LiveGO: One app for IM, Facebook, Twitter and Google+

Back in 2009, I asked for one social network to rule them all because I was tired of following friends, status updates and location check-ins on multiple platforms. That hasn’t happened, and now I have at least a half-dozen apps on my smartphone to navigate the crazy social currents. But there is some smart software that can, at the very least, mildly aggregate social networking activity. LiveGO is one of the newest such apps for iOS, and I took it for a brief spin on my iPod touch this morning.

LiveGO is essentially one app that houses both instant messenger accounts as well as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ activity. The software actually started up in 2006 as a web-based IM client called MessengerFX, and the web roots show through in the app. From a technical standpoint, the software is mainly an IM client with wrappers for the social network services, so you won’t see redesigned clients for Facebook, Twitter or Google+. Instead, LiveGO integrates the standard web interfaces for each.

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As a result, it offers a single app where you can quickly switch between social networks with the press of a button. Sure, you could run each app individually in iOS and multitask between them, but I find it much faster to just tap a button in LiveGO to move back and forth between networks. And the software is a full-featured IM client that supports MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and GTalk. LiveGO also supports IM notifications, but only for three hours after inactivity or closure of the application.

Again, LiveGO is more of an aggregator and doesn’t add new functionality to social network management, but it’s free and might be a faster way to stay in tune with friends on different networks.

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What happens when you marry sports, sensors & social?

New York Road Runners and MapMyRUN will bring an enhanced spectator experience to the 2011 New York Marathon with smarter software and social network integration. Available a week before the Nov. 6 race for both iOS and Android smartphones, new applications will integrate data from RFID and GPS sensors, providing real-time progress of runners throughout the 26.2 mile course. The status of runners will also be available through SMS, email and push notifications in addition to automatic tweets and Facebook status updates as runners pass mile markers.

As an avid, daily runner, I’ve watched the progression of such sports apps when paired with sensors and social media over the past several years. A simple pedometer morphed into a large, clunky GPS watch in 2004 for tracking my training run distances and paces. That has now been replaced by the GPS radio in a smartphone. It was a hassle to get useful data from that old device into a usable application, but not anymore: I can easily beam data after a run into my online running log through the RunKeeper app I’ve been using for the past two years. And sharing the information is simple, as today’s apps support automatic posting of exercise activities directly to Facebook, Twitter or other social networks.

When you put sports, sensors and social together, it can bring vast returns. I run about 20 races a year, but my family often can’t attend them. I enable real-time GPS tracking and broadcasting in my running apps for these situations so the family can follow along on the web or a smartphone. I often receive encouraging messages on Twitter from friends and perfect strangers alike just before these races, which helps more than most people realize.

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@KevinCTofel
Kevin C. Tofel

Happy with my 5k race tonight. With minimal speedwork, a tender Achilles and a hilly course, managed a 21:22. Best time in 10 years.

July 13, 2011 4:57 pm via Twitter for AndroidReply RetweetFavorite

Transmitting race data in real-time also adds a little positive pressure to perform well. Knowing that folks are paying attention, even virtually, has often kept my body moving when my mind says I should take it easy. And I’ve heard from a number of folks that posting my daily running streak progress (198 days and still going strong) has provided a few of them that little extra boost to get up and exercise. My running goal isn’t to be inspirational by any means, but if sharing my workouts and races helps to engage others in physical fitness, I’d call that a win.

In some sense, the new apps for the upcoming New York Marathon are the next logical progression in the trends I’ve witnessed for exercise data. We’ve gone from individuals tracking their own race times on watches to wearing RFID tags on shoes and race numbers to gain splits at certain points in a race. That’s useful information for the runners, as it helps for performance analysis after the race, and it helps race directors with more detailed race results that can be posted soon after the completion of a race. And now that data is getting transmitted from running apps and sensors on courses to the web for spectators and competitors. That’s different from my race transmission through the RunKeeper app. The direct MapMyRUN collaboration with a sporting event allows for any participant to tracked in real-time.

This combination of social, sensors and sports emphasizes a key point: Competition is a shared experience between athletes and spectators. If it wasn’t, millions around the world wouldn’t have tuned in to the FIFA Women’s World Cup match yesterday, nor would we fill weekends with other sporting events and athletes wouldn’t be tweeting during events. Thanks to small sensors and software to capture data, mobile broadband to send it and social networks to share it, we can all take part in sporting events, even from the comfort of our couches or computers.

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The smartphone: Our new tool for sharing experiences

Attending Keith Urban’s concert in Philadelphia last night, my wife and I were lucky in our seat selection. Oh, we had marginal, average-priced tickets; near the back corner of the venue which had an end-stage set-up quite far away. But as the show neared conclusion, Keith carefully walked the entire length of the concert floor — flanked by security, of course — and walked up the steps near us where a temporary microphone rig magically appeared. For us it was the highlight of the night. It also shows how prominent camera-enabled, connected smartphones have become in the U.S., as nearly all of section 103 started snapping pictures.

Limited to the aging 5-megapixel shooter in my old Google Nexus One, most of the pictures I took are unusable. (Yes, I should have taken the myTouch 4G Slide!) But a few were good enough to share the experience. Thanks to the impressive Google+ Android app, all of my shots were uploaded in the background and I was able to quickly post a few during the moment. Aside from lacking picture quality though, folks on Google+ quickly noted all of the smartphones in the images. It seems like everyone was capturing memories, and I’m willing to bet that most were immediately doing as I was: Sharing those memories with friends around the world.

Whether you share on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+, use a BlackBerry, iPhone or Android handset, it’s simply amazing to think about the smartphone’s rise to prominence in our culture over just the past few years. I saw my first Keith Urban concert before I had a smartphone although I remember trying to snap photos of him back then. I couldn’t share easily share the images, and to be honest, the fuzzy pictures weren’t worth sharing with anyone. But now? It’s actually part of our daily experiences thanks to superb image sensors, fast processors, smart software and mobile broadband.

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