Venture Beat says the location application Whrrl is revamping its iPhone app just in time for SXSW.
The South by Southwest Interactive Conference runs March 13-17, in Austin. Here’s the Twitter chatter and a live TwitterVision map.
Here are the talks, trade show and parties. Winners from the SXSW Web Awards Finalists will be announced at SXSW Web Awards Ceremony, Sunday evening.
Social networking apps, like Twitter, got their start at SXSW just two years ago. Today location-based networking apps include Loopt, Brightkite and Shizzow for the iPhone. But it was Pelago’s Whrrl that was the first app to get funding from Kleiner Perkins’ iFund, to develop a location-based network for the iPhone, explains Venture Beat.
While it had some success, it, like the other location apps, has been hampered by the iPhone’s inability to run third-party apps in the background. So now, Pelago is relaunching Whrrl for the iPhone with a slightly new approach.
The new version simplifies the interface and puts your contacts front and center. The app also now allows you to very easily post status updates and photos. Any user can also comment on those items. And, smartly, Whrrl is now tied into both Facebook by way of Facebook Connect and Twitter. So when you update something like your location in Whrrl, the change can be sent to both of those services to let your friends know, even if they aren’t using Whrrl.
But the biggest modification may be to Whrrl’s interface itself. Not only is it less confusing as I noted above, it may be the least confusing of any of the aforementioned location-based iPhone apps out right now. It takes a little getting used to if you’ve used the old version, but the interface actually works very well and feels natural when you know where everything is. It uses a system of drop-downs and overlays to display information.
In other location application news; Friends on Fire is a new Facebook app from Yahoo.
The app was built by Yahoo’s Fire Eagle. Fire Eagle is the service Yahoo launched last year to manage location data. You can update your location through Fire Eagle through GPS, Wi-Fi triangulation, etc.), then Yahoo sends the information out to the networks you belong to that work with Fire Eagle.
Friends on Fire has been beta testing since December, but starting today, it’s open to the public. Yahoo is adding new apps to the Fire Eagle Gallery each week.
Dailywireless co-founder Don Park developed a take-off on Fire Eagle called IceCondor. IceCondor works on an Android phone. It allows you to follow people and events in real-time from multiple services.
IceCondor takes advantage of map coordinates in RSS feeds (called GeoRSS feeds) and displays them as markers on a map. IceCondor works with multiple services including Brightkite, Shizzow and Upcoming.org. You can download IceCondor from Don’s site or at the Android Market
Fierce Wireless says their Top 5 Free Android Apps are; Beetaun (a recommendation engine, offering suggestions from trusted friends and contacts), BreadCrumbz (exploits Android’s GPS, Google Maps, camera and microphone to enable users to create first-person travelogues complete with annotated photos and spoken narration), chompSMS (messaging with an iPhone-like onscreen keyboard, signatures, chat-style bubbles), Locale (determines location, automatically changing the device profile accordingly), TuneWikix (delivers karaoke-like lyrics synchronized with audio and video playback along with social networking).
