I have decided to spend all day tomorrow saying hello to as many people as possible at the Metropolitan Pavilion. That would be the red zone in this diagram. All it takes is that first hello and you end up meeting some amazing people, you end up having some amazing conversations, you end up establishing some amazing contacts. Another thing you do is you reconnect with people you already know. Some of that also happens.
I am so looking forward to it. And I might show up early in the day.
I have given up on the idea that Brett Martin might buy me lunch. I am buying my own lunch tomorrow.
If the day goes well, as I have every reason to believe it will, I am skipping the parties in the evening. The entire day is going to be one big party.
He presented his app Sonar at the TechCrunch Disrupt. We exchanged a few tweets and a few emails. The guy is buying me lunch during Internet Week.
I am so looking forward to Internet Week but I have not had the time to go down the schedule to pick the events I want to go to. I'd like to believe I have some time. Hope they don't all get filled up. Or maybe I should do that today, go down the list and RSVP to all the events I wish to go to.
Brett: Let's grab breakfast during internet week. How about 9am on weds the 8th at the grey dog cafe on carmine in the wet village? Open to other ideas, unfortunately I haven't made my schedule for that week yet.
Me: we will do something one on one during internet week right now i don't know what
Brett: OK, you LMK. I really liked your analysis and would like to treat you out to lunch.
Me: u want to buy me lunch? :-) ha ha i blogged about sonar b/c it is an exciting proposition Image via Wikipediait has the potential to be the leader in that hyperlocal space
i will let you buy me lunch if you will keep it to around 5 bucks, not more dumplings at Joe's Shanghai in Chinatown ----- 6 bucks
i have not looked at the internet week schedule yet, but i am in mind to do as many events as possible so once i have my to do list ready ----- then i'd like to fit in lunch ---- hope i am not sounding "difficult" i mean, i'd love to meet and u know that already
:-)
Brett: ha, 5 dollars for 60 minutes of you thinking on my problems is a great deal.
Me: 60 minutes (or more) to get to know and become friends with an interesting dude who just might be on to the next big thing, and HE is buying lunch? great deal :-) i'd love to blog about sonar again -------
National Geographic: Military Sonar May Give Whales the Bends, Study Says: Undersea noise from naval exercises appears to give beaked whales the bends, an ailment most commonly associated with scuba divers who rise to the ocean surface too quickly ...... Scientists for years have suspected a link between sonar activities and mass strandings of marine mammals—similar events have occurred recently in the Bahamas and Greece—but they are uncertain as to why sonar causes the animals to strand themselves. ....... They found gas bubbles in blood vessels and hemorrhaged vital organs. ..... Sonar technology, such as that used during the Cold War, was passive: essentially big microphones that listened for the distinctive sounds emitted by large submarines. ....... Environmentalists say incidences of marine mammal strandings have sharply increased since this mid-frequency sonar technology was deployed. Environmentalists are now actively opposing testing of a new technology, called low-frequency sonar, which they say would significantly expand the geographic range the sound travels. ...... the sonar likely either causes a behavioral change in the whales such as rising too rapidly, or there is a physical effect of the sonar on bubble precursors in nitrogen-saturated tissues. ...... low-frequency sound waves can rapidly compress and then expand microscopic bubbles of gas in the tissue. Each sound wave causes the bubble to absorb more and more of the gas dissolved in the bloodstream, eventually making the bubbles big enough to rupture tissues.
Standout App
Sonar was an app that stood out of the many that presented at the TechCrunch Disrupt. I am not saying that was the best app. I am not saying I watched all presentations. I did not. But Sonar is the one I remember.
Privacy Concerns
Sonar only uses your publicly available information. Your Twitter bio is public information. When you check into a venue, others who check is can see you are there. But still people should be given the option to opt out of Sonar. Not everyone is trying to say hello to everyone.
Feature Requests
You should have the option to send a gentle hello to someone in the room. And you should have the option to record a meeting Hashable style. As in, just met Cindy.
Hyperlocal
Sonar could end up a leading hyperlocal app. We are in fractal territory.
Chris Hughes and I have 12 mutual friends on Facebook, Dave McClure and I have nine, Mike Arrington and I have eight mutual friends on Facebook. I have a feeling there are a lot of people out there who might have 10 mutual friends with Chris Hughes, Dave McClure and Mike Arrington. It might be worse for the likes of Ashton Kutcher and Fred Wilson. Fred gets mobbed at conferences by people who want to pitch him. And that was before Sonar. I think one challenge for Sonar is to see if it can become relevant also to people like Chris Hughes, Dave McClure, Mike Arrington, Ashton Kutcher, and Fred Wilson. Okay, maybe not Ashton Kutcher. The dude just released his own app. I think the app lets you be surrounded by all Ashton Kutcher all the time.
Sonar, in short, should not be that app that spoils public events for all mid level celebrity types. I thin Sonar should have this feature that allows you to say hello to them without them having to say hello back to you, or lets them say hello to everyone at once, the Sonar version of signing an autograph. Maybe there should be a Sonar badge. I was in the same room as _________. (Insert Chris Hughes)
Augmented Reality App
Sonar is hyperlocal, but it also feels like augmented reality.
Ajay Chainani
The iPhone developer for the app is an Indian who grew up in Japan. That's an interesting background to have.
VentureBeat: Sonar tells you why the people around you matter: I saw plenty of startups today at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York City, but Sonar, a newly launched iPhone app, stood out from the crowd because it offered up a simple new way to take advantage of the social data we’re increasingly surrounded by. ...... Sonar lets you ping specific locations to show you who is there, and most importantly, it also tells you why certain people will be more relevant to you than others. The app relies on location data from check-in heavyweight Foursquare, but it also taps into your Facebook and Twitter accounts to get a decent sense of your tastes and friends. ....... founder Brett Martin describes the app like this: “It’s simple — you open up Sonar and we tell you that the guy sitting across from you is Facebook friends with your college roommate, the dude by the jukebox is a VC that you follow on Twitter, and the cute girl by the bar also likes the Arcade Fire and Hemingway.” ...... the app can easily generate a Twitter message to someone mentioning a particular friend you have in common. ..... amazing that it’s taken this long for an app like Sonar to appear ..... it’s sure to rile detractors who think it’s yet another app that’s killing face-to-face communication. I would argue that it supplements real world communication ..... Sonar was founded last year and so far has raised $200,000 in funding.
Time: Cool Or Creepy? Sonar App Introduces You To Nearby Strangers: Sonar is kind of like a good party host: It introduces you to whoever else is in the room by leveraging what you have in common...... one of the more practical applications of the hyperlocal craze we've seen. But we'll see if it reaches the threshold for usership it'll need to actually thrive.
The Next Web: Interview with Sonar: The inside story on the hyperlocal, realtime networking app: a mobile application that uncovers the hidden connections that you share with everyone else around you. It works by aggregating and then ranking relevancy, pulling public data from Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook. Social connections, network affiliations, shared Likes, shared interests are all factored into Sonar’s relevance algorithm. ...... Using Sonar, you’re never more than one click away from a hyper-targeted introduction. In one check-in, Sonar bottles thousands of potential connections that you would’ve otherwise missed. ...... Future builds will include the ability to filter search results by room or type of person. For example, “Show me all the investors in the room.” ...... Brett Martin grew up in Ocean City, Maryland ...... Growing up in a resort town meant the gregarious surf shop employee turned entrepreneur was meeting new people everyday. But he felt unable to connect quickly and easily. Martin says, he’s spent the past several years simply waiting for the technology to catch up to reduce this chasm. ...... After attending Dartmouth, he entered the dry world of banking. It wasn’t long before he left to sail the world and live in Italy on a Fulbright scholarship. ...... Sonar’s lead mobile developer Ajay Chainani ..... The app works globally, but to use it at this time, you need to have a Foursquare account. ..... For power networkers, eager startup founders, freelance developers or those who believe a stranger is just a friend they haven’t met yet, Sonar is a long overdue app that presents potentially powerful connections at your fingertips. It’s an app that makes our world feel a little bit smaller, a little bit friendlier and a lot more connected.
Gizmodo: Sonar App Joylessly Friends The Friendless: It's yet another social networking app that you may briefly use before deleting, after its features have been sucked up by Facebook or Twitter or both or neither
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