aka-aki: Taking social networking to the streets June 18, 2008
Posted by Jörg Michael in Technology Toys . Comments (0)A few students at the University of Arts in Berlin did their thesis (actually, "Diplomarbeit") on a crazy idea of theirs and went on to actually develop the real thing. Take the concept of social networking and combine it with real-life aspects. They came up with a website and a piece of software you put on your internet enabled mobile phone. It also works without internet connection on your phone, but the functionality will be reduced.
The British TIMES has an article about aka-aki that does a better job of explaining it than I will, but it is also longer ;-)
Download the software, turn on Bluetooth - here is where it gets interesting - and run the program. aka-aki will find other Bluetooth phones in your vicinity and look up their profiles on aka-aki's web server. If the owner is also a member of aka-aki, you can access their picture and profile. If they're not, well, there used to be a feature that allowed you to send a "hey, why don't you sign up? go to www.aka-aki.com" message via Bluetooth. The current version doesn't have it, but it is rumored to return.
You can also grab "stickers" - basically little picture with a name and a meaning - that you can use to let others know a little about you in categories such as: what I am, what I love, , where I am by day/night, what keeps me busy, what I have to offer, what I spend my money on. When you meet another member, your phone knows how many matching stickers you have. It also tells you how many times your phone has seen the other phone before. And the date of the first encounter with that phone.
It also has a twitter like micro-blogging thingie where you can also "follow your friends' activities" and it has its own "aki-mail" service.built into the software.
So, walk up to that hottie, introduce yourself and say "Our paths have crossed 27 times so far and we both love coffee. How about a Latte?".
After developing the software on zero budget, they found VC investors in December 2007 and at this year's CeBIT fair in Hannover, they won an award for "most innovative idea".
So go download the software and play with it. They just recently did the english version so it's not perfect, but should allow you to play with the software. Their site it at http://www.aka-aki.com/?lg=en or just http://www.aka-aki.com for the german version.
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