Hello from sunny San Francisco!

If you follow me on Twitter or if you’ve hit the Blog in the last week you’ll have notice that I’ve begun a 2 week road-trip around California. I’ve just completed the first 3 legs that took me from Los Angeles to San Francisco along the famous Highway 1. Yes, it has been awesome!

Normally I wouldn’t necessarily blog about a vacation like this but there is a twist this time. As you all know, or at least should know, my two main passions are Mobile and Social Media. I talk about them all the time, I blog about the subjects and, more importantly, it’s what I do (i.e. it pays the bills). Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about LBS as well and while I was deciding what to do for my break an idea hit me.

The Idea

I’d always wanted to go back to California and see more of the state, especially the Pacific Coast along Highway 1. This would have me traveling up and down the California coast and also in-land to Las Vegas, another place I’ve wanted to experience. It hit me that this would be the ideal trip to put a lot of services to the test.

The Challenge is to broadcast as much of my travels as possible to my online community (and my mom). They would track where I was going, check out the content I was producing and even pitch in with suggestions and advice. It would be a marriage of Social Media, Mobile and LBS and a great proof-of-concept to show people the power of the tools we are starting to have access to.

It is also a great opportunity to assess exactly how far we’ve got in these areas in terms usability, reliability and interactivity.

The Tools

The System: Tools of The Trade

• NokiaviNe – Nokias new “Life-Tracker” is an updated version of their great Sports-Tracker software. It allows me to record my journey using GPS and will also track the content I create along the way. I can then be upload the data to create a map of my trip with the content tacked onto it along the way.

  Nokia also provide a neat little widget that displays the trips on your blog. You can see mine on the new-look Homepage. You can also see the trips in more detail over at my Sports Tracker profile.
  

• Moblog – I’ve been using Moblog for years to upload content direct from my phone to my Moblog. They have recently revamped their software to include cool features like Geo-Tagging support and Mobile Web support.

  The Geo-Tagging support is what really appeals to me for this project as Moblog automatically generates a Map (using Google Maps) with all my pictures on it. This is in contrast to NokiaviNe which only allow you view one trip at a time. The fact that it also pings Twitter every time I post a photo adds to the level of communication I can have with my community while on the road.

• Twitter – This one speaks for itself. Twitter is what I use for most of my interaction with online communities – The Mobile community, the Social Media community, even my mom follows my Twitter updates. This makes it the ideal place to post updates especially as they have a great Mobile interface (and even better ones via 3^rd parties) and an SMS post mechanism that works in the USA. Already my Twitter followers have been able to provide advice on what to check out in the various cities I’ve been through, have recommended restaurants and have even provided a place for me to crash. The fact that Moblog works with it is a bonus as is…

• Spinvox – The voice-to-text specialists not only have a great Voicemail service but they also have great Social Media services that allow you to post messages to Twitter and other networks by calling in and leaving a voice message. This is invaluable to this challenge as I’ll be spending a large amount of time behind the wheel so calling in a post is very useful.Their new partnership with ping.fm is another cool feature as it allows me to send the same update to multiple networks which allows me to ping my Jaiku community at the same time.

• QIK – Yet another great service that is ideal for this challenge. QIK allows me to stream video live to the Internet and while the quality isn’t always great if you want a live-stream, the immediacy of it is what makes it worthwhile. Watchers can communicate with me directly and the video is stored so that people can watch it another time as well.

  Like with Moblog, QIK updates Twitter when i start streaming which keeps my community up-to-date on what is happening. The saved videos can also be uploaded to Moblog using…

• Shozu – The final piece in my social-media-mobile-LBS puzzle. Shozu allows me to upload content to multiple networks quickly and easily. I can use it to post content to Moblog and also to Facebok, Flickr, Youtube and a host of others. It can also support Geo-tagged content which is vital.
  

The Hardware

The Hardware

Once I’d identified all the Tools I wanted to use I had to sort out the hardware to run them on. Now here is the cool part – The only thing I need to do all this is a Nokia N95-8GB (though most new S60 devices would do).

Unfortunately my iPhone 3G just wasn’t up to the job as the camera wasn’t good enough to rely on for all my holiday shots, it didn’t take video and it didn’t have an equivalent to NokiaviNe. Now that isn’t a shot at the iPhone, it’s a great device but while it’s awesome for consuming content it isn’t so great at content creation.

The N95-8GB on the other hand has a great 5 Mega-pixel camera for all my photos and videos, GPS for all the tracking and tagging goodness, HSDPA support to make things quick and snappy (I am using a North America Version) and most importantly supports all the Tools I need for the challenge. WOM World were good enough to loan me a handset for the trip so I was all set.

How Can You Track My Trip?

I’m already in the middle of Day 5 of the Road-Trip so there is already content online from the last few days for you to check out. I have updated the Homepage of this blog to incorporate the NokiaviNe widget, my latest Twitter post and my latest QIK video.

The best way to keep track of where I am and what I’m doing is to follow me on Twitter. You can also check out my Moblog site along with the Content Map and my Sports-Tracker profile for the various Legs of the Road Trip.

I’d love to hear all your thoughts and comments on the challenge and also on the content I’m uploading so feel free to leave a comment here, on my Moblog, through Twitter or via email (abuesber [at] gmail [dot] com).