Symbian Founders Announce flook - World's First Location Browser
November 19, 2009 7:49 AM | Software | Comments (0)
 Flook’s design is being lead by a team of four co-creators with deep programming, entrepreneurial and creative backgrounds – Roger Nolan and Jane Sales founders of Symbian, led the teams creating that company’s comms and kernel respectively. Tristan Brotherton has deep web and media expertise and Dave Jennings’ background in machine intelligence and location services informed flook’s servers. Together, they have built an imagination-centric company, shrugging off the typical corporate structure, enabling the creativity and wonder that has gone into flook’s world of robots, color and whimsical interface. |
What is flook?
Flook’s unique approach combines a web browsing concept with the physical world by allowing users to browse or make “cards” at their current location. Flook learns what the user likes and delivers new findings – without the user needing to search for them. “We're building a new way of browsing the undiscovered, and we hope that users will build upon flook’s world in fun and useful ways,” explains Tristan Brotherton.
Video: Flook - The Location Browser
Using flook
Within flook, a colorful landscape of robots guides the user to browse or create. One can browse cards that capture what’s amazing nearby, including food and drink, local secrets, events, art and more. And when inspired, users can also create their own card to share what they’ve found. “See something beautiful or interesting? Flook it. Cute shoes on sale on your walk to work? Flook it. Funny misspelled city notice? Flook it,” advises Jane Sales.
Content and Creation
As well as user-generated content, flook’s cards are also made from a quickly growing library of external sources, such as event information from Upcoming (upcoming.yahoo.com) and local tweets from Twitter (twitter.com). Sharing via Twitter, adds geo-location and photos to tweets. Facebook integration is coming soon. Browsing the world is now just as easy as swiping through an iPhone’s photo library – just flick one card away and another takes its place. If the user likes the look of a card, they can “flip it” to read the comments and view a map, or collect it so that it is easily available later. Cards are simple and quick to make. Users just take a photo (and add some text if desired), place the card, and it's done. The card will automatically be attached to the place where it was made (geo-tagged) and left for others to find.
Flook Learns
Over time, flook learns which cards people like most – how long did they linger on a card, did they collect it, or email it to a friend? Then, using flook’s equivalent of PageRank, the application prioritizes cards’ delivery, taking into account the “hotness” of the content, the timeliness of the information and its proximity to the user’s location.
Entertaining and Competitive
Highly active flookers can find themselves competing for the highest flook score by creating the the best cards. The flook website, www.flook.it, showcases the community, giving prominence to top flookers.
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