Symbian Founders Create flook -- The World’s First Location Browser
Today, Ambient Industries (http://www. ambientindustries. com), a mobile application software company, debuts flook (http://www. flook. it), in the Apple Store. Offered for free, Flook is a location browser that lets users discover and share the world around them.
San Francisco, CA (PRWeb UK) November 19, 2009
Today, Ambient Industries (http://www. ambientindustries. com (http://www. ambientindustries. com)), a mobile application software company, debuts flook (http://www. flook. it (http://www. flook. it)), in the Apple Store. Offered for free, flook is a location browser that lets users discover and share the world around them. Flook’s design is being lead by a team of four co-creators with deep programming, entrepreneurial and creative backgrounds – Roger Nolan and Jane Sales founders of Symbian, led the teams creating that company’s comms and kernel respectively. Tristan Brotherton has deep web and media expertise and Dave Jennings’ background in machine intelligence and location services informed flook’s servers. Together, they have built an imagination-centric company, shrugging off the typical corporate structure, enabling the creativity and wonder that has gone into flook’s world of robots, color and whimsical interface.
“Flook is about serendipity, being lucky and finding something really great nearby, whether it is a beautiful building, a great tapas spot, some cool street art or a ridiculous sale,” says Roger Nolan. Flook’s design marries the photo, some text and the location and adds in a conversation to capture a moment that lives on. Jane Sales adds, “Now you can browse the world around you as if you were flipping through an ultra-local magazine made just for you – and then chat about it. Flook is the first mobile application to enable true location-based messaging.”
What is flook?
Flook’s unique approach combines a web browsing concept with the physical world by allowing users to browse or make “cards” at their current location. Flook learns what the user likes and delivers new findings – without the user needing to search for them. “We're building a new way of browsing the undiscovered, and we hope that users will build upon flook’s world in fun and useful ways,” explains Tristan Brotherton. “We plan to open flook’s API to third-parties in the near future.” The team has been mindful of creating an interface that is user-focused – letting the simplicity of design mask the complexity of the back-end technology. “On the technical side, everything has really come together, and we’ve been able to make complex software that is incredibly easy to use.” says Dave Jennings.
Using flook
Within flook, a colorful landscape of robots guides the user to browse or create. One can browse cards that capture what’s amazing nearby, including food and drink, local secrets, events, art and more. And when inspired, users can also create their own card to share what they’ve found. “See something beautiful or interesting? Flook it. Cute shoes on sale on your walk to work? Flook it. Funny misspelled city notice? Flook it,” advises Jane Sales.
Content and Creation
As well as user-generated content, flook’s cards are also made from a quickly growing library of external sources, such as event information from Upcoming (upcoming. yahoo. com) and local tweets from Twitter (twitter. com). Sharing via Twitter, adds geo-location and photos to tweets. Facebook integration is coming soon. Browsing the world is now just as easy as swiping through an iPhone’s photo library – just flick one card away and another takes its place. If the user likes the look of a card, they can “flip it” to read the comments and view a map, or collect it so that it is easily available later. Cards are simple and quick to make. Users just take a photo (and add some text if desired), place the card, and it's done. The card will automatically be attached to the place where it was made (geo-tagged) and left for others to find.
Flook Learns
Over time, flook learns which cards people like most – how long did they linger on a card, did they collect it, or email it to a friend? Then, using flook’s equivalent of PageRank, the application prioritizes cards’ delivery, taking into account the “hotness” of the content, the timeliness of the information and its proximity to the user’s location.
Entertaining and Competitive
Highly active flookers can find themselves competing for the highest flook score by creating the the best cards. The flook website, http://www. flook. it (http://www. flook. it), showcases the community, giving prominence to top flookers.
A fun demo video is available here (http://flookblog. wordpress. com/2009/11/19/flook-sneak-peek-video (http://flookblog. wordpress. com/2009/11/19/flook-sneak-peek-video))
The Story of Ambient Industries (http://www. ambientindustries. com (http://www. ambientindustries. com)):
Ambient Industries was founded by Roger Nolan, Jane Sales, Tristan Brotherton and Dave Jennings, who all collaborated to create flook. As a testament to the serendipity that underlies the flook application, the four founders all ended up working in Ukraine. This chance event led to the conception of flook – as not only the playground of their imaginations, but the realization of what the new generation of smartphones could do.
Ambient Industries is built on the Gore model (as in Gore-Tex fabric), where there are no titles, complete openness of information and a strong peer review culture. The lack of narrowly defined roles has enabled Ambient Industries to be more nimble, productive and extremely creative.
Ambient Industries’ history is firmly rooted in a deep technological, yet creative, background. All the founders have long backgrounds in a myriad of types of technical businesses. Nolan and Sales both worked together at Psion, where they were responsible for the communications and the kernel, respectively. Their code was the foundation for the larger codebase that became Symbian OS and their code still runs in millions of phones all over the planet today. Dave Jennings worked in Fortran at the Parkes Radio-Telescope in Australia, writing assembler code to drive a 1500 tonne dish, was the first technical hire at Play. com and chief architect for Tigerex. Afterwards, Jennings worked with Nolan at Sonopia. Tristan Brotherton’s background includes the founding of FluidHR, which produced the U. K.’s first online staff screen software platform and building software. Clients ranged from the World Health Organization to International Investment Funds. Brotherton later joined ROO Media/KIT Digital.
Ambient Industries is based in London and San Francisco. The company is funded by Eden Ventures and Amadeus Capital.
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