Dodgeball.com
Dodgeball.com is a social network targeting mobile phone users. Users of the service send a text message to Dodgeball (36343) stating their current location. Dodgeball, in turn, broadcasts the user’s location to all of his or her friends (that are also using the service). The benefit is, as one can see, that you can share your location with a group of people. The service also notifies you if you are near a friend. Apart from sharing your location, the user also has the option to look up the address of a location or broadcast a text message to everyone in their friends list.
Of course, everything is done via text messaging which means that you better have a good text messaging plan. In my opinion, the service doesn’t seem very practical. For one thing, you have to enter the location manually via a text message which can become tedious after a while. Second, the location has to be entered into Dodgeball’s database manually via a web browser, in other words, if users haven’t entered a particular location before, Dodgeball will not know that it exists.
Another set of problems is the fact that if you enter three or four friends, every time your friends change locations, you will be swamped with text messages declaring your friend’s new location. Of course you can have Dodgeball email you your friend’s location instead of sending you a text message.
Dodgeball might not be for everyone but I do think it is especially useful for parents who what to keep a tab on their children’s where-abouts. For example, a child can use Dodgeball to declare their location. The parent will then have a log of their child’s location plus address and phone number of the location and if the parent is near a computer, he or she can view the child’s location on Google maps. Of course the child’s information will be hidden from everyone else. Only the child’s parent will be able to access this information (a couple of option need to be changed).
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