{"id":675,"date":"2009-05-11T20:32:51","date_gmt":"2009-05-11T20:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=675"},"modified":"2009-05-11T20:36:48","modified_gmt":"2009-05-11T20:36:48","slug":"why-im-giving-up-on-brightkite-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=675","title":{"rendered":"Why I’m giving up on brightkite (for now)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A common simple approach to identifying a user’s location is to give them a text box, and ask them to type in where they are. <\/p>\n

It’s not that easy, as I was reminded last night. <\/p>\n

I’ve been using brightkite<\/a> for some time now – a web service for sharing your location. <\/p>\n

The mobile site m.brightkite.com<\/a> lets you update your location from your phone. <\/p>\n

I tried updating my location last night from Southampton Airport Parkway train station<\/a> while waiting for my train home from Open Hack London<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>I typed “Southampton Airport Parkway”.<\/p>\n

When brightkite isn’t sure where you mean, it offers a list to choose from. <\/p>\n

If it thinks it knows where you mean, it shows that one alone.<\/p>\n

Brightkite decided that I meant…<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Partido Judicial de Pamplona. <\/p>\n

In Spain.<\/p>\n

Erm… not quite. <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

So I tried something else.<\/p>\n

Maybe if I added “Eastleigh”, it’d help clarify what I meant. <\/p>\n

I typed in “Southampton Airport Parkway, Eastleigh”.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Not much better. <\/p>\n

This time it decided that I meant “Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya”. <\/p>\n

Really? Where did it get that from either “Southampton” or “Eastleigh”?<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Okay, I thought maybe the “Parkway” bit was too obscure for it, so I just went for “Southampton Airport”. <\/p>\n

I wasn’t in the airport, but I was close enough that this would do. <\/p>\n

And surely this wouldnt be too ambiguous?<\/p>\n

Apparently it can be. <\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Brightkite decided that I must be in South Africa.<\/p>\n

This was getting ridiculous.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

After a few tries, I found a query string that showed where I was. <\/p>\n

And that’s a crucial point – it should be pointed out that Southampton Airport Parkway Railway Station<\/a> was in the Brightkite database. <\/p>\n

I didn’t add it or create it as a Brightkite place. It was there already, but just not being returned by my searches.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong – I am well aware how difficult it is to do this right. This was fresh in my mind after Open Hack<\/a> where I went to a talk on GeoPlanet<\/a> – Yahoo’s service for identifying locations. <\/p>\n

After playing with it while developing my hack<\/a>, I was impressed. It seems to work very well. <\/p>\n

This wasn’t the first time I’ve heard people talk about the challenges of identifying locations from user-entered text. This was the topic of a very entertaining talk “The tyranny of the box” at Geomob a couple of months ago<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So as a technologist, I have a lot of sympathy, and am well aware of the challenges involved in parsing descriptions of places.<\/p>\n

But as a user, it’s just too much hassle. Last night wasn’t the first time I’ve bumped into this problem using brightkite. For now, I think I’ll leave it until their service handles UK place names a little better. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A common simple approach to identifying a user’s location is to give them a text box, and ask them to type in where they are. It’s not that easy, as I was reminded last night. I’ve been using brightkite for some time now – a web service for sharing your location. The mobile site m.brightkite.com […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[385,386,384],"class_list":["post-675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-web","tag-brightkite","tag-geo","tag-geolocation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}