shuffler.fm (http://blog.shuffler.fm) which will launch in a few
months.

I can imagine the ability to find music in so many places on the web today pretty much means the demise of many of these type of start-ups.  Can one really survive and make a living with the large scale music systems like iTunes blazing a path to devices?  Streaming free music content is always a choice, but even independent artists are making a living with sites like Magnatune.

I think one thing missing, even as Twones added sharing to Twitter, Facebook and more, was the ability to have your friends installing a toolbar into their browser and also sharing every song they find with you.  Not to mention proper tagging of the music itself.

Toolbars are often looked upon as evil or privacy issues sending who knows what data to the web.  I am in no way saying Twones did this, just the opinion of many people is that toolbars used to be spyware or hook into ad type networks.

I hope the new venture for the people behind Twones takes off called Shuffler.fm

As a beta tester, your job will be to ask great questions and provide great answers about your favorite topics. Economics? Skydiving? Relationships? Mexican Restaurants? It’s up to you. You’ll be the first person outside of Facebook to use this product. Your expert writing will be seen by tens of millions of people

Facebook is quite apparently looking for free writers to begin filling in pages of information on any topic.  To be a beta tester they want you to also submit a writing sample on pre-listed questions with links to external sources included.

Before we can give you exclusive beta access, we’d like you to submit one great sample question and answer. We’re looking for evidence that you can write clearly and authoritatively on familiar subject matter.  Where relevant, cite and link to third-party sources such as Wikipedia.

What this means, is as you browse these topics, your profile grows in areas of interest and Facebook finely tuns targeted marketing towards you.  As you fill in topics, they begin to build a table of your knowledge as well.  It is a confusing matrix of information they will learn about you.

I would hesitate submitting for this opportunity, even with the promise that the top writers get invited to the Facebook offices to meet the team.  They make no mention of monetization towards you, nor how the data will be used.  They make no promises to you that you own the content you create.  It looks as if they claim the content as well.  So work for free, input tons of your knowledge for free and let them make advertising dollars from your work.  A perfect plan.

Mahalo, I know, pays the writers for this very same type of content. (No I am not writing for them so no disclosure necessary).  While they own the content, you do get benefit and the content creation is not linked to your profile inside of the largest social network.

After you create an account, it prompts you to allow them to authorize them using the Foursquare API and read your stream of checkins.  From there, it will tell you how many checkins you have at a location, who the mayor is and how many more you should need to steal the title.

You can even search for a particular site if you have your eyes on being mayor there or if they are running an upcoming special.  All thanks to When Will I Be Mayor.  It was interesting to see how far behind I was in certain spots and how far ahead in others.  So using it in reverse let’s you know who is creeping up behind you as well.

I have written recently about how Foursquare has failed me, and this does not detract or add to that.  It is just a good implementation of the API to show how mayorships works inside the game known as Foursquare.

Battery
Obviously the first concern everyone raises.  I went through some unofficial tests and timekeeping to see where it falls short in battery life.  Here is those results:

• Airplane mode – everything wireless and applications off and the phone just sitting there idle.  After 16 hours I barely noticed a dip in the battery.  So Android itself is not sucking life.
• Normal usage – on the 3G network, no wifi and normal call rate and application access/syncing.  A normal decline in battery, yet higher than the Blackberry was.  Topping it off daily will be the norm right now.  I definitely broke 12 hours, but I know it wouldn’t make a constant day, or even 6 straight hours of talk time and normal activity.
• 4G or wifi access – I found that this and wifi were big killers of battery life as expected.  I would not expect the HTC EVO or most other smartphones to perform well under heavy usage on 4G or wifi with the tiny batteries inside.  A disclaimer must be made that St Louis does not have supported 4G everywhere yet from Sprint, so making sure it is off until it is official was key to make sure it wasn’t polling all the time for 4G.
• Heavy application access – a lot of the battery life was the size of screen and brightness you utilize the phone in.  Lowering the brightness made a difference in the battery life on the HTV EVO 4G and gave some longer performance.  However, having it too low made the screen unreadable due to glare.  Indoors no issue.  A prime example of combining 3G and the screen was streaming any content and having the screen on long term.  Moving into just clicking and using applications was also tough on the battery and reduced the time measurably.

Physical
The size of the device itself is a distractor to me, but I am a heavy Bluetooth headset user and will focus on that instead of holding the phone to my face for any amount of time.  Android does a nice job of sensing and automatically dimming the screen when you put it next to your face though.  A cool little touch.  However, something I discovered after writing this post, but before publishing.  I am glad I heavily use Bluetooth,  The edge of the phone held to your ear actually feels quite uncomfortable.  A rounded edge there would have made so much more sense.  When you see a side picture of the phone think about that.

As much hype that was placed around the large screen, I was not prepared to carry this thing around.  There was no go holders immediately available at the store but I have one on order from Amazon that has a gel case and holster in one.  Just from the habit of being with Blackberry devices for so long I am used to the holster approach.  Everyone has been asking what holster I liked and bought, so here is the Amazon link for the Seidio Innocase Holster/Case combo (disclosure affiliate link)

Otherwise, the device was easy to manage, easy to learn to navigate and was a decent weight.

Functionality
This is a strong point.  Android made it easy.  Installing apps is a breeze from the marketplace.  Finding apps to do most every function I did before is already complete, plus a slew of new ones.  There is one or two things I wish existed that never will and a few vendors that need to catch up and make official versions.  I imagine that is not far off.

The initial sync and hook in Google was mere seconds.  Adding additional accounts took no time either.  The stream client/sync with Facebook and Twitter was nice but I knew they would be a draw on battery, so I turned those off.  I went for the marketplace Facebook and it sync’d the contacts and more with ease.

From there the simple interaction, moving items around, making shortcuts and whatever else was a breeze.  The book that comes with the HTC EVO was pretty useless on Android information.  It was all about making calls and call features.

I was able to run multiple apps at once with no obvious decrease in speed or performance.  Certain apps always took a moment longer to open, no matter what else was running.  I did not like how some applications came out when the phone started/booted.  It seems they pre-load a ton of things for no reason.  I was also unable to easily find how to uninstall a few applications that came with the phone I knew I would never use and seemed to always want to run.  The application to see and kill all running tasks (free) is a savior to increase performance and I have used it regularly.

The dual camera ability was an interesting twist.  Having a standard 8 megapixel camera is awesome and then the front facing 1.3 camera for conferencing was cool.  The other person does not need an exact phone to conference, it seems they can use the Qik web interface as well with the other person on the HTC EVO.  Very cool.  I am still not sure how useful the HDMI port will be.

Summary
You can see in the video how it handles and looks.  If the Android 2.2 update helps with any battery usage then this phone takes another leap.  I do not think at this time I will go back.  I will give it more testing and effort before a very final decision (Sprint gives you a window to bring it back) and make sure it is the right phone.

This first tool is from Rabid Gremlin and is simply called Privacy Check.

You can visit the original source to see it in larger mode online.  Or feel free to subscribe!

Another Spiked Studio Production

There is no quality control in making, duplicating and creating locations.  This is derived from individuals not wasting the time to correctly search and match a location, to network failures that don’t show results with prompts to create even more.  Seriously, do you really, really think no one has even been to that airport and checked in?  No one?

Then we move into the micro-location placements.  I read an article where Denny, of Foursquare, was paraphrased in saying that it is part of the fun when referring to creating these new micro-locations.

A micro-location (by my new definition) is small places within large check in points.  For example gates at an airport.  I can buy in the to the idea of doing that after you check into the airport itself due to the airport size and letting people know exactly where you sit.  However, which of the 5 airport listings did you get back in your result and how many variations of the gate are there now?  Shouldn’t “gate A7 at Stl” be matched and forced somehow into a single listing of “STL – gate A7″ and the other “A7 gate at Lambert” and maybe “Lambert gate A7″.  Oh the list goes on.  So much more.

A location service basing monetization needs controls of the data itself before moving ahead.  How can you guarantee people are using the one where you offer the free drinks or discounts?  What if two exist?  Who won?  How do I advertise?  How do I track results?

This adds to the overall complexity in the sheer number of location services fighting to be on top.  Or to get purchased and sucked into some major network.  I still use the service, for no other reason that people look there to find people.  However, I am losing value in the visits myself as the user base grows.  Even being a Level 1 Super User has me spending far too much time cleaning up others mistakes to simplify my later check-in experience.

We, as in tech writers and early adopters, quickly jump to the tear-down of each part of the device and capabilities.  The reader of these very articles we write are other tech journalists and early adopters.  Not the consumers seeing this device being shown on morning shows and CNN all day.  Or witnessing the lines at the stores.

No matter what we hate about the device, or what is missing, hand this to anyone on the street and they can work it.  If you own an iPod or iPhone in the house, this is the stepping stone, not a MacBook.  Simplicity and similarity make the iPad itself an easy decision.

Just as you are taught more difficult steps in math, writing skills and even your favorite hobby, Apple has taken that concept to the technology and created the Rosetta Stone of devices.  Easy to use, multimedia capable, adapted games, no controllers and limited real need for accessories.

I watched a YouTube video tonight of a 2.5 year old handed an iPad.  She had played with the parents iPhone for some time and understood the basics.  Click the Home button to get to the screen with the fun stuff to do and slide your finger.  She took off once handed the iPad.  No input from the parents required.

I watched a video of a grandparent that hated computers (said verbally) and was handed the iPad.  Seconds later they were reading and playing a game. Any device that traverses ages and demographics within days of launch was the right move by Apple; no matter if it has a camera or cheap enough applications.

This is only one of many portions of the iFad that Apple created.  Think everyone will have a Facebook account soon that can get connected?  I bet Apple continues to flourish by making devices people want, not what technologists say it should be.

I confirmed that it would not function on other carriers, as shown in this screen shot