What is Plazes?

Plazes is a location-aware service, connecting you with the people and places in your vicinity and all over the world. Plazes is using Local Networks (LANs) as a unique identifier for a location. Every time you run a little application called the Plazes Launcher it identifies the network you're in. Then you're browser pops up and provides you with information like geolocation, links, photos, etc. for this specific network i.e. location. By being at a specific Plaze users also publish presence information to others at the same Plaze and their friends anywhere else. Every user has a personal profile so discovery and search is easy.

What kind of Services does Plazes offer?

For example:

• Learn about the Plaze you're at. At a trade fair, maybe someone will link a map of all the exhibitors or learn more about the park, which public hotspot you're using. Look at photos that other people put up for this place and events that happened here. Basically you can link any kind of information to a specific location.
• Discover other people using the same network, and engage in conversation with them. Or identify your peers at a conference or any other event. It's like rendezvous for everybody.
• Discover nearby hotspots or check who's online at your favorite restaurant at the moment. Or be alerted, when a colleague of yours goes online at the S.F. Branch.

Many other applications are possible and can even be integrated into existing applications via the Plazes Web-API which will implemented perspectively.

Who´s Contributing all the data?

You, the user. Plazes is a huge collaborative effort for annotating locations. If you are the first to discover a place you are being asked to annotate this place and input basic information like name or city. Everyone who is physically present at the same location can incrementally complement this information. There is also no editorial authority, it basically works like a wiki. Information for a location is only partially structured. Every location´s page also incorporates text and a picture comments.

Does Plazes offer exact Geo-Coordinates?

Yes, but only if you enter a street adress in the Plazes´ description.

Why should I contribute?

For the honor and because you make the world a better Plaze. No seriously, Plazes incorporates a system called 'Discoverer'. Every discovered Plaze has a unique page, basically a website. On that website there is a box called 'Discoverer' in the upper-right corner. If you discovered a location first, this box is yours. In contrast to the other information this can only be edited by you and yourself. You can point to your own weblog, upload pictures of your cat or use this space to promote your own business. Solely up to you and your imagination.

So is Plazes a HotSpot Finder?

No, it´s more. But yes, you can use Plazes for finding a hotspot or any kind of network, and therefore location, that´s close to you.

So is Plazes Social Software?

In a way, yes. It´s not a 'six-degrees-of-separation' software like friendster or tribe.net but it allows you to declare other users as friends. This way, Plazes can notify you, when any of your buddies go online at a certain location. Nevertheless does Plazes allow you to link your multiple digital identities, like your friendster profile or your blog, into your Plazes profile so other users can learn more about you.

So is Plazes an instant messenger?

No, Plazes is not an instant messenger. It provides basic messaging functionality for discovery so you can get the attention of other users or find out about other ways to contact each other Most users already have more than one IM account and there is tons of good software out there. So Plazes integrates existing systems: On your profile page you can just add your ICQ or AIM number and other users can add you or message you with just one click on your profile page.

Can I use Plazes everywhere in the world?

Yes. Plazes is the only truly global location-aware service. Since it doesn´t depend on any cellular phone infrastructure you can tag places and find your friends anywhere on the planet as long as there is a internet access.

What about privacy?

Yes, Plazes is centralized and relies on a central database. There is just no other way to provide this kind of service. But Plazes is also pseudonym. Which means you do not have to provide your real identity ever if you don’t want to. Plazes respects your data and Plazes is not about 1:1 Marketing. We will not provide any third party with your location or user information at any point.