

Show HN: Gecko SMS, our (hopefully) revolutionary Android messaging app - asmosoinio
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.geckolandmarks.geckosms

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Pewpewarrows
Best of luck with your app, but I'd like to take a second to play devil's
advocate: what does your app offer me over my existing location sending apps
(Latitude and Glympse)? Latitude being there to let me friends know where I am
without me even having to initiate anything (for when I don't care about
privacy at the moment), and Glympse lets me send temporary expiring location
messages via SMS, Email, etc (for when privacy of my location is a concern).

~~~
asmosoinio
No need to apologize, this is exactly why I posted the app and the idea to HN!

I agree Latitude rocks hard (when you get friends to actually use it), and the
idea of Glympse is brilliant. I haven't tried it myself but immediately
thought it would be a good solution when I stumbled across it. We may want to
implement something similar as well.

But they both fail on a few cases:

\- Try getting your non techie friend with a dumbphone to use Latitude -- not
possible as the app can't run on the device. Same with Glympse, however less
so because it may work ok with pretty simple browsers on the receiving end.

\- vs Gecko SMS: If someone can receive SMS, they can receive your location

\- And then the "rest of the world" -argument: most people don't understand
maps, maps are not available to many areas. Maps don't work well in cheap
phones with small screens.

Landmarks is a simple concept that everybody understands, and it's available
everywhere. That's what we offer.

I know this partly contradicts with using the Android platform, but that's
where we wanted to start. We have a fully working prototype for S60 Symbian as
well, but it's no fun to use. :)

~~~
Pewpewarrows
Thanks for the quick reply! I guess I missed the part where Gecko would work
with so-called "dumb" phones as well, without any mapping software. That's
definitely a good enough reason for me to give it a try this weekend.

~~~
asmosoinio
Hey, I just submitted something of my own for the first time so what else can
I do than sit here replying?-)

I don't think you missed it, that information probably isn't available
anywhere yet. Unless you read all my comments here, and still I don't think I
have really mentioned that.

But had you read our business plan, you would definitely be aware of this.

\-- Update: Just realized you probably meant the receiving end, whereas I was
talking about sending these messages from a dumb phone. The former is
mentioned in the Market text:

 _This means that Gecko SMS works with standard SMS and MMS, and does not
require any special software on the receiving phone._

------
asmosoinio
This is an Android application I have made for my company.

It is a Messaging replacement with a twist: You can include your location in
the message, while still using standard SMS or MMS without any special
requirements on the receiving end.

To make a location human-readable, the app uses a global landmark database
that we have developed and are constantly updating. Our database was
originally developed for communicating tracking device location over SMS, and
we are now looking for other ways to utilize it.

I am somewhat ashamed of the current state of the application, so this should
fit the "release early" philosophy.

We have tons of further development ideas ourselves, but would love to get
some feedback from real users to figure out what to do next.

Any comments are highly appreciated (on the app, the Market copy, the
look&feel etc.).

~~~
auganov
On your website you say "Our landmark database is the most accurate in terms
of quality, coverage and updates ". That's a pretty big claim. What's so
special about it? Where does the data come from?

As for the app, I don't know, maybe I'm missing something but doesn't sounds
too exciting. In all cases when I would like to put a "landmark" in my message
I would do it myself.

~~~
asmosoinio
We select each landmark "by hand", and can spend time on the quality of the
data while still keeping the data gathering/updating process effective. Quite
different compared to how traditional landmark databases, with focus on
quantity, are built.

Another one of our strong points is data in areas where there are no digital
maps available (but still lots of people with cellphones) -- landmark data is
so much easier to gather than traditional map data.

Sources of the data depend on the country: 1\. For example in the US or
Europe, we can work mainly by combining information from a number of online
sources with only some checkups from people actually "on the scene". 2\. For a
lot of developing countries (Nigeria is one of our strong areas for
differentiation from other datasources), we will have some local guy
physically go around the city and gather the raw data that we then process for
accuracy and quality.

I'll dig up some examples where the usual digital maps fail and we succeed.

I am the head tech guy of the company, and am not so accustomed to preaching
about the power of landmarks. So thanks for the opportunity to work on my
arguments!

Re the app: Try it! It's much faster with the built-in landmarks compared to
writing it yourself, and will change your texting behavior. Once you get used
to it, texting without a location feels just so... last season. :)

~~~
auganov
95% of the time if I put a location in my message it's most likely a location
that I and the receiver are familiar with, so such a standardized name is not
too desirable. But of course it's just me. I can definitely see, a lot of
couples using that all the time (beware cheating girlfriends!).

Does it work backwards? So that if somebody uses it too and sends me a message
using that can I look up the place on the map? That would be a big plus.

But yea, now that I thought of it. In very big cities where people move around
a lot in a fairly constrained area that is very nice. If you can add more
features and market that better I can see some people using it. Not quiet
revolutionary, but nice. Of course provided that this landmark database is
really really, really good.

~~~
asmosoinio
<warning, long reply which hopefully also answers all your questions>

You can also easily add you own points, which is what you probably end up
using a lot. "I'm Home now", "Still at the Office". It's a one time tap/enter
name to add these, and these are the ones you probably end up using a lot.

(Not really related, but: Also usually the app is pretty good at picking up
the correct landmark even without GPS (from the inexact cellid location), so
you can just forget about it, send your text and automatically also share your
location.)

Regarding the cheating girlfriends, we let the user select any point she
wants. This is by design, this is not a tracking application but a
communication tool. For example sometimes you know your mother will not be
familiar with the closest automatically selected landmark, and can easily
select another one.

It's not about exact location (going all psychological: there is not exact
location, ever), it's about human understandable location.

Currently it doesn't work backwards. On a concept level, we want to think maps
suck and landmarks rule. On a technical level, this is something we may well
implement. (Sidenote: I guess the view with the landmark points can also be
considered a "Map", and that we definitely could want to show on the receiving
end.)

Thanks for your positive words! This is version 1.0 in terms of marketing
texts and everything, so the journey for this app is just beginning.

------
mziulu
Can I ask what problem your app solves? Why would I want to add my location to
an sms? Good job anyway, sounds interesting.

~~~
asmosoinio
Because a lot of times you want to tell people where you are, or where to
meet. So this app does that for you, automatically. In a way that the
recipient will understand.

¤ Gecko Landmarks EU HQ, Turku, Finland :)

~~~
brosephius
if I want to meet up with someone, wouldn't I just give them an exact
location? if the nearest landmark is 5 miles away I don't see how that would
be useful.

~~~
asmosoinio
How would you define that exact location, with coordinates?

What if we have gathered just the right amount of landmarks from the area, so
it's pretty likely that all the well known places to meet at are there
already?

Naturally if you are in a rural area far away from any kinds of "real"
landmarks, this will not help you. But by definition, such areas will have low
number of potential users as well. We think this works well for a lot of
people a lot of the time.

------
nachteilig
How is this "revolutionary" other than it revolutionarily cuts down on the
remaining characters to send?

And it's not really revolutionary in the way that BBM or iMessages is (i.e.
taking sms away from the carriers).

~~~
asmosoinio
It's revolutionary because:

\- Sharing you location is a very basic need in communication (don't think
Google Latitude on smart phones, think 90.7% of mobile phone calls including
the question "where are you?", globally, everywhere)

\- Landmarks is a concept that has evolved to solve this; Well known places
that can be used to communicate location. And they fit the text based
communication perfectly.

\- Traditional maps, which can be seen as a competitor, lacks in a few major
areas:

→ How do you send a map? SMS is the global standard of communication, you
can't SMS a map

→ More than half of the people in the world can't read maps. At all. These
people still understand the local landmarks.

→ Good maps are not available everywhere, and will not be anytime soon as
traditional maps are expensive to make

So revolutionary in quite a different way than BBM or iMessages.

(edit: formatting)

~~~
nachteilig
Sure, but it doesn't seem like your company's offering solves any of these
problems _well_. Smartphone solve this problem already by letting one send
contact point (such as a location from the Maps app on iPhone) over mms.

For a majority of messages it seems like your product mostly eliminates
remaining characters.

~~~
asmosoinio
Did you try the app? If you did: Where are you located, how did you find the
local landmarks? What would you improve in the app?

I agree that if (1) the receiving device is a smartphone, (2) there is map
data available for the used area, and (3) the users knows how to read maps,
sending a location link with MMS works well. Or a http- google-maps link with
SMS, that gets opened in Google Maps at least in iPhone and Android so works
pretty brilliantly too and doesn't cost the price of MMS.

I think we have pretty much proven that landmarks in SMS is a killer feature
for consumer vehicle tracking with Tramigo (best selling GPS/GSM tracking
device), and in that use simplicity is the key: plain SMS, no need for data
connection or anything else than just a plain GSM phone. So we are trying to
expand from there.

------
wccrawford
I see that it's free. What's the catch? Ads? Does it spam my friends? Anything
else that I might not think of?

~~~
asmosoinio
The most important thing for us is to spread the understanding of our landmark
concept. As such the idea is almost trivial: we have coordinates and names for
point-of-interest etc. However we think that with highly optimized data those
can be a really effective way to communicate location. We have the global
landmark database already, and a sustainable business for it, but now we are
looking for new ways to utilize it.

There's ads when viewing a menu ("Landmark" button in compose view), not so
much for the money but to study if that might work. I think the ads need to be
very unobstructive in any app like this that we expect the user to use a lot,
so we are not counting on that.

It definitely does not spam your friends.

------
bahman2000
It's like the Locate in Handcent, but you're basically "rounding-off" to the
nearest "landmark"?

~~~
asmosoinio
Kind of, but the receiver does not need to click on a http-link to understand
the location.

So like Locate in Handcent, but Gecko SMS also works

\- when texting to your mother/grandpa/non-techie friend with old dumbphone

\- in places like Balikpapan, Indonesia, with zero Google map data coverage.

Handcent Locate can also optionally add an address (created from Google street
data), which may work well if the data is there. However landmarks are
designed to be well known spots, whereas addresses are often cryptic.

