GyPSii June Newsletter

GyPSii® Newsletter

June, 2008

June brings warmer weather to the north, ski season to the southern hemisphere and millions of worldwide Points of Interest. Preparation continues for the upcoming Olympics. GyPSii is rolling out our beta of Communities this month to support the China Unicom community for the Beijing Olympics and adding new phones into our lineup with the release of a new client for Blackberry. In this month's newsletter you will find tips on making Places, links to fun videos and plans for the near future. You will also find a short overview describing the GyPSii vision for the Personal Digital Life Recorder. Have fun, enjoy and be in touch with any questions, complements or criticism.

1. Tips for PlaceMe on a Mobile Phone

Making a Place is quick and easy on your mobile phone. The following example uses a Symbian phone such as the Nokia N95. The process is similar on WinMobile, iPhone and Blackberry. It only takes a few clicks and a few seconds to create a PlaceMe.

Open GyPSii and hit the PlaceMe button. Keep the default category (Interesting) and folder (Public). Add a single character for a Place name then press Options and select Send. That's it for a fast, basic PlaceMe. You can change the defaults or add more details with Description, Folders, etc. Additionally, you can edit the Place later on the web at www.gypsii.com, adding more details like a longer name and description, tags, a URL or attaching even more media.

To attach a photo, video or audio clip that was already captured, simply press Options, scroll down to Insert Media and select your media file. New media can be grabbed directly with "Insert New", then select type and submit it. Once you are comfortable making Places, Insert New is almost as fast as using the camera application on the phone.

2. The Personal Digital Life Recorder

Our lives are mobile. We live on Earth regardless of how much time we spend in cyberspace. Half of the global population now carries a mobile phone. Increasingly capable mobile phones have overtaken sales of laptops. The next wave of digital computing and collaboration fits in your pocket.

The Personal Digital Life Recorder is about putting your life online, not living online at a desk. Chances are you carry a Personal Digital Life Recorder (PDLR) with you in the form of a camera phone or smart phone. The PDLR has almost been available since the first cameraphone was introduced in 2001. The thing missing was the lifestyle application. That lifestyle application is GyPSii. This is the tool for creating a fundamental shift in how we view place, time, the virtual and the real. The GyPSii mobile social network service enables the PDLR as a new way to communicate that ties mobility and location together in real-time. Tagging and exploration of this information creates new meaning for you and your friends.

GyPSii focuses on the media associated with your life by putting the pieces together to become your Personal Digital Life Recorder. Your PDLR enables you to create and record compelling experiences in multimedia as you encounter it in the world. Share rich multimedia in your social interactions as a seamless experience. Publish what you are doing with anyone in real-time. Wherever you are you can record audio, take pictures and video, then share it with the GyPSii people and communities you choose.

Vote with your phone. Every time you PlaceMe you are creating meaning and context. Places are not virtual, they are electronic markers for real locations and events. A Place is not just part of a random collection of data, it is something that you care enough about to spend the time to record. Every new Place helps reinvent the Internet by investing some time and effort into it.

What makes this different than current ways of rating content online? A Place represents a real location. A real person made it, maybe you made it. This is a very large shift away from page-ranking and click-through ratings. After creating a Place, SpaceMe enables you to immediately share something you care about with others. What if millions of people PlaceMe at the same location? That must be a VIP (Very Important Place), which has infinitely more significance than millions of people clicking a link in a browser. This new mode of ranking has much more real-life value to people online, especially out in the environment. Facilitating the creation of digital content by and for everyone through mobile phones is the way to re-build the Internet from the ground up, an Internet where you, the user, provide the content and context.

It's a statement. A positive one about Humanity and our Planet.

That statement is, "We live here, on our Earth, and we trust each other enough to enable every single person to use their PDLR and GyPSii to generate their own digital life recording. To make a new, more human and Earth-centered Internet. More meaning, more context, more relevance." - Dan Harple, Founder & CEO of GyPSii.

Listen to GyPSii CEO Dan Harple's podcast interview by Alex Bellinger of the UK's SmallBizPod.

3. Highlighted Places

Here are three fun Places for this month and four very serious Places. "I found my car" is for everyone that lives in a snowy region. "Mumbai Commute" is an amazing ride through the street life of one of the world's most dynamic cities. The National Aquatic Center is where, in a few short months, the best swimmers in the world will converge for the Olympics.

Please take a moment to consider the people in the Chengdu region, Sichuan Province of China. Five million homeless, tens of thousands deceased, cities and towns ruined. Please keep these people in your thoughts, donate if you can and do whatever it takes to Be Prepared. GyPSii member Thomas Ma appears to have beat the international media to the location - warning, graphic images in "Earthquake Fact." "Three Silence" shows something rare in China - nothing moving while people stop and remember. GyPSii is hosting photojournalist Peter Wang's Geoblog and photography. Follow along as he journeys into some of the most devastated parts of the region.

If you can, please donate time or money to the American Red Cross's China relief or the relief organization of your choice.

4. Communities, the sneak preview

GyPSii is rolling out a Beta test of our Community features. Currently we are testing it to support the Beijing Olympics for China Unicom. Communities will become the next level of topic and interest-based social interactions for GyPSii members delivering even more relevance to you.

Communities are designed to be fluid so that you can join, enter and leave them as needed, like rooms in a house. "Walk into" a community to explore an interest, hobby or event. Once done, you exit that community to enter another. You can be a member of many at once, or none.

We will have links to these communities as they become available later in June and July.

5. GyPSii at the Olympics

As we mentioned last month, GyPSii is the official Location-Based Service provider for the Beijing Olympics. The Olympics are a time to come together, put aside differences and compete on a level playing field.

We recently added the NAV2 database of Chinese Points of Interest to provide Olympians and visitors with the information they need while in Beijing. The new information provides links to restaurants, hotels, service stations and a variety of other locations around China. Using a GyPSii-enabled phone on the ground will help people find the places they need to be.

"Location based services and social networking are the future of mobile." said George Qie, General Manager of NAV2. "We are delighted to have licensed the map database to GyPSii and allow Chinese users unrivalled access to this new mobile experience. This year's Beijing Olympic Games represent a momentous occasion for China, and the GyPSii application will enhance the whole Olympic experience for both the Chinese public and visitors to the country. Fans, media and athletes, will now have unrivalled access to key location information and POIs throughout the event."

6. GyPSii Student Videos

We met some great students at the University of Rhode Island in early April. They made several videos afterwards detailing how they can use GyPSii in their lives.

Thank you,

The GyPSii Team