I know there are only so many names, but in this case both flocks are social apps, tracking updated photos between friends.
I wonder if Zynga (the owners of flock.com now) will have anything to say about this, though I find it hard to imagine it hasn't already been discussed.
Flock uses new battery-friendly location technology and
sophisticated algorithms to magically know which of your
Facebook friends you are with when photos are taken.
My bet is that they're using the background significant location change service. Each time iOS wakes the app with a significant location change notification, Flock combs through your photos and sends their GPS coordinates from the EXIF data to the Flock servers.What I'm really concerned about, though, is that to pull this off the app must send your location to the Flock servers for correlation with other users' photo locations. This means Bump now has a reasonably accurate location log for everyone using the Flock app.
I wrote a test app for the iOS significant location change service that logged my location for a week, and it was surprisingly accurate. Enough to clearly tell when I was at work, at home, driving down the freeway, etc.: http://www.tomjstokes.com/130/iphone-ios-4-2-background-loca...
If anyone out there is interested in being a developer in my group and is handy with algorithms and fast data stores e.g. Redis, ideally in production, email me.
Space ship: http://www.spacex.com/careers.php
Robots: http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/jobs
We are hiring also: http://bu.mp/company/jobs
My original point though, was that sometimes I feel like we make these apps, because that's what we're capable of making by ourselves. The links you posted are great opportunities for what we can do together. But I think there's still a large opportunity out there. Think about how many people actually completed the Stanford AI course. I think it was something close to 20k. There's a HUGE amount of people who have day jobs, but have the potential to do BIG things on the side. Except they're all off on their own, so they build iphone apps.
I'm starting to get an idea here :D
With shared photo albums on iOS6 it will be really easy to share a set of photos on your phone. It will not remind you to share and it will not consolidate everyone's photos into a single album.
Watch the Flock video to see how this works: http://vimeo.com/46398388
With Flock you just use any camera app as you normally would and when you leave the event Flock gives you a 1-touch page (not automatic, users still have control) of what to share and with whom.
Great quote that really stands out after downloading the app. Fiancee and I are going to give it a try this weekend with some friends. I'm assuming, now that I've used it for a few hours, that it combines location AND time to make a best guess on what an event was. Very cool.
One thing that would be nice is to block out a certain location. For instance, we both take a ton of pictures at our house on a daily basis. For me, it's pictures of delicious things I'm pulling off the Big Green Egg. For her, it's pictures of our dog and her freshly-painted nails.
However, the instant combination of our travel photos earned a phone call from said fiancee. She loves it. Big props.
I'd suggest a bigger font to make it more readable. Over 85% of people use a screen bigger than 1024x768 [1]. Take advantage of that. :)
Flock finds the photos you take together with family and friends and magically brings all the photos from each person's phone together into a single shared album.
At least it stands alone, making it somewhat more (quickly) identifiable.
And such formulation (as in this comment, by the way) is what is known as "burying the lede". [1]
I mention it because I'm getting rather tired of not just blog posts but also essays, news articles, and even marketing copy (which the OP could also be considered), that makes me read 200, 300, or 500 words before I learn what they are talking about.
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