It’s been a while since we last released a new feature on our service, sorry for that, guess we just need to row with it. Mind you, we haven’t been lazy … as a matter of fact this featured piece here acts as a “come between” a rather heavy new update on our mobile & desktop service … what is it ? well, please wait a little longer and you’ll find out … in our ever present hunt to provide you with the most outstanding GEO-communication service.

So back to topic. What’s this post about ?
Today we release a neat new feature which some of you have asked about for a long time, and has been top of mind for many of us down here at the bliin play-pit: Put My Video on the Map … Today it’s here & here’s the Trick … or should I say here’s the Qik ?

Qik is a popular service which allows you to stream your Live videos to their site. The service supports a multitude of phones including of course the popular iPhones & Androids … but also other models are supported. We launch our Video embedding feature with Qik because of this and because of their simplicity of use.

So here’s how it goes. From today on anyone can port their Qik movies to bliin and we will put them, like any other content on the location of capture. Now, not all movies are taken at a static location, this is where the news comes in. When you record your videos while moving - in a car, or a train, or a hot air balloon - bliin will present these movies along your trip; to take you just a little bit closer. For this to work, you need to be Live on bliin.

Here’s a clip of us cruising the Markerwaarderdijk in lovely wintery Netherlands, captured on a good old Nokia N73.

And here you can see it on bliin

How to add your Qik Videos to bliin ?
To add your Qik Network to bliin goto your Details tab. In the Networks section click [Edit Networks] to expand the Networks section. From the Select Networks dropdown menu select Qik and enter your Qik username in the right form field. Select “Post your Qiks on bliin” before clicking the Save button … you’re all set. Every new Qik will be ported to bliin and captured in motion.

NB:
- playback is quite a performance challange, both bandwidth and processor so rev up your local boxes
- we will be experimenting with Live Tracking feature of Qik soon, more on this later
- thinking to add user icons & trip traces
- will be adding other streaming services sooon, let us know which ones
- Videos are now part of the Photo Content category, we will be creating it’s own

Ok, that’s all for 2009. From all of us here at bliin. We wish you all a great New Year and hope to see many of you in 2010.
Enjoy, with kind
bliin team

We blogged about CloudMade before during the SOTM conference here in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, this time we want to briefly point you to a neat feature we just implemented: Custom Maps. Check out the Midnight Commander CloudMade Map in our Map Source Selector (image below) to experience a midnight view of the OpenStreetMap dbase. CloudMade has an API which makes it extremely easy - for OpenLayers implementations - to add a preset number of Custom Maps to your mapping service. Additionally there’s a nifty web editor to create/customize maps to your personal liking … we’ll be adding this feature in the near future so you can create your maps at CM and import them here in bliin … chapeaux CloudMade!

Of course the Midnight Commander Map is also available on our mobile service at: m.bliin.com

See you out there!
bliin team

Today we launched a nice collaborative site together with Dutch Radio station KinkFM, focusing quite literally on Kink’s DJs Live! presence at Holland’s most famous - 4-day - pop festival called LowLands.

The site is the kick off of an ongoing campaign that puts 8 of the KinkFM jock’s in the spotlight in the months ahead of us. Equipped with shiny new iPhones, a strange kind of humor and a massive shared passion for Music, the Jocks will broadcast their Total Media rock & roll Lives’ with all who wish to follow.

For now have a look at the KinkFM / LowLands featured site where we added a nifty little LowLands layer on top of the existing maps, pinpointing publicly at which venues the Jock’s are partying, which bands they’re interviewing and when … or perhaps better … if … they catch any sleep at all.

It’s hot in Holland, prepare for thunder!

PS
Obviously you can also follow all of this in this KinkFM Group on bliin

This weekend, starting Friday, 10th of July, the 3rd annual OpenStreetMap Conference - State of The Map 2009 - will be hosted at the CCC Conference Center, right here in our home town Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

We first started implementing OSM data in our early release of Pocketbliin in September 2007. Back then and today still, Google Maps TOS would prevent developers from using Google Map data in Mobile Applications. Our strategy to be independent from any particular Map provider - which we continued to pursue resulting in our implementation of OpenLayers Map API on our desktop service - and the excellent & growing Map database from OSM made us choose for OSM. OpenStreetMap data is currently still available on our Mobile and Desktop service … for which we are truly thankful.

One of the keynote speakers at the conference is OpenStreetMap founder Steve Coast who will be kicking off the conference on Friday morning 9am. See the complete conference schedule here. Another interesting presentation to watch should be by Steve’s co-founder of CloudMade: Nick Black. CloudMade has been developing an impressive portfolio of Tools and API’s to enable developers to “make the most of map data” … using OSM data. Registration is still open and we hope to see you there!

Lastly, we congratulate the entire OSM community and are - once again - truly grateful for the service offered. As a small token of our appreciation we are showing OpenStreetMap as the default Map layer on our Desktop service.

with kind,
bliin team

The Heineken Delivery Men Campaign where we followed delivery from distribution center to some 300 bars and restaurants, has been nominated for this years Webby Awards – INTEGRATED MOBILE TECHNOLOGY-. After winning a silver Spin Award we are now going for Gold in New York. To win the People Voice award, we need your vote!

To Vote:
http://pv.webbyawards.com/ (register ☹)
http://pv.webbyawards.com/ballot/home/127 (Vote!)

check http://www.awardinzending.nl/deliverymen02/ if you want to ‘replay’ the Campaign.

We will keep you posted!
bliin team

We had a good day today, early coffees Amsterdam time, lots of late night red bulls on the other side. Going down this morning was exciting, coming back aLive! just now even better. We are happy to present to you our new desktop service with complete new design and full of rich new features which we shall soon blog more about … after this night turns into day again. Also on the go, we updated our mobile service: following the new design style and implemented features.

For now we leave you with some notices and issues which will be addressed  soon. We hope you enjoy it … Do leave us a note in the Feedback box to tell us what you think. Here’s a snapshot of the beauty

with kind
bliin team

Browser Support
* a recommendation is shown to users using IE7. The new site renders sweetly and performs nicely in the much improved, latest Microsoft browser Internet Explorer8. We recommed all visitors to upgrade to this browser. IE7 will work fine, but you can get a better experience.

Trip migration to new approach
* in the past you were allowed to pause and resume trips, this is no longer supported. Paused & Resumed imported Trips may show weird behaviour on Trip Playback

* Photo Z-index not fully perfect

On mobile service: m.bliin.com
* you may need to clear cache and cookies for the new style to render correctly
* updating Status Message shows no response … yet Message updates
* iPhone: shows iffy username in Info window, service works fine
* iPhone: missing homeX icon in Home Tab
* iPhone: no map may be selected in Home > Settings causing no map display

* bliin widgets are temporarily out of sync ;( working on a fix

Today we will be closing down our desktop and mobile service (bliin.com & m.bliin.com) for a long anticipated service upgrade! Over the past months we have been working hard to design a completely new desktop front-end with many new features and improvements.

Stay tuned as we anticipate to be back up in just a little while. Next time you’re here please let us know what you think!

With kind
bliin team

Today - and we are incredibly happy to say - we welcome Thomas C. Tyler to the bliin team. We met Tom at ESA in last great late-summer where we had lunch and Thomas was going to ‘listen to our story’ … Two months (to the day) and many inspiring meetings later, we welcome Thomas as new CEO and President of bliin.

We trust Thomas to help grow bliin to a better experience and to best serve our user communities world wide.

Naturally we have captured Tom in one of our meetings … you can find him here.

Download above press statement here: Bliin TCT 120908 FINAL FINAL 5PM ESTl.DOC

Hope to see you soon
Kind regards
bliin team

Today we have release a new version (1.3) of our locator software bliinGPSXS for Java & BlackBerry clients. Both packages contain new features and some bug fixes.

• bliinGPSXS users on JavaClients with external GPS where experiencing a lag in sending GPS coordinates. Hence it was possible that two Live! users in, for example the same car, would show a considerable distance between them on bliin. We have located this problem and fixed it. Thanks for your input in this!
• Due to iffy signal handover from tower to tower, sometimes the app would crash internally on internet connect routines. The UI on bliinGPSXS would display ‘Live!’ while in reality your last location update could have been minutes ago … showing this on the desktop client. Also this is fixed in both releases.

As for the BlackBerry clients:
Our last release was developed to work with BlackBerry BES data accounts only. This release supports both BIS and BES. HOWEVER: internet data connections with 3rd party applications remain troublesome on BlackBerry; read more about it here …

BlackBerry users who have a data account straight with their provider (BIS users) must manually (if not done already) set their TCP / APN settings to reflect the settings of their providers to be able to connect to the internet. bliinGPSXS will give a “Network Error” alert if these settings are not provided and correct. Please consult your telco to provide you with the correct APN settings for your BlackBerry device.

Below some screenshots of where to find your APN settings and which permissions to give to bliinGPSXS during installation. To download the new software: point your mobile browser to http://m.bliin.com and click downlaod. Please drop us a line if your problem persists (info[at]bliin[dot]com).

Goodluck and regards
bliin team

Our new release for iPhone has just come to the shop and we have taken the opportunity to make improvements not ONLY for iPhone but across our mobile platform. Below a changelog of new features, updates, bugfixes and still … a few known issues. Stay tuned, we’re making smoke

ChangeLog
dd: 090808 New

• Add profile picture in your Home tab, select from your Shared Photo library
• Trip distance in Trip list items
• User Live! speed in User list items. Beware iPhones: your speeds may be (way) off caused by locator-source (Cell and WiFi) hopping … On GPS your speeds should be steady and accurate
• Un-read comments and messages are displayed bold
• Added a link to our mobile FAQ at bottom page

dd: 082908 New

• Faster Map rendering on all devices
• Upload your Photos to bliin via your private upload email address … check Upload Photo for your private upload email address at bliin
• iPhone v1.1: Application icon now shows Inbox Message count
• iPhone v1.1: Application now remembers and opens last page at restart
• iPhone v1.1: After successful upload of Photo now landing on Photo item page

dd: 082908 Fixed

• iPhone v1.1: Location Send Interval on Manually bug now fixed. App stops updating location untill user presses Send now
• iPhone v1.1: Photo upload bug - uploading same Photo multiple times - fixed
• iPhone v1.1: You are not connected to the Internet, alert now working properly

dd: 082208 New

• Edit Photo Shares: rotate, mirror and delete
• Comment-count overlay on Photo thumbnails
• Show all Friends in list in Friend view
• Start of News page link in bottom page, with ChangeLog, etc

dd: 082108 Fixed

• Add Photo to unlimited Groups, was limited to 5

dd: 081508 New

• Added Microsoft Visual Earth base maps: Aero, Map, Hybrid.

dd: 081508 Fixed

• iPhone: Now record Trips when GPS send interval is 15minutes-manually
• iPhone: Added iPhone specific Help / FAQ on mobile service

dd: 081308 Fixed

• iPhone: Increased font size and map navigation buttons for better screen tapping
• iPhone: Removed bliinGPSXS legacy download links

dd: 080208 New
bliin iPhone app downloadable in iTunes App Store world wide

Known issues
Below a list of open issues. Please report your issues at [info]at[bliin].[com] … so we can make it better.
iPhone:

• Spikes in Trip recording caused by alternating location sources
• Your speeds may be (way) off caused by locator-source (Cell and WiFi) hopping … On GPS your speeds should be steady and accurate

Generic

• If recipient deletes messages from Inbox, your conversations lack recipients messages.

BlackBerry:

• bliinGPSXS locator only works with wifi and / or BlackBerry BES accounts … not (yet) with BlackBerry BIS accounts