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New social networking site makes surveillance fashionable > Last journey from scorching Nicosia to the beaches of Protaras gained international fame, or so my pals and I like to think, when it showed up on Bliin, one of a new generation of social networking sites that uses satellite positioning technology.

Users logged onto Bliin could watch us travel in real-time, the direction and even the speed at which the car was travelling. They could also view photos of the scenery taken with the mobile. Way too cool, man.

Users with Global Positioning System (GPS) enabled mobile phones log on using a small application loaded onto the handset. Your location can be viewed by other users with similar phones or through Bliin’s website where the positions are superimposed onto Google Maps. Files are geo-tagged using the longitude and latitude taken from the GPS receiver.

Launched in January this year, Bliin is an Amsterdam, Netherlands based company headed by CEOs Stef Kolman and Selene Kolman. The fledgling venture claims some 4,000 members, and was recently listed by CNNMoney.com as one of the best 20 ideas on the Internet.

Stef Kolman says members lacking a GPS receiver can still log onto the website and note their whereabouts, though other users aren’t able to see this in real time. “We call this idle mode, as opposed to the live visibility mode,” said Kolman. “We’re currently updating the site to incorporate extra features that will appeal to a broader base,” he said. “For instance, subscription membership and end-user licences and branded content, such as location-based advertising, though no irritating messages on your mobile phone.”

However, the standard feature set would remain free for users. “What’s really exciting is the ability to generate information about people on the move. We call this geodata. This information, which is collective, never individual, could then be applied to infrastructural decisions, say where’s the best location to place a bus stop or a billboard. “Another thing in the pipeline are search tags, where you type in a keyword for, let’s say, French cuisine, and people’s recommendations come up on your desktop or your mobile.”

Social networking sites, which allow users to share photos, videos and update friends on everything they do, have been around for some time but really took off two years ago. As usual with all things internet, the US is where it all began. Facebook, MySpace and HiFive are some of the most popular sites these days, with their numbers growing by the minute. In August 2006, MySpace reported 100 million users in total, with 250,000 new registrations a day.

And if you thought that social networking was the domain of nerds and good-for-nothing slouchers, think again. Recently a campaign on Facebook forced HSBC bank to reconsider its move to charge interest on its graduate overdraft accounts. The bank bowed to pressure after the National Union of Students organised a virtual protest on the website calling on students and graduates to boycott the bank.

Not everyone is comfortable with the idea of location-based networking. For example, the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre is looking at the possibility of the technology being abused. On its website, the organisation states: “This has significant implications in terms of grooming via mobile social networking sites with offenders potentially able to locate their victims in this way.”

But according to Alex Schleifer, CEO of internet agency Sideshow, whereas privacy is always a concern, most respectable social networking sites do enough to protect users. “At any rate, kids nowadays don’t have the same sort of attitude towards privacy. They’re not as cautious as, say, the previous generation. They’re OK with giving out information about themselves, what music they like and so on, and besides their profile is available only to the people they choose. The more information you share with your friends, the better off you are on the network.”

For Schleiffer, geo-tagging is the “next big step” for social networking. And he predicts it will become a big part of the boom in what is known as Web 2.0, which revolves around user-generated content. “Think about it. When a friend arrives at a place you’ve tagged, their mobile beeps letting them know you’ve been there. This is the sort of thing that will bring the technology into real life.”

And he sees huge business potential in the technology. “Right now, everyone’s trying to figure out how to use this is an advertising platform. With most youngsters spending their free time on the internet, it’s clear there’s a huge client base to tap into. We’re talking about the 16-25 age group, the untouchable generation if you will. They’re not watching television or reading magazines any more. They’re online all the time. Take the new Die Hard movie that’s coming out. You’ll be able to send a friend a Die Hard ‘gift’, a picture of a veering truck from the movie. The possibilities are endless.”

And while Cypriot entrepreneurs might take some time to get on board, the public has already caught on. “On the one hand you’ve got all these students abroad, making new contacts and getting familiar with what’s hot on the technology beat; on the other, there’s the Cypriot diaspora. Right now we’ve seen a few high-schools in Cyprus that have formed their own groups within social networking sites. There’s no real need to set up a bona fide ‘Cypriot’ site, since Facebook is a global activity, said Schleifer. “Kids under 20 are eating this stuff up. Everyone wants to be famous.” w00t!

In addition to bliin (www.bliin.com) check out these sites > www.trackut.com and www.kakiloc.com

Amazon.com to sell music downloads as SpiralFrog goes for free

The world of online music stores is growing rapidly as Amazon.com  has started testing a digital-music download service to compete with Apple’s iTunes, while another iPod killer, SpiralFrog plans to offer free downloads of millions of tracks, legally.

The Amazon MP3 store will allow shoppers to buy and download individual songs or entire albums that can be copied to any device or computer, burned onto CDs and played on most types of PCs and music players, including Apple’s iPod or iPhone. Songs will cost 89-99 cents each and albums will sell for $5.99 to $9.99.

Amazon.com said the new service will include tracks from more than 20,000 record labels and they will be available in the MP3 format without anti-copying programmes known as digital rights management software (DRM).

iTunes was the largest online music store in 2006, with 70% of the market, according to research firm NPD Group. But record companies, such as the giant Universal Music Group which controls 25% of the world music marke, are trying to reduce Apple’s domination of the digital music marketplace by refused to renew a long-term agreements to sell their music on iTunes.

Apple sold more than 3 billion songs since iTunes’s April 2003 debut and the service currently offers more than 5 mln songs, 550 TV shows and 500 movies. On the other hand, as music lovers been getting free music online since the days of Napster, peer-to-peer sites such as Limewire and Bit Torrent are getting more common, but are also deemed in violation of copyright and can expose users to viruses and malware, not to mention poor recordings.

Newcomer SpiralFrog has the support of dozens of music companies, including Universal Music Group and the site offers more than 750,000 songs for free, including popular tracks from U2, Timbaland, Amy Winehouse and others. The only snag is that SpiralFrog tracks cannot be downloaded to iPods, by far the most popular of all portable media players, though downloads can happen to Windows-compatible devices.

Users also have to renew their free subscriptions every month to retain access to the SpiralFrog library, at which time they will also be required to fill out a survey on their music and buying habits. They will have to wait 90 seconds for every download, during which time they will hopefully look at ads which is where SpiralFrog aims to make money.

Apple’s doubling production to meet demand

There might be queues aplenty on iPhone launch day on Friday 9 November, but there certainly won’t be a shortage of phones.

Sources close to Apple say the company is nearly doubling the number of iPhones it’s making ahead of Christmas from the originally planned 1.54 million, to a staggering 2.7 million.

That’s presumably to meet rising demand from the US following the $200 (£9 price cut in the iPhone’s price there, while also satisfying eager iPhone buyers in the UK, France and Germany.

If the increased production numbers are true, then Apple will have also busted its own stats for the whole of 2007, with 4.8 million phones to be built, compared to the 3.6 million it had originally predicted. Apple says it hopes to sell 10 miillon iPhones by the end of 2008.

Foreign phrases at your fingertips with new series of audio tracks

You’re in a busy train station in Paris and need to buy a ticket, but you draw a blank under the impatient clerk’s wilting glare. Time to panic? Nope, instead you pull out your iPod and with a couple of clicks hear and see the French language phrases you need.

If you’re one of the 40 million people with iPods or other MP3 players, you can take advantage of a new audio and visual phrasebook for travellers called iSpeak French by Alex Chapin ($15.95, also available in German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and Chinese).

It allows you to see and hear hundreds of words and phrases, which you can use as study tools to prep for an upcoming trip or as a language reference while you’re on the road. You’re never more than three clicks away from any of the words or phrases.

Downloading the phrasebook into your iPod gives you access to nearly 1,500 audio tracks, organized into categories like finding accommodations, arranging transport and dining out. And when trouble inevitably arises, you’ll be able to say, “My car won’t start,” “The bill is not correct,” or if all else fails, “I want to call a lawyer”, all phrases included in the book.

You can locate the words and phrases on your iPod in the same way you find music files, by browsing Artists or Genres. Using Playlists, you can create your own dictation by choosing titles from various parts of the book.

Words and phrases scroll by on the screen as they play, in French and English. But if your player doesn’t have a screen, this feature won’t be available and you’ll have to make do with the hard-copy booklet included for your reference.

I found that downloading was straightforward enough. But be warned, the phrasebook does use a lot of memory, about two gigabytes, or half of the memory available in my iPod Nano. Depending on how much memory you have, you might not have much, if any, space left for music, audiobooks or other applications.

As language lessons go, this is fairly basic. It doesn’t include pronunciation guides, grammar rules or conversations. But it does make excellent use of the memory and organizational abilities of iPods and other MP3 players. Available at leading bookstores and online at Chapters and Amazon.

One of Japan’s top toy companies said Friday that it would launch small humanoids for adults to play with, hoping to tap a new market as the developed world gets older.

The 16.5-centimeter (half-foot) tall robot, named i-Sobot, is able to make some 200 physical movements, including somersaults and other complex acrobatics, speaks some 180 words, and responds to verbal commands. Tomy Co. Ltd. said that the target audience was men in their 40s and above.

“As the number of children decreases, toy makers, if they want to maintain their market, have to reach out to adults and lift the barriers between toys and high-tech products,” company official Kimi Watanabe told a news conference. There are lots of adults who dream of having a real robot but don’t have the means, knowing it would cost them several hundred-thousand yen,” or thousands of dollars, he said.

The i-Sobot will go on sale in Japan at a cost of 30,000 yen ($250) October 25. An English-speaking version will go on sale shortly afterwards in the United States. The company chose to make the Japanese-speaking robot white and the US version black. A European launch is anticipated next year. Tomy hopes to sell 50,000 units in Japan and 300,000 worldwide.

The robot will be the first product sold with Sanyo Electric Co.’s next-generation rechargeable Eneloop battery “in hope of sending an ecological message and reducing the use of disposable batteries,” Watanabe said.

Japan has one of the world’s oldest populations as more seniors live longer and many young people decide that starting families would impose a burden on their careers or lifestyles.