Location Geek — The Offical ZKOUT Blog

What’s the fuzz about?

We have integrated with Facebook — you can now share your ZKOUT activities with all of your Facebook friends automatically, yay!  Add the Facebook App by going to “Settings -> Share” in the ZKOUT Web Interface (http://www.zkout.com). Once there follow the instructions to setup ZKOUT for Facebook. 

Facebook Status with Location

Post a ZKOUT Note and it will update your Facebook status with location included… neat!

Location Box for your Facebook Profile

From now on your Facebook friends never have to worry about where you are. The Location Box is automatically synced with your ZKOUT location.

Widget for your Facebook Profile

The Widget reveals your three latest ZKOUT pictures. Any new picture you post to ZKOUT is also automatically posted to your Facebook news feed.

iPhone App – even though our mobile web version of ZKOUT is available at http://m.zkout.com we figured a native app for iPhone would be cool. You’ll be able to update your location automatically in the app, so no more typing in where you are manually. Also we’ll give you access to the camera, so snapping pictures and sharing them with your ZKOUT friends is done with a few taps… and your location is as always tagged with the post.

Facebook App – wouldn’t it be great if you could let your Facebook friends know about how much fun you have using ZKOUT? We’ll enable you to automatically share your ZKOUT activities to Facebook, so that your Facebook friends can know where you’re at and see all the cool pictures and videos that you upload through ZKOUT.

We have released RSS for ZKOUT feeds (your feed and other users’ feeds). This enables you to hook up news feeds to your favorite RSS reader and be in sync with ZKOUT. The RSS feeds also open up the opportunity to develop neat ZKOUT widgets. If this is something you are interested in, contact us at developers “at” wichro “dot” com and we will get you started.

To subscribe to your own news feed simply click on the RSS button found on the news header on your home page. If you want to subscribe to another user’s RSS feed go to his/her profile and click on the RSS button found on the news header. It is as simple as that.

High quality version of the video here

ZKOUT is happy to announce our new release! Our engineers have been working around the clock over the past few months incorporating your feedback and developing new features. Thank you so much for all the great suggestions and feedback – you guys are awesome!

So what’s new in ZKOUT?

• New UI. Beautiful design and simplified layout.
• Improved privacy. You can now block users from contacting you or viewing your online activity.
• Twitter integration. Automatically post your notes to Twitter! Go to Settings to enable Twitter.
• Yahoo! Fire Eagle integration. Enable Yahoo! Fire Eagle to update your ZKOUT location automatically.
• Blackberry Support. Blackberry users can now use m.zkout.com!
• Local News feed. See what others are commenting on and discussing in your area. Post a Note and see how it pops up live in the News Feed.
• Text Messaging (SMS). You can receive Text Messages directly to your phone when someone wants to contact you or comments on your Posts. It is also possible to send Notes and change your Location by sending Text Messages to our UK phone number (US number to be enabled soon!). Go to Settings to enable Text Messaging.

If you use Twitter follow us on twitter.com/zkout as we post important updates there. Any comments on the new release are greatly appreciated!

What do you think?

We are SUPER excited about our new release… its coming very, very soon :-). Take a look at these screen shots. New features and improved usability!

News.com has a nice article on Wichro and ZKOUT. Check it out!

Hola!

You can now upload pictures and videos from ZKOUT’s web interface. Hurray! Simply click on “Post Pictures” which is found under “My Moments” on “My Home”.

Once you have clicked on the button the Moment Uploader will pop up. From here you can specify where you were, when the Moment took place and of course upload one or many pictures or videos. Let us know how it works!

/ZKOUT-team

Flat rate data plans in conjunction with more robust handsets (iPhone yes, but there are tons of other handsets that also allow for great mobile web experiences) has opened up this very exciting market. Accessing the Internet is no longer an exclusive deal with your desktop. There are countries like South Africa where the by far most common way of accessing the Internet is via the handset. In fact, in development countries it is not unlikely that someone’s first exposure to the Internet is via the handset!

There are estimates that Mobile Advertising could be worth as much as $52 billions by 2012. These numbers are questioned, and what on earth would make Mobile Advertising this valuable? Do we even want ads in our phones, which by all means are our dearest possessions? Taking into account the already limited screen size of most phones, will not ads on my phone be intrusive and maybe even evil?

Regarding the future value of mobile advertising I do not think that the estimated market value is exaggerated. However, someone needs to develop an efficient marketplace that utilizes the properties of the handset to its full extent -– and location-awareness is the killer attribute. Just imagine when your usage pattern on your phone can be used to deliver contextual ads that you want and are timely instead of “Click here to access my Bermudan poker-site”-ad. When businesses can target a group of people that are drinking beer within a specific geographical area, and tell them: “Come to my pub across the street and the first round is on the house”. What would the value of a conversion in that case be worth for the advertiser? Maybe location-based advertising based on collaborative filtering is one of the most promising hopes to increase the quality of ads by delivering content that is timely and appreciated by the consumer.