Beat roaming charges

Shocked by your roaming charges-theres an App for that.

Your away for holiday, you still want to check into Foursquare, Gowalla and get your twitter density reading from the Clima meter so you can see what is hot and what is not, but do you dare come home to a 2,000 pound mobile phone bill?

The online tech site ZD Net has just started a campaign to bring roaming prices down. It surveyed 1,300 of its readers worldwide, and they weren't happy either.
"We have to stand up for our readership on this one, it seems to us it's a very clear cut case of people being charged over the odds for something that is becoming crucial to all of us," said David Meyer from ZDNet.

Making use of voicemail while you're away may seem sensible - but those doing so may have to pay double or even triple the international rate.

Turning off roaming doesn't mean you need to be cut off. You can still hook up to local wi-fi networks that will let you use all the usual VOIP services, like Skype, Viber and Jajah.

The other useful tool when you're on wi-fi is instant messaging services, like Whatsapp , Pingchat and Meebo.

Google maps lets you search for free wi-fi access points by location. NavFree is a turn-by-turn satnav app for Apple mobile devices, soon to be released on Androids too. OffMaps is another mapping app for iPhones that stores the data on your handset before you depart. For Android users there is AndNav2. and Nokia users are looked after too with Ovi maps.

Read more on the BBC

Whats your Geosocial? The Geosocial Universe and Geosocial Networking

Introduction to Geosocial Web

"This infographic, created by Jesse Thomas of digital creative agency Jess3, shows the relative size of social networks and on-line services such as Skype, Gmail, MySpace, Twitter and Foursquare, and also shows the proportion of their user base that access the service via a mobile device. Jess3 has also done a number of other creative visualizations of digital services, including the “Conversation Prism” in collaboration with Brian Solis."

"Graph created by Jesse Thomas of digital creative agency Jess3

Geosocial Networking is a type of social networking in which geographic services and capabilitiessuch as geocoding and geotagging are used to enable additional social dynamics. User-submitted location data or geolocationtechniques can allow social networks to connect and coordinate users with local people or events that match their interests. Geolocation on web-based social network services can be IP-based or use hotspot trilateration. For mobile social networks, texted location information or mobile phone tracking can enable location-based services to enrich social networking."

Source wikipedia, read more here:

Graph created by Jesse Thomas of digital creative agency Jess3

What is Clima: Crowd Sourcing for the Geospatial, check it out before you check in

Track the levels of Web 3.0 adoption for any location on Earth with Clima

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Clima Tweeter Meter Facebook App

Advertisement Use this tool to track Twitter Levels anywhere in the world

This tool from our Web Lab tells you the overall level of tweeting for any given location in the world. It provides context to the geo-social network. Most current geosocial sites provide location for your friends and social contacts. But one of the great features, or terrible features, of space is that it can be crowded. Sometimes we seek out crowds, like when we want to meet people on a Friday night or participate in a protest. Other times we want to avoid crowds, like when we and some other new parents are meeting for a coffee after a week isolated with our terrible twos. By looking at the overall level of Web 3.0 activity at a location we provide data about the social conditions in a space. People can see if a place is hot and busy (say with a score of 90 or above) or quite and laid back (with say a score of 15)


By looking at the intensity and frequency of geo-tagged tweets we can gauge the "crowdedness" of an area. Now be warned, different people of different ages groups and social background tweet differently. Don't expect a convention of WWII veterans to be producing a lot of tweets. Also a rave full of teens is likely to produce a lot more tweets than a normal high street. But the tool will give you, on average, a sense for where the larger community social activity is located in space. Look for high scores over 80 in big cities and over 60 in smaller cities and developing countries to find locations of heavy social activity.


The Clima suite of tools aims to move the social above the social graph in to a measure of social climate in space. This gives you a way of engaging with a larger community of stranger who you socially collaborate with every day, when you create a crowd or event. Clima aims to provide for geosocial what Wikipedia did for content: finding a way to learn from the wisdom of crowds.


Rather than having to rely on your own network for friends Clima lets you survey the global community to see what places people decide to visit. Each person tweeting from a location is similar to a like in Facebook. It is a vote for a location and using Clima you can count these votes.