BrightKite – Twitter with Location

Brightkite is a new site to me that is quickly becoming one of my new favorite sites out there. It’s basically a Twitter clone that allows you to “check in” where ever you are. I find myself using it more than Twitter lately. In fact, I can even update my Twitter feed through BrightKite.

It will tell me who is within a certain radius of me and what they are doing. Users also can upload pictures of these places and anything else that happens. But the best feature is its SMS capabilities. I can sent BrightKite a text message with “@ home” and it will check me in at the location I have marked as my home. I can do the same thing for work too. I can also take a picture, attach that picture to an email with the subject line of what I’m doing and send it to a special BrightKite email address and it will add that picture to that location with whatever I said along with it.

It’s a really cool site, still in beta so you have to get invited to get in. I have 2 invites left so if you want one, let me know. Also, check out my profile here.

Update: I have a total of 5 BrightKite updates to give away now thanks to the awesome people there.

Streamy Review – So Far, So Good

So I hunted down and finally received and invite to Streamy last weekend and got to get my grubby hands on it. So far I like what I see. I tried so hard to get it because of what I had heard; that is was the “Next Latest and Greatest” web app. While I can’t quite agree with that, I definitely can say that I would give it a “Thumbs Up”.

I have never been one to really get into the RSS readers before. I have one on the gadget bar for Vista but nothing other than that. Streamy has a really good way of handling RSS feeds. Very easy to add and go through. After you see one, it marks it read and takes it away. Not sure if it is lost forever from your subscriptions but it does what I would want so I’ve never looked.

I do like the start page but have run into a few situations where I have seen some old stories that should have only been up there for 24 hours. Not a big deal at all.

I really like the instant messaging offered. I haven’t used it yet but it seems really easy to IM your friends and share articles that you are reading. I can see this as very productive.

This brings me to my negative comment about the site. I really wish that they would open it up to more people. I would love to get some more friends of mine in here but I am only given a limited amount of invites (2 per email address). If they were to make that something in the 5-10 range, I can see this thing really taking off. If I was able to easily invite more of my friends and co-workers, I think my experience would be a whole lot better.

Overall I would give Streamy a 7 out of 10 rating (9 out of 10 if they let more users in). It’s a great app and I highly recommend begging anyone for an invite. I still have one left