Category: Contact

Through CitySense inhabitants and visitors of San Francisco can see where the masses are in a city with one press on their BlackBerry. Through GPS and WiFi-locations of other (anonymous) CitySense-users the BlackBerry displays real time where in the city the most people are gathered. You can see whether it concerns a busy restaurant, overcrowded bar, or a steamy club. Also ideal for when you're looking for an empty bar stool or don't want to go out where all of San Francisco is at that moment.

Familii.nl offers people the ability to hunt for ancestors and family members all over the globe. The looking, finding and keeping in contact with family are the most important features of the site. You can develop your family tree, keep the birthdays and addresses of your family members up to date and share photos and movies.

At Totspot (Dutch) parents of babies can make a profile with the timeline of their child. The time lines distinguish themselves by heights and lows and supplemented by photos, videos and music.

Vodafone has taken over ZYB, a mobile social network, as a step towards the implementation of the 'Total Communications'-strategy. Users of ZYB can enter the data on their cell phone as contacts, appointments and messages and save it online. In that vision Vodafone isn't a (mobile) telephone company, but it's all about the contacts in the cell phone.

Fring is an application which you install on your iPhone fring and which allows you to call, chat and get into contact with your friends on Skype, Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger), Google Talk, ICQ, Twitter, Yahoo, and AIM. In addition you can see on your iPhone whether someone is available. This negates the need to keep copying your contacts from one list to another. All you need is a data or WiFi connection on your iPhone. Calling will be free and it won't matter if your friends are behind their computer or are available on their cell phone or another device with an internet connection.

Facebook-users will soon be able to use their profile data on other sites. With a click of the button users will be able to add their profile data to all the websites that participate in different projects of the two community sites.

Via Nulaz you can see where your friends are at any given moment, an event in the area or background information about a building. The information is given on the basis of the restaurant site lense, Wikipedia, the Uitburo and NL10 and NL20. Users can also add information to the system. The application that needs to be installed estimates the location on the basis of GSM masts.

Korean mobile phone operator KTF offers a ‘Love Detector’ service which analyzes if someone talks with love and affection. Users can test themselves. They have to aim their mobile phone at themselves during a video conversation, see a ‘love meter’ bar on their screen or mobile phone, and later get a text message with the analysis. The service costs $0.32 (yh). Brands thus get better at understanding us. Not only our written language, not only our spoken words, but also the way we say them. In the end brands will be better listeners than humans. It will take at least another thirty years for that to happen though.

Indipenda helps women get through a divorce. With advice, inspiration, relaxation, talking and even dating, the life of a divorced woman is filled in a little better (mf, Dutch). In tomorrow’s new economy a new type of brands evolves. A type of brands functioning as coaches. They stand beside us and help us make choices. This service is to be included in the portfolio of personal contact brands. These types of brands get to know someone very well from a very young age, and they can connect people, help them maintain the connection, and if necessary also terminate the contact. Independia contributes to this development.

New Dutch dating site Paiq matches people with artificial neural networks, a form of artificial intelligence trying to imitate the way human brains work. People who register first have to enter personal characteristics and a picture. Paiq then matches people based on intelligent rules, which in their turn our based on psychological insights. At the first contact the picture is made very vague, so that the dating partner can’t see it sharp. Only after the users have been talking to each other for a longer time, they can see who they are dealing with (via em, Dutch).

The brand Paiq thus becomes a little smarter every day. In fact this brand evolves to be a smart friend, who understands who you are, thinks along, your coach. Someone who can introduce you to other people. A valuable brand. Thus new technology is used to make a brand, and Paiq can grow to be a personal brand. And this is only the beginning.

Live Search, live.com’s search engine, now can also rhyme. Live Search is the world’s first rhyming search engine. If you type ‘rhyme ‘ in Live Search, in the first search result you get a whole series of possible rhyme words. The rhyming search engine is based on Dutch website Rijmgein (sc, Dutch). In the future, brands will assist us in choosing the right words. Poetry is part of that. This is a very early example in that direction.

Through Wixi Dutch users can now say a catchword, which then is automatically interpreted and called. Anyone can buy such a catchword. It is possible to buy off a catchword so that the caller doesn’t hear an advertisement first, but it is also possible to reserve a catchword for free. Then the caller first hears and advertisement. Besides, there are many more possibilities, among which printing a business card with the Wixi catchword included (via am, Dutch).

For example, it is possible to buy the word ‘workshop’. A caller dials the number 0900-0100 and says ‘workshop’. Then he or she is connected to the business that bought the catchword. Unfortunately, in this case it didn’t work perfectly, and I was connected to a different catchword. That of course is not very good. It is a step in the evolution though. Brands more and more learn to (automated) listen to consumers. In the future they will put our pronunciation in our personal context, and will be perfectly able to understand what we are saying: in the end even better than humans. Then we only have to say something and we get connected every brand, every part of the government, every individual, on demand.

Social network Hyves wants to (anonymously) sell active brand associations of its members to the respective brands. The most popular brands at Hyves on average have more than 100,000 fans. Fashion brand Björn Borg for example, has 230,000 brand fans. Besides, Hyves knows the other brands to which somebody associates, and how this changes in the course of time (em, Dutch). In a media landscape in which brands have a hard time to reach people through advertising, they will be able to promote their products through brands that do have access to the consumer. In the bi-directional world thus developing, consumer knowledge is the specialty of personal brands, and transaction brands fully focus on top products. After all, to be recommended to somebody, you need to deliver top products.

Social network MySpace makes it possible to call somebody directly from a profile page, through telephone service Skype (cz). Personal contact brands - MySpace could develop to be such a brand - facilitate mutual contact. Asynchronously by leaving text, voice or image messages in ‘boxes’ or on ‘pages’. Or synchronously through text, voice or image by chatting or calling. If a company can’t deliver a certain type of service itself, it will be purchases, which in this case happens with Skype. In the end MySpace will probably want to be in control of the communication between its users. Now its own messenger competes with the chat possibilities in Skype. That will only be a matter of time.

Mier3000 (Ant 3000) is a new little brand that nestles in your Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN Messenger) contact list, and that searches the (Dutch) national telephone guide and yellow pages for you. When you add mier3000@live.nl to your contact list, you can directly start asking questions. The dialogue is still simple, although it already can answer questions like ‘I’m looking for’, ‘I want the phone number of’, and even ‘gimme a pizza place’ results in a list of hits. In Messenger’s right screen (the activity screen) the results then appear on a map. Anybody who registers gets a personal ant. People can even nominate their ant to be the work-ant of the month.

Thus the dialogue further develops. Any human being, any brand and any other organization: we will only (literally) have to call their names and we are directly connected to them. Through speech (and image) with a real person, through a website or through an artificial brand agent. Ant then can become our personal secretary, a virtual personal brand instance of our personal contact brand. This is a small step in that direction.