Technically Speaking

Friends On Fire, the new Facebook app that launched earlier today based off of the Yahoo! Fire Eagle. Along with the official Yahoo! blog post, there was really good coverage of the new app.

In addition to Friends on Fire, we’re also launching a new way to update Fire Eagle — a Firefox extension that adds a button to your toolbar. With one click, your location is instantly shared with your trusted friends on your favorite services.

I haven’t had time to try the Firefox Fire Eagle extension yet, as it’s been a busy Friday – wanted to write this post hours ago! Glad it was well covered.

Of course, if you’re out and about, you’re not necessarily going to be hauling around your computer with you. Instead, you’ll want to grab one of the mobile Fire Eagle updaters from Yahoo’s Gallery. These apps include simple mobile updaters like Fire Fone for the iPhone as well as more robust social networking apps like Brightkite.

I haven’t tried the mobile yet either. Now here is one thing that did come up in discussion in a call I had earlier today. There are a lot of 35 and older people online. In fact, here is a thought for you – most people that age and older would rather have a hidemenow.com function vs a “Here I am! Here I am!” mobile all the time find me everywhere network. Not saying there is failure here, but basically – you are not 23 years old forever is all I’m saying!

While Foursquare and Whrrl may have a good time this weekend at SXSW, how will it translate into the real outside of SXSW coming in the following weeks.

Just in time for SXSW, Dennis Crowley, one of the original developers of Dodgeball, has released a new location-aware social app (iTunes link) for the iPhone: Foursquare.

One of the main issues of Foursquare that I see out of the box is limited support or limited areas as described.

The app currently features a database for 12 of the larger metropolitan areas in the U.S., including Boston, New York, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, and Austin. We expect that Foursquare will add data for more cities in the next few months. If a certain restaurant or bar is not in Foursquare’s database, you can also add your own.

Like I said – after Austin and SXSW this week – what about the real world post SXSW?

Whrrl, I just never found it easy or fun. Maybe that has changed in the 2.0 version as outlined in this post, but still what about Loopt?

You’ve got options when it comes to iPhone apps designed to help you capture moments in time, but the Whrrl v2.0 iPhone app hopes to help you combine photos, stories, and your location with the photos and stories of your friends for a collective storytelling experience.

While there is even more written about Yahoo! and Fire Eagle, and Friends On Fire.

Despite the hype they get, location-based services have yet to catch on in the mainstream.

That above quote is the main issue of location based social nets in one sentence.

Of the two, Friends on Fire for Facebook is the more consumer-friendly.

This above quote sums up Friends On Fire for Facebook. It is quite easy to use, and yes, I signed up as shown by this picture below.

Technically Speaking, there are just as many 35+ age people online and technology savvy as I already stated above that would rather have some startup come up with the hidemequicknow.com vs the find me here! Find me NOW! COME HUG me TODAY! social networks of today. It’s not at all a fail, but a miscalculation of mainstream appeal. For complete coverage inside of SXSW – check out Rizzn unleashed, on twitter @rizzn, as well as posts that he will be putting up on siliconANGLE.

It’s late on a Friday afternoon, and while siliconANGLE is a new blogging venture that John Furrier invited me in on, it’s certainly not lacking for content! Currently we are growing, and as we grow we should have even more content for you to read.

Here is a look at what has been happening just over the past couple of days:

It’s Almost Too Late to Save Print Media – Rizzn digs in here with a great post that of course was spurred on by the closing of the newspaper today – The Rocky Mountain News.

MicroPlaza Organizes URL’s That Tweet Past You – Yes as one of our readers pointed out – it’s not a twitter based company, but more like a company that has been created once again based on the twitter API!

iPhoneMania Only in Certain Locations – iPhone seems to be a no go in Japan.

DEMO 09 Class of Demonstrators! – John was given a schedule for DEMO09 last week, and we posted it. Later we did find out that it was under embargo, so while that looks bad on us, we as siliconANGLE the blog was never officially given this item with someone saying to John “Yo, it’s under embargo until such and such time!”

Facebook Decides To Be A Commune – After writing this one, I was sort of thinking, “That’s pretty damn good!” – and when I was linked later, I was quite pleased others had a similar line of thinking. Although as I watched Mark Zuckerberg this morning on Today, I was hoping, “Man, I hope he didn’t see that and make some rude comment about communes and hippies!” And if he did, well – that would have been even cooler!

Yahoo Re-Org Round-Up – Rizzn masterfully sorted out the mess known as the Yahoo re-organization memo(s) or rather, we found out that the new CEO likes to memo out the employees! Another skillful surgery through the massive amounts of Yahoo coverage, Rizzn’fied.

Will Michael Sit Become Web 2.0’s Kevin Mitnick? – Rizzn once again cuts through the noise, and this time pulls something to to the surface that is being buried. Yes, Michael Sit – the media ignores it, but Rizzn rips through the slime of cover up to pull the facts to the surface for the readers.

Twitterfied Yet? – Do we need more twitter coverage? Google coverage? Well maybe not, but we covered it anyways.

DEMO Changing Hands – Kara Swisher Interview with Matt Marshall and Chris Shipley – John has total respect for DEMO and the changes and posted the Kara Swisher interview with Matt and Chris.

Forget InterWebs Think InterClouds – John talks about the InterClouds.

Panther Express and CDNetworks Merger – Making sure we also try to keep up with the infrastructure.

Social Media Lessons Learned – What To Do – John talks about social media and what he has learned. This seemed to be a popular subject this week, and John addressed it well.

Technically Speaking that was just the past two days over at siliconANGLE and hopefully you had a chance to check in and read a few of those posts, and if not, well there is the weekend to catch up on the angles we presented over the past couple of days, and there is more if you want to dig back a little bit.