You may have seen the other day that GPS navigation system Waze hit 10m users. It’s a social tool that aggregates user reports on traffic, accidents and the like. I’m a recent convert and signed up a few months ago, since then it’s become a part of my daily commute. If any of you have experienced the vagaries of rush hour traffic on the A3 you’ll understand that drivers need all the help they can get.

Waze: Useful and free, what's not to like?

As a consumer my prerequisites for downloading a geolocation app have to fulfil at least 3 of the following. Here’s how Waze hits those targets:

• Collaborative – Waze uses thousands of users’ traffic reports to create a map of road congestion and allows them to send messages in real time to update each other. Its success rests on the community spirit of its users
• Timely – this all happens in real time, a boon for an audience where seconds count
• Useful – I’ve avoided innumerable traffic jams with this tool and anything that can make the daily commute less painful and for free gets my thumbs up
• Fully integrates with my existing social profiles without superseding them – this is not a Foursquare, inundating friends with useless and annoying updates. It fulfils a purpose and doesn’t pretend to be a Facebook replacement. Should the jam be particularly bad you can send your update to Twitter or Facebook to alert your wider following, but that’s it. Waze knows its limits

Download it for your iPhone, Android or Blackberry here. My username is rupinjapan, so if you see a Transit wrapped round a traffic light on the Cobham bypass let me know ahead of time.

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The much rumoured “BlackPad” has been revealed. Last night at the company’s developer conference CEO Mike Lazarides introduced its Apple iPad rival.

We know little more than the tech specs right now but the preview video looks pretty cool. Price? Well that is mooted by the guys at PR News to be double an iPad, estimated to be between $1,000 and $1,300. That is a lot! When can we get our sticky fingers on it? According to an interview with BlackBerry’s Dan Dodge, it will be early 2011 in North America and next summer in the UK. That is a long time!

BlackBerry is keeping its focus on their enterprise market and the video above specifically calls the device “enterprise ready” and a “professional tablet”. They are clearly positioning the device in a different place to Apple’s iPad. But then why call it a PlayBook? Not sure an enterprise IT director would countenance deploying 1,000 PlayBooks across his organisation?

As with the iPhone and iPad before it, key to the BlackBerry PlayBook’s success will be the range of apps available and the speed with which they become available. Apple has a huge head start and my feeling is that this will simply be another device wealthy BlackBerry fanatics will buy to “play” with in airport lounges.

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So Facebook Places finally comes out of the closet. At first read it looks pretty good, and when you go to the iPhone app it stands proud in the middle of your phone screen. What it has over other location services such as Foursquare and Gowalla is an existing network of friends who are more than likely to be the ones you would actually want to bump in to “by accident” in the pub.

For a more detailed look, have a read of Walt Mosberg’s column on the WSJ the video is worth a watch to.

Those other two location games have gained some traction and a lot of headlines, but the established nature of our personal Facebook communities combined with the weight of half a billion users worldwide, will guarantee use of Facebook’s service by a much larger volume of people. That means businesses will flock to it and now be trying to get their first Places campaigns running as soon as possible.

Facebook does appear to be being very embracing and actively encouraging Foursquare and others to access Places through its API. Facebook has also not gone down the game route, no mayorships or awards, allowing the more niche services to keep their focus unchallenged.

Right, so what can we do right now, if we live or visit the US? Here are a stream of tweets this morning from @sophysilver from the Facebook UK PR team, thank you!:

• If you don’t trust your friends it is simple to turn off. For most there is a lot of value in being able to share an experience with friends
• Places never automatically shares information on the location
• You must take an action to associate yourself with a place by either checking in yourself or by allowing friends to check you into a place
• It is not true that the primary location setting is switched on by default. “Places” tags will not automatically be shared with friends
• Where you have not allowed check-ins you are simply tagged in your friends status updates, just like status tagging works on the site today.
• Additional protection of being able to turn tagging off for Places, and to sett your own check-ins to any group you want including ‘only me’
• You also have the option of never checking in with the product in which case you will never be associated with a place
• Default setting for all is Friends Only. Minors can only share their location with Friends even if they try to widen it

Do follow Sophie on Twitter and for further news about the arrival of Places in the UK.

We will be keeping a close eye on this, especially should we be lucky enough to go on any trips to the US and when it finally arrives on this side of the Atlantic. Let us know what you think of the announcement, are Foursquare and Gowalla doomed?

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Having declared last week that it was not illegal to jailbreak iPhones the U.S. government effectively gave consumers the right to fiddle with their proprietary software, allowing them access to other providers or to use apps and music from sources other than Apple’s own iTunes Store. This all became possible thanks to the exemptions made to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA.)

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF,) a selfstyled civil liberties group defending consumers’ digital rights, more than a million iPhone owners are said to have jailbroken their handsets in the past few months. The EFF hails the DMCA exemptions as a landmark victory and a good percentage of iPhone users might agree with them.

Apple on the other hand has warned that although jailbreaking may not be frowned upon by the law of the land, it won’t take the matter so lightly. Not only will jailbreaking void the warranty, but there is a risk of bricking the handset, effectively turning it into an expensive door stop. However, according to a journalist friend of mine it can be easily restored to a non jailbroken state.

If you’re after my personal opinion,  I’m torn. On the one hand, I agree that Apple should be able to protect their IP with some legal recourse, however, emotionally I’m with the EFF (who remind me a bit of the Wolverines from mediocre 80s action flick Red Dawn) who believe a handset shouldn’t be locked down once you’ve purchased it. This battle will continue to rage. Choose your side carefully, maybe grow a mullet, wear khaki, buy an AK.

Let me know what you think about jailbreaking; a digital taboo, or your revolutionary right?

mmmmm the 80s

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Surely it can’t just be about the products. There are many other consumer electronics companies with great design and rich features. So what makes hundreds of people – probably take a day holiday from work – stand in a queue for hours just for a new phone?

I have been a vocal advocate of all things Apple for a number of years. That said, I don’t buy into this “must have day it is released” philosophy that keeps Apple on the front pages.

I think we are all still a bit in awe of the company, its products and its success. All since it simplified personal music players at a time when every other tech company was talking up more and more formats, features, memory, processor speed etc. This must be where the attraction lies, technology for the technophobe and geek alike, only in limited numbers (at least on launch).

Accessibility to the internet, to information, entertainment and the people who are important to us has never been easier. The iPad and the iPhone put this power in our pockets, or a small bag. The combination of design and simple, reliable technology that provides non-stop access to the services we now demand has been the secret sauce behind the company’s success. It is the epitome of less is more.

As a gently cynical PR person, I can’t help but also think that the introverted, highly controlled communications strategy has also been important, kind of a real world Willy Wonka for the consumer electronics market. Yet there are chinks that seem to be appearing in this particular piece of armour.

Apple needs to be careful not to get too big for its boots. It is still just one of many technology companies out there offering these types of product. The left hand gaff is a potential landmine for what has been an impenetrable tank rolling over its competitors as it sees fit, given the power of social networking platforms today.

Don’t get me wrong, iPhone 4 is just a wobble. iPad has been hugely successful and the phones will sort themselves out over the coming few months. Having said that, right now the company needs to work hard to ensure its mystique remains. Prototype products being sold to bloggers, fundamental usability issues appearing on day of launch and a change in tone to one of arrogance will leave a lingering uncertainty in the mouth of later adopters and could build to a sense that Apple rotten to the core.

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Facebook is a huge success, we all know that. But are major brands being blinded by the sheer volume of people using the channel?

First it was Levis who started using Facebook’s latest “like” functionality to allow people to share the type of jeans they are buying, or wearing. The style of jean would be sent out to all that person’s friends letting them know what jeans that person is likely to be wearing out down the youth club (do these still exist for the Facebook generation?) that evening.

Now, maybe it is just me, but I would take this as a “don’t buy these jeans” alert. The last thing I want to do, and sharing my metrosexual side here, is turn up on a night out with my friends where we are all wearing the same clothes. Maybe it is just a British thing?

The latest of the major global brands to look to Facebook to steal a march on the competition is McDonalds. The social media giant’s highly anticipated location updates, which are just round the corner, look likely to be the cornerstone of a new way for people to interact with the burger giant.

Sorry, but again maybe it is a cultural thing, but to go around sharing with your friends and family that you are in McDonalds again would fill me with dread. It is one location that, no matter how strong a guilty pleasure a quarter pounder with cheese is, I would not want to share across Facebook, not even for 50p off.

Brands such as the two I have singled out above need to be sure to think carefully about how they roll out campaigns internationally. There will always be cultural stereotypes and idiosyncrasies that will make it difficult to ensure a global social media campaign is successful in all countries. Local teams with local knowledge are important in avoiding the brand becoming a local laughing stock. One answer is to create country specific Facebook pages that will enable these individualities to be a positive and not an opportunity to poke fun.

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