<% #if cgi && cgi['ps'] %> <% # change 1 to '1' to enable %> <% if cgi && cgi['ps'] && cgi['ps']==1 %>

It appears that you are in a PlaceSite but the wifi router is not recognizing you properly. If you want to get into to your local PlaceSite, please disconnect from the Internet for 5 minutes, then try again. This will give the router time to notice that you've left, at which point it will kindly connect you.

If you're seeing this message and you are connected to a PlaceSite router, please e-mail help@placesite.com and let us know about your problem so we can fix it as soon as possible.

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What's this about?

PlaceSite introduces a new way to use wireless networks -- to strengthen local community.

Just open a Web browser in a PlaceSite place -- you'll see a digital reflection of the social activity going on right here, right now. You'll find a host of services by, for and about people who spend time here, including profiles of the other people here now, a truly locals-only chat room and message forums tied to the place.

You don't need to download any software; you don't even need to type in a URL. PlaceSite works with any browser on any wi-fi-enabled laptop. Unlike most location-based services, PlaceSite is built on what already exists.

PlaceSite is not just a Web application -- it's an open platform that lets people around the world build a new class of hybrid online/offline experiences tied intimately to physical places. It lets people share information locally, apart from the global Web. It offers powerful new ways to use some of the world's most popular Web sites. And it lets each PlaceSite evolve differently from the others, to take on the spirit of its home place and the people who spend time there.

PlaceSites are already up and running in several San Francisco cafes. We're rolling out soon in many more places, and soon we'll release the software to the world so you can build your own PlaceSites in your neighborhood. You can help us enhance community gathering places around the world.

 

How does it work?

It's quite simple. Let's start with a basic scenario: You open your laptop computer in a neighborhood café and fire up a Web browser.

Instead of your usual startup page, this is what you see:

From here, clicking "Skip It" skips PlaceSite altogether; you can use wi-fi freely as you would in any other cafe. But if you click "Check It Out" you can explore the cafe's PlaceSite.

This site is visible only to people within range of the café's wi-fi hot spot.

Each item in the left column ("Who's Here") represents someone using a computer in the café, now. That includes you, the person highlighted in yellow.

From here you can leave this page behind and surf the Web or check e-mail as usual.

Or, you can find out more about one of the other people by clicking on their usernames. Or you can read messages posted by other people in this café to a forum visible only to people here:

 

If you'd like to post a forum message, or just to share information about yourself in the "who's here" panel, you can register for a free account. Registering and creating a profile is easy and it resembles similar processes on social network services such as Friendster and Tribe.net, with two key differences:

      1) Everything is optional -- you can fully use the system without filling out any personal information fields (beyond a username and password), and

      2) Every personal information item includes a "reveal" setting:

The reveal setting ("reveal this to others") determines when others can see the indicated piece of information. You can return to your profile page at any time to change these settings. This feature arose from our survey of Seattle wi-fi café users in Summer 2004. Some of the respondents expressed a desire to actively reveal and hide certain pieces of personal information, on an ongoing basis, based on who they see entering and leaving the café.

This example cafe application is just the beginning - PlaceSite is a platform designed to allow people all over the world to invent new sorts of location-based services tied to places.

(To learn how this works behind the scenes, see our technical details page.

 

Why can't people just walk over and say hi to one another? Will software replace face-to-face conversation?

Not at all! To the contrary. We think new forms of communication through software can augment and even encourage face-to-face conversation. Older forms of nonverbal communication do this already.

Consider graffiti, or an old-fashioned paper bulletin board; people use these to communicate with others nearby, but these things don't replace face-to-face dialogue. Think of the clothes you wear and your facial expressions: they tell other people a lot about who you are, how you're feeling, etc. When you glance around in a public place, clothing and expressions give you important clues in deciding whom, if anyone, to start a conversation with. But they don't replace that conversation.

[ Recent news: "A Pew study said the Internet supplements, rather than replaces, social interaction," The Minnesota Daily, Jan. 31, 2006. ]

Computers are no longer tied to our home and office desktops. Why limit people to heads-down, inwardly-focused digital tasks when they're in settings where more social behavior comes naturally?

What's the difference between PlaceSite and Dodgeball, Plazes, Meetro, 6th Sense, Jambo, Lovegety, etc.?

PlaceSite is built on what exists already. Those other services require you to install special software and/or buy new hardware. With the other services, most people in any given public place don't have what's needed so they don't see the system. And they're not visible on it, which dramatically reduces the incentive for people who do install the software to turn it on and keep it on. With PlaceSite, everyone using wi-fi in a place automatically experiences the benefits. We've leapfrogged this chicken-or-egg problem.

The other services above are tied to a person, to the user who installs the software. PlaceSite is tied to a place, and it grows to reflect the local character of that place and the people who frequent it. The experience of one PlaceSite will differ substantially from that of another PlaceSite, just as the corresponding places differ from one to the next.

Having said that, the services tied to the user do provide features that PlaceSite doesn't. For instance, we personally have used Dodgeball, Plazes and Meetro to keep in touch with our friends who we know also use these services, and to note those friends' whereabouts when they're not in the same places with us. PlaceSite serves entirely different purposes.

PlaceSite provides a significantly different set of services from those seen in the location-based social networking applicaitions listed above. We welcome such products; PlaceSite complements them and extends their value, and they do the same for us.

What exactly are you doing?

We installed our system at a local café and launched it for one month last year. We observed the reactions, gathered feedback from the community, and now we've redesigned the system based on what people want to do with it, and we've rebuilt the entire code base to make it faster, more efficient and easier for other programers and designers to understand, use and build upon. Now we've launching the redesigned version in several more Bay Area cafés, and we're releasing the software as an open source project, including a router installation package to allow café owners around the world to create their own PlaceSites easily and free of charge.

We're carefully watching how people are using the current PlaceSites, we're interviewing the users, their fellow cafe patrons and the cafe staff to learn how we can improve things, and we're in the midst of the next redesign which we plan to roll out this summer.

There's a lot more in the works, including an open API to make it easy for anyone to create whole new PlaceSite services, or to turbocharge their existing Web sites and services with PlaceSite location context. Stay tuned and get involved if you'd like.

 

Where and when will it happen?

PlaceSite is up and running in several San Francisco cafés:

Axis Café, 1201 8th Street (at 16th Street). (Map)

Couleur Café, 300 De Haro Street (at 16th Street). (Map)

Jumpin' Java Café, 139 Noe St. (at 14th St). (Map)

We're rolling out in more cafés in the Bay Area. Soon we'll release the code free of charge so that café owners around the world can install our software and turn their cafés into PlaceSite cafés, and so that developers around the world can contribute to the core software and build their own new creations that use the PlaceSite platform.

Want to try it out? To be notified of our next launch, join our mailing list by sending your e-mail address to notify@placesite.com.

 

When will the real fun begin?

We think PlaceSite's real power will emerge when thousands of places transform into PlaceSites. That leads to PlaceSite as network of many places, and PlaceSite as open platform to build a host of new services upon.

Then we can provide "views" between different PlaceSite places and open up our location data to outside developers. These people can build new services such as friend proximity alerts, PlaceSite café finders, and all sorts of things we can't yet imagine. Respect for privacy is a PlaceSite keystone; by default personal information will be limited to the place where it's first shared, and no personal information will be open to other places and applications until a user specifically requests such sharing.

Other online services can dramatically boost their value by hooking into PlaceSite's open platform. Imagine how much more valuable a dating service like match.com will become when it can bring location context into play: for instance, match.com can notify a subscriber when another person whose profile matches her preferences logs on in the same café or neighborhood. Imagine the benefits PlaceSite's location context can bring users of Flickr (a social photo-sharing service) or Audioscrobbler (a music taste-matching and recommendation service), or to people who use any other social online service.