For the last two weeks I’ve been playing around with Brightkite, a location based social network that utilizes a GeoRSS feed and Twitter to enable you to see which of your friends are nearby at any given time. The premise is that you “check in” to various locations as your day unfolds, allowing you to publish notes or photos for the world to see.

How To Update Brightkite Via Email

I’ve noticed a few people out there wonder how this is done. Brightkite doesn’t yet support international SMS updates, so for us Aussies the next best thing is to update via email (I have email set up on my mobile). First off, you need to find the unique email address that is linked to your account. Do this by clicking on your “Account Settings” then hitting the “Mobile” tab and the email address is on the bottom right. Click the picture below for full size.

Got the email address you need to send your updates to? Great. Ok. On to the next step - setting up some placemarks.

Think of placemarks like bookmarks, or shortcuts. I found that once you have set up your placemarks, it makes checking into Brightkite alot more simplified. You don’t have to do this, but in the long run it saves time. Trust me. Or don’t.

Two of my more popular placemarks I use are “Home” and “Work“. Setting up a placemark is very easy. On the side menu click “Placemarks” then in the search bar at the top of the screen, type in your residental location. (For me it is Kensington, Victoria, Australia). See the pic below. Click for full size.

Once you’ve done that, “Add to Placemarks“

Now label your placemark. In this example, I’ve labelled it “Home“.

Repeat the above steps with other locations you frequent. I’ve set up “Home“, “Work“, “Flinders” and “Baranduda“.

Once your placemarks are set up accordingly, you can now check in to Brightkite via email much more easily.

The Email Commands

Ok, so you are on the move and want to check in via email. Simply start a new email message and leave the subject line blank. Because we set up a “Home” placemark before, all need need to do is to inform Brightkite. In the body of your email, simply type”@ Home”…

If you have set any other placemarks such as “Work“, “Flinders” or “Pub” then all you simply need to do is email Brightkiite “@ <placemark>”. Make sense?

If you haven’t set up a placemark, simply email your location as such. If you haven’t visited there previously, Brightkite will ask for confirmation. For example, if you email…

Brightkite will ask for confirmation…

Simply reply with a “Y” to confirm and your status is updated!

More Email Commands

Direct Message: m username your message
Example: m andrewsayer Hey there, how’s things? Did you make bail?

Post a note: ! your message
Example: ! Didn’t make bail. Court tomorrow morning.
(PROTIP: Your note will be posted at your current location)

Posting a photo:

Once you have fired off that email with the pic attached, the photo and the note will appear in your Brightlite timeline as such:-

Overall, Brightkite is a new and interesting way of managing and contacting your friends online. There is a lot of potential in this venture, especially as GPS is introduced into more and more mobile phones nowadays. With Brightkite still in BETA, there is numerous ways that they can expand. I am interested in seeing Brightkite being used for ametaur journalism as Twitter is nowadays. Who knows? One day a Brightkite user may be “on the spot” of some major breaking news, post their location and pictures of the event. That is why I am keen on them adding comments to people’s photos.

Hope the quick run through helped. - @andrewsayer

ADVANCED

Place streams, user streams, and the Brightkite Universe stream now have GeoRSS feeds.

View Larger Map

For example, click here to see the Brightkite Universe timeline rendered in Google Maps.

To see your timeline simply replace YOURUSERNAME with, yeah you guessed it, your username and then copy and paste the link into the Google Maps search bar.

http://brightkite.com/people/YOURUSERNAME/objects.rss?limit=100&filters=notes,text,photos

You should get something like this:

View Larger Map

Access Brightkite via the web at http://brightkite.com, their mobile site at m.brightkite.com or visit Brightkite.com on your iPhone/iPod Touch for their nifty streamlined interface.

Also see @bcks post about Brightkite on Pantsland.com

I have a limited number of invites. Hit me up in the comments if you would like one.

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