Just over a month ago I was asked to be part of the AlertMe Panel. As a Panel member I was sent a free AlertMe Smart Energy Kit and SmartPlug (£49.99, £25.00), and a one year subscription to the service (£1.99/month). In return I’ve been asked to take part in three or four challenges throughout the year. I should probably point out that I’m not obliged to write about my experiences but have chosen to do so as I’ve been watching the company for a while and find it hard to ignore anything that involves collecting data about the world around us.

With many of the utility companies in the UK trying to stamp their mark on the smart energy market, it is going to take something different for a non-provider like AlertMe to corner a significant market. Google (an AlertMe partner) tried, but only recently abandoned it’s attempt to collect home-energy data when they decided to retire their PowerMeter API.

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“What really struck me, though, was knowing that the lines didn’t represent coasts or rivers or political borders, but real human relationships. Each line might represent a friendship made while travelling, a family member abroad, or an old college friend pulled away by the various forces of life.”

I wonder how different this graph would look if the same analysis was done for Twitter? For me, the two networks are very different.

Read Paul Butler’s explanation of how he generated a world map from Facebook relationships over on his Facebook page.

Take a look at the site below:

Does it surprise you that 4399.com is the fourth most searched for site in 2010 in China (according to Google)?

Google’s Latitude application has not seen the same level of excitement as some of the other location based networking applications; foursquare, Gowalla, and more recently Facebook. Many have already written the service off as a failure, but I believe they are wrong.

In his recent blog post, Google Latitude for iPhone is a Big Disappointment, Marshall Kirkpatrick describes the recent launch of the official Latitude iPhone App as “a real let down”. Whilst I’d tend to agree with a many of the observations he makes about the iPhone App, I disagree with his conclusions about Latitude.

I believe the core Latitude service to be sound, but Google needs to clarify the direction it intends to take the Latitude service and work on encouraging developers to build Latitude applications if it is to avoid sending Latitude to the same fate as Wave. The following are essential to the success of Latitude:

1. Increase sources of location information:
   • Phones (real-time)
   • Check-In Apps (point in time)
   • Browser Location (point in time)
   • Runkeeper, Nike+, etc. (historic)
   • Flickr (historic)
   • GPS Import (historic)
2. Increase sharing options:
• Twitter, Facebook, etc.
• Check-In Apps
• Blogs
• Flickr
3. Improve granularity of privacy controls.
4. Provide push notifications to authorised Apps.
5. Provide clarity around what Latitude is.

The Google Latitude service provides a great way to maintain a history of a user’s physical location, a service that doesn’t appear to have been offered by anyone else. The benefits to Google, a data company, are mind boggling. Location history can be used to better understand user lifestyle and to increase awareness on how we interact with each other and the world around us. In an age where we know browsing history, purchase history, and contact history, location is a missing dimension in the behavioural analytics game. To understand what might be possible, have a look at the Latitude dashboard after a couple of weeks of use. It has determined that I took a flight on Monday just from my location updates alone. The benefits to Google are clear.

Where Google have struggled is persuading users they need to pro-actively share their location. After all, what benefit do users get in return for providing their location? To me, this comes from integrating Latitude with other applications. Much like the way the success of Twitter was largely down to the success of the client applications, the success of Latitude lies in the hands of application developers. The number one focus of the Latitude team should be on encouraging application developers to build off the core Latitude service. This alone would enable three out of the five essentials identified above.

Yes, the iPhone App may be a little rough around the edges, but the iPhone App is only a small part of the Latitude offering. Latitude is a great platform, but as with any platform, it is encouraging others to build off it that is the key to success.