Benefits of a Social Calendar

Mar 10, 2009 Live Local, Newspapers, TownSync, Video

As the initial launch of townsync.com approaches, we wanted to lay out some of the benefits to using an online social calendar.

So What is a Social Calendar?

A social calendar is a calendar with social functions – when events are posted they can be synchronized with others so the event is seen on both calendars.

What are the Benefits of a Calendar on TownSync?

TownSync brings social calendar functions to small towns across the country. With an account a user gets a free public and private calendar that can be synced with anyone on TownSync. The communities on TownSync are arranged by location so finding things going on and meeting new people in a local area has never been easier.

Private

The private calendar can be used as a personal scheduler unseen by the rest of the community.

Public

The public calendar can be seen by connections and used to sync with friends, colleagues and others in town.

Sync Function

If there is an event displayed on someone’s public calendar you can “sync” the event so it displays on your calendar. If you like everything that person has on their calendar you can also sync their entire calendar to your own. This way all the events in town you would like to remember or be reminded of are on your personal calendar.

When you are promoting an event you can display it to the community and others can sync it with their own calendar. Not only does this help to spread the word, but when someone syncs the event it is displayed on their public calendar to be a constant reminder of the date and location of the event.

Location

TownSync is based around US Zip-Codes. Unlike other global social-networks, TownSync connects people based on a radius around their Zip-Code. This benefits every user on the site because it connects them and allows them to sync their schedule with people that matter. Instead of finding events based on what is posted to the entire world, TownSync gives people the ability to find things happening, and people living nearby.

National

Say you’re going to another city for the weekend, or moving to a new town. You would probably want to find out what that town is like, see some pictures and search through local events, right? TownSync also gives the ability to go to other Towns/Zip-Codes and see businesses, classifieds and events happening in that town.

What Would You Like to See?

We are very excited for the launch and are looking forward to hearing what people think of the site. What features would you like to see on TownSync?

Tags: benefits, calendar, TownSync

A Downside to Geotagging?

Jan 27, 2009 Live Local

“Geotagging” is a term being used now when photos and things posted online are tagged with their geographical locations.

In an article for this month’s Wired magazine, Mathew Honan writes about his recent experience using GPS tracking and Geotagging. While many people are excited about the availability of Geotagging, especially with the advanced features on the popular Apple iPhone, others are becoming more concerned with the privacy issues this may reveal. Mathew Honan is one of them:

To test whether I was being paranoid, I ran a little experiment. On a sunny Saturday, I spotted a woman in Golden Gate Park taking a photo with a 3G iPhone. Because iPhones embed geodata into photos that users upload to Flickr or Picasa, iPhone shots can be automatically placed on a map. At home I searched the Flickr map, and score—a shot from today. I clicked through to the user’s photostream and determined it was the woman I had seen earlier. After adjusting the settings so that only her shots appeared on the map, I saw a cluster of images in one location. Clicking on them revealed photos of an apartment interior—a bedroom, a kitchen, a filthy living room. Now I know where she lives.

Granted this woman doesn’t have to use a Flickr account, and she doesn’t even need to upload the photos to the Internet, but this does raise some very interesting privacy issues. Are people even aware of the geotagging functions for their accounts? Do they know how to shut them off?

As a website for local communities we tend to look at the amazing possibilities Geotagging will have for localizing the Internet, but the privacy issue is definitely a good concern to have. We hope to eventually incorporate ways of using Geotagging on TownSync, but the most important thing for us will be to allow users control over their own privacy.

Tags: geotagging, gps, location, mathew honan, privacy

How President Obama’s Stimulus Plan can Help the HyperLocal Internet

Jan 27, 2009 Businesses, Live Local

President Obama presented an $825 billion economic stimulus plan this month, $6 billion of which is proposed to expand high-speed Internet access in rural and undeserved communities. The theory is that spreading Internet access to underprivileged communities will help build jobs and increase innovation and efficiency in the US.

This is very exciting for those of us involved in HyperLocal content as it will only make the possibilities for localizing the Internet even stronger. Areas still using dial-up modems to connect to the Internet will have access to broadband connections. We will begin to see more people from these small areas joining social networks, starting blogs and connecting more openly with others online.

Tags: Barack Obama, blogging, economic stimulus, economy, hyperlocal, internet, localization, social networks

How local will a TownSync Community be?

Jan 23, 2009 Live Local, TownSync

A very interesting site by Ben Fry called “ZipDecoder” breaks the United States down by zip-codes visually. This sparked our interest as we thought it would give our users a better idea of just how local a TownSync Community can be. We suggest you check out the site, and keep in mind that TownSync will have a Community for every one of these zip-codes!

Here is the link

Tags: townsync community, zip-codes, zipdecoder

The Web’s Future is “Town”

Jan 16, 2009 Live Local, TownSync

We recently read an interesting article written in the BBC called “The web’s future is ‘village.” The article goes into detail, and interviews a man from HP named Bernardo Huberman, about how people are connected to thousands of people online but they really only pay attention to a few of them, “… enough people to fill a village.”

In our case, however, it’s a town. The concept of TownSync was based on the idea that people currently aren’t connecting with others online that are close enough to affect them in the real world. Hyperlocal networking is a way to connect people that matter to you. What’s going on in your area? Who’s new to town? What’s the best place to play pool nearby? These are questions we hope TownSync will help answer for those connecting on the site.

Here are few quotes from the article, and here’s the link, enjoy!

Despite the desire to have the world of information at our fingertips and a social networking page that boasts of hundreds of so-called “friends”, the reality is very different.

Researchers at Hewlett Packard have found that, in truth, we really only bother about a handful of friends and generally visit a small number of websites.

“With Facebook many people boast of having 100, 200 friends but in reality only keep up or track a very few of them.”

On this basis Mr Huberman concludes that we are returning to a time where we maintain close contact with a small number of people – enough people to fill a village.

“Things are starting to become intimate again,” he said. “We went through this explosion, this illusion that the world is at my fingertips and I can reach anyone and everybody. But at the end of the day we notice that we actually interact with very few.”

Tags: BBC, Bernardo Huberman, Hewlett Packard, HP, hyperlocal, town