I joined Plazes. It is a nifty social Web 2.0 site that tracks your movements and puts them on a map. Essentially you either use their official client or a small python script, that sends them the MAC of your local router. If you are the first person to send that info, you get to type in information about the location, and get karma points.
If that MAC is already in their database, your marker just gets placed in that spot, and you can see all the other people who are currently at the same plaze. You can also do manual updates via the website or even from a cell phone.
It also integrates with Flickr allowing you to geotag your pictures – they get associated with the specific plaze and show up for everyone who visits it.
Here is the thing – I really like this service. I think it is an awesome idea, and I’m really having fun with it. But I’m concerned about privacy. I really don’t want to publish the exact location of my house on a publicly accessible map. I set my privacy to only allow my contacts to see my location. Some people may be more reckless or brave publishing this sort of information, but I just feel uneasy about it. And because of this my use of Plazes use seems a tad limited. It is a really awesome tool to interact with close friends or family. But not being public cuts out some of the fun out of it – after all it was designed to be a social tool allowing you to connect with other/random people.
Of course the other issue I have with Plazes is that my immediate neighborhood is a literal ghost town. If you look at the public map, New York has so many markers that they all overlap each other. In NJ there’s pretty much just the Newark airport. I’m surprised no one added my university as a plaze either. I guess I’m the first one.
Note that I’m not posting a link to my plazes profile, or my location badge here precisely because the privacy thing. If you are on my “people who I can probably trust” list you probably already got an invite, or will get one in the future. :)
Anyone here also using plazes? What are your thoughts about it? What do you think about the privacy issues it creates? Am I being paranoid here?
[tags]plazes, geolocation, flickr, map, google maps, maps, mapping[/tags]
I wouldn’t join something like that, but I stay clear of all the things that expect you to make personal information public – Myspace, Facebook, blogging, all of it
The way I see it, if you’re close enough to me that you should know this stuff, you already do. The exception being discussing stuff in forums/comments sections – that serves the legitimate purpose of bringing similarly interested people together, which could be said of other things, but the other things tend to expect more from you as well.
I may eventually (read: when I have something interesting to say and can be bothered to say it) start a blog (or whatever the prevailing form of mass communication of the time is) but I don’t see the need for it to be honest.
I kinda get the sense of being connectedness out of these things. Also, some people I know do not blog or twitter, but instead are really active on myspace and/or facebook. It’s a nice way to keep in touch.
You know… If you told me I will be blogging and using all these services 5 or 6 years ago I would probably laugh at you. But now – I’m hooked. I just wish more of my RL friends and family members would catch the bug also. :mrgreen:
I just came across Plazes here, and I don’t share your paranoia. Nobody really cares if you’re in the local cafe, and you’ve got control of how much information you give when you’re in more sensitive locations.
Out of curiosity, do you use Twitter or Jaiku?
I guess I’m concerned about this in light of that whole Kathy Sierra thing. It’s one thing to get threats from some jackasses online. It’s another one to get the same threats while publishing a nifty map of all the places you frequently visit during the day. :P
I think this is a great tool for people who do a lot of traveling. I don’t so on my Plazes you essentially see the same 2-3 locations day in, and day out – and my schedule rarely changes. It would be trivial to stalk me given this data if anyone wanted to do this.
And yes, I do use twitter. But I usually do not reveal my location – I may occasionally post something like “at home” or “in school” but I don’t usually even mention the towns and etc.
I’m by no means knocking Plazes for this. As you said – they give you complete control over what information you are willing to share.
Also, I would probably get much more use out of it if I could convince my less than technologically competent familly members, and more of the RL friends to sign up and use it.
Luke,
I’m not a stalker by any means, but I suspect that it’d be easier to stalk someone using old-fashioned offline means (ie. follow them in person and see where they go). I can’t see anyone tracking my hangouts for nefarious purposes anytime soon.
On a different note, I’m intrigued by the way you’ve set up your comments on this site. I like both the location-aware map beside the commenter’s name, and the ‘Posted using’ line at the bottom of each comment. How are you doing those?
It happens all the time. All you have to do is to post a comment in the wrong thread at a wrong time and you can get on a random aggregate hit list of one of the trolling communities out there.
I got hit like that once, and had about 20 people running comment flooding scripts against my blog for like a week until they got bored. I got few nasty emails and fee hundred comments to delete. They picked me because they decided to hit every n’th e commenter with a blog who posted in a specific slashdot thread.
People who actually pissed them off somehow, or tried to put up a fight got hit much worse – they would branch off, hit their social networks, chartrooms and etc.
I could see how some dedicated trolling group could use public Plazes profile to, for example, anonymously send some embarrassing shit to your workplace, or prank call you at home. Not that it’s not possible to find that information using other sources. I’m just saying, plazes makes it easier and more convenient.
The thing is – if you are too general when using Plazes (ie. you set your location to be New York, NY) you miss out on some of the features it offers. If you are too specific, you put yourself at risk of being one day stalked. Chances are you won’t be, but it can happen.
So as I said – it makes sense to use it as a trusted friends-only network where you can disclose your full address, so that your mom, girlfriend, or a group of trusted friends know where you are and how to reach you. :)
Regarding the comment setup, it’s pretty easy:
Priyadi’s Browser Detection Plugin
Easy IP2Country