The New Social Network for Your Neighbourhood

When was the last time you talked to your neighbour in the same building complex or down the block on the street? When was the last time you finally move beyond the generic "Hi" or "Have a great day." greetings with the familiar faces you see on your stomping ground?

Kinjoe www.kinjoe.com - the newest online social service provider on the block in your neighourbood. This network site is so new that it just launched its service less than 3 months ago. There was a buzz party held in Blenz Coffee Yaletown last Wednesday, March 30, 2011. Prior to the event, Kinjoe mailed out a buzz postcard to all Yaletown residents as its first trail user base. 

By providing your work or residential address, you get to discover the people who live/work within 15 minutes walk away from you. The privacy aspect works as 2-way street, in order to see your neighbours, you need to also display your profiles. On the site, you're allowed to interact with people within 15 minutes walking distance. On the site, there are posts such as asking about the best brunch place in the area, organizing a running club on Sunday mornings, inviting people to an event in town, creating a poll survey on a certain subject, notifying a great promotion in the area, posting a parking spot for rent...and goes on.

Think of Kinjoe like Facebook but for your community (By the way, you can also log in using your Facebook account, no need to remember another username or password.) I joined the site 2 months ago using my work address in Yaletown since I was told that it has the most user base so far. What I like about this new social site is that you don't have to be a "friend" with someone or "follow" someone in order to connect with people. ------> That's what being a neighbour is for! So far, I heard the site is available for use in Vancouver and Victoria. I am sure once it upgrades and makes more modifications, it'll be a full running site and picks up the steam.  

What I would also like to see is the opportunity of Kinjoe presence in school campuses or residences, where it provides the function for new or existing students to organize study groups or events. Overall, I see a great potential of this site. As part of the existing user, I would love to see how this would revolutionize the definition of "community" in an urban setting of this modern virtual world.

Who needs to fly when you have internet?

Google recently has launched Street View for Museums and started the launch of the Art Project http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/hermitage, which features 17 art museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA in New York, The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Tate Britain and The National Gallery in London, Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

Via the Art Project, users can navigate through these museums and check out more than 1,000 works of art by more than 400 artists. From the website, you got to use the zoom tool and admire each art piece as long as you wish. Google also created an annotation feature that lets you toggle between the museum’s interior and particular works of art. Artwork is also supplemented with info panels and YouTube videos.

For those who like to linger in front of pieces, every museum chose one work to be captured using “gigapixel” photo-capturing technology. One can check out these pieces in “microscope view” using Picasa to explore brushstrokes — an awesome addition for aspiring artists looking to learn.

In addition, you can create your own artwork collection, saving views of any piece. You can comment on these pieces and even share the selected works with friends. We can see tools like these being invaluable for students.

This idea allows everyone around the world the experience an environment and view the object without physically being there. However, doesn't it also mean that the sense of "exclusivity" has lost? You get to see something without paying a flight, traveling the world, paying the admission fee? This feature is fantastic for students like me, though. 

Or is this a way for Google to show to the world that they have the technology and power to do things that no one else can? Also, like Google's Webex http://www.webex.com/, a tool for realtime virtual meeting everywhere (3-minute quick tour demo http://www.webex.com/quicktour/mc-enduser/?TrackID=1017644&hbxref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webex.com%2F&goid=quick_tour). It seems like we as a society is trending towards an environment where you are there and you are really not, but you can. 

Imagine in the future, there are virtual showrooms of any category where viewers are allowed to enter in and with the help of some kind of sensory device, you are taken into this 3D environment where you can literally feel and touch the products the retailers are selling. -- This may be another daring way for marketers to promote their items to create the surreal experience. 

Note: Some sources are collected from http://mashable.com/2011/02/01/google-art-project/