Location goes A-List with Google Latitude

Since the Google Latitude announcement on Feb. 4,  it is clear that from a strategic level, Google has not given up on location. After the initial failure of Dodgeball and the dismissal of Jaiku as a presence application they are once again trying to jump in. For us at In Real Life, this is a defining moment. Google will expand the Latitude service on the mobile and with that it will gradually expand on the web. Other parties like Facebook and Myspace will move forward too and I would not be surprised if Microsoft or Yahoo take a stand. 

  Although any movement from Google is threatening to anyone involved in location we rather embrace the initiative as a clear signal of the potential that lies in location and look at the red ocean that is taking place on the mobile. As all eyes are focused on the battlefield, the potential of the blue ocean that is the web is overlooked when it comes to LBS. As stated in our press release, we are unlocking the value of location on the web by creating a centralized platform for LBS. By aggregating existing social networks like Twitter and Facebook and with our recent partnership with the Barcelona based mobile social network Geo-Me, we are setting the pace. 

Verbeterdebuurt

Friday the 8th of February IRL and Creative Crowds presented their joint venture Verbeterdebuurt to the Digitale Pioniers project leaders. Verbeterdebuurt is a platform where citizens and local government are brought together to improve their neighbourhood. The concept is based on Fixmystreet from the UK, which is a project from MySociety. It was initiated during an Open Coffee session in Amsterdam. In the coming months we will be developing the Verbeterdebuurt platform. All groundbreaking developments will be posted on this weblog.

Below are two photos from the meeting at the Digitale Pioniers (click phtotos to enlarge). A set of photos is available on our Flickr account.

Marco Scholten Joins IRL

We are proud to announce that Marco Scholten will strengthen the technical development of IRL Connect. He will team up Mark Scholten (really, the names are a coincidence!) who is already busy with creating the IRL Connect backbone.

Short Q/A with Marco – Why did you join IRL?
“When I first heard about the project it got my attention right away. The idea of molting your virtual life with your real life is very exciting. I have not found a product like this yet. It is a innovative idea with the potential to reach many users and fits right in with the developments in online social networking. For me it is a great challenge to be part of this.“

What experience do you bring to IRL?
“After the introduction of internet in the Netherlands I immediately started making websites. First with HTML, later on with Perl and ASP. Because of my growing interest in programming I chose to study Technical Informatica and later on I got my bachelor Informatica. During my last study, which I finished in May this year, I got in touch with PHP and .NET, which I’m specializing in right now.”

What would you like to say to our future users?
Keep track of what we are doing. We are ready for a new era where your real life and your online life are closer connected. I hope to be a part of this together with the IRL team!

On behalf of IRL I welcome Marco to our team and we look forward to an excellent coorporation.

Marco Scholten on LinkedIn.
More photos on our corporate Flickr account.

Open for feedback

We have opened up the discussion and the real innovators can already sign up for the closed IRL Connect beta at getsatisfaction.com/irl. Please leave your e-mail at our closed beta topic or contact me directly through our corporate website. You will automatically be notified when we are ready for you.

Anything else?

Don’t forget to check out our stalk-your-competitors-by-buying-similar-looking-url’s marketing campaign, starting off with Bliin at www.blin.nl ;)

Detailed vision of IRL: Reality Fusion

Some people have asked me about the vision behind our company IRL (In Real Life). Although the basic outline is described on our corporate

What is virtual?

From a philosophical point of view virtual is that which is not real, but may display the full qualities of the real. Translations of the real into the virtual are widespread phenomenon’s. The most prominent example of this is the virtual world Second Life which aims at imitating life without the boundaries of reality. Visionaries have made visual representations of what virtual worlds may evolve to in science fiction books, series, movies and art. The Matrix is one of those representations that showed in a dramatic sense what may be the result of artificial intelligence combined with virtual evolution. Of course it is hard to say in what way virtual reality and physical reality will fuse together, but we can start by looking at current developments.

The market

The metaverse roadmap shows the segmentation of solutions that are out there today. To get a better understanding of what you are seeing:

• Lifelogging is blogging, Twittering, Jaiku-ing, Flickr-ing, Youtube-ing and all other applications and websites that provide a platform to share your life with the rest of the world.

• Virtual worlds are digitally created worlds like Second Lifeand game environments . Many companies come to see the benefits of such worlds, because they allow them to try things in virtual worlds before practicing them in real life.

• Augmented reality is basically a combination of the digital and the real.

• Mirror worlds model the real world like Google Maps and Virtual Earth.

Of course this is a simplification. Please read the whole metaverse roadmap to get a better understanding about our vision.

What about IRL?

It is our believe that these solutions will fuse together. Products that want to achieve this should have the right mix of augmentation and simulation while enabling users to be both identity- and world-focused. We came up with our service IRL Connect based on needs we came across and the metavers space model, which will be a geoweb service (see article in The Economist and geoweb on wikipedia) that integrates lifelogging in a social context. From there on we will take our users and guide them to augmented reality. We start with a geoweb service instead of augmented reality or a virtual world for many reason, but the main reason is timing. Although the majority has adopted social networking, mobile devices, Google Maps, direct communication and started creating their own content, they technologically trail behind to initiate the full experience we are aiming for.

We could use your help

I hope the IRL vision is clear now. If you are interested in joining us and help us realize this vision in any way possible, please do contact me through our corporate website www.irlcorporate.com. We are always looking for programmers and people with useful advice that can enhance the user experience for our service IRL Connect. It is scheduled to be released in February 2008.