I was hanging out at one of my very favorite websites this morning (feedmyapp.com, which is literally a massive list of applications, mostly brand new) when I became enchanted by Neer.
Who they are in their own words:
“Neer is an app, currently in beta for android, that lets users automatically and selectively share their location. Notifications are customizable, and based on user-defined lists of people and places.
Neer allows you to privately and automatically share your location with the people you care about. Not everywhere you go, just the places that really matter.
Neer works in the background so you don’t have to. Go ahead, leave work and leave your phone in your pocket. We’ll let your loved ones know you’re on your way!”
TechCrunch explains: “With Neer, you create a geo-fence around certain places like home, work, or school simply by marking them on your phone when you are there. Entering or leaving the location triggers an update message to your inner circle.”
Reasons I love this:
- Privacy is explicit! You hand pick a few people who will see exactly the places you hand pick.
- It’s ballpark-esque. Other users don’t see the actual name or address of the location, or see your physical location on a map, they see the name you give the place, such as “Home” or “Work”, and that’s all within a radius.
- … And the icing on the cake: It’s automatic! And because you know exactly what you’re sharing and who you’re sharing with, it doesn’t have to be perfect. (I would NEVER let Foursquare check me in automatically. Nope, nope, nope.)
Complaints/ Concerns about Neer:
- They have no Twitter on their website and when I went looking, the only one I found has 2 followers, no updates, and not even a profile picture.
- There’s no way to sign up for email updates… So for all the iPhone users out there (like me) who stop by their site eager (or willing) to be reminded of the launch of an app that they can use, they’re SOL.
- They have no forum for users to submit questions, ideas, etc. ala GetSatisfaction.
Their FAQ says:
“Q: You need notifications, a widget, ability to delete a group, etc…
A: We totally agree. Stay tuned.”
Umm… How? In all fairness, they do have a blog. But listening to your users and enabling them to communicate with you in the best and easiest way possible is absolutely a requirement. If someone ever made a Launchlist for tech start-ups all of the above should most definitely be on there.
So, wait.. Back up… What’s the deal with the geofencing? Sounds intriguing… At first, I mistakenly thought this geofencing thing was brand new.
I pride myself on being pretty “up” on tech news, so I was curious about how much buzz has been going on about this… Google only found about 54k mentions in the last year. Compared with Facebook’s 16 billion, I’m pretty sure most people have never heard of this… So here’s the deal…
A geo-fence is a virtually fenced-off geographic location. When this concept is applied to mobile phones, it refers to a device’s ability to receive automatic alerts or notifications when entering, leaving or moving within a specific geographic area. – RRW
Unsurprisingly, in the mobile world, an app utilizing geofencing draws on the battery quite a bit. Some superstar geeks are out there working on all kinds of things to improve and broaden the potential for this technology. But where does that leave the users?
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