StrangeMap · posted by vaibhav bhawsar Feb 27, 2007

What is it?
A photo service where you can shoot familiar people/strangers and post those photos up on a website to share with other strangers.

Who are familiar Strangers?
People who you see everyday while you take the subway or walk to school. But they are essentially strangers.

So how does it work?
You take a picture, tag it with the place you were in- the address. Send it to mobtree{att}recombine…net
The picture is logged and shows up as a new familiar stranger on the community page. Now other users can add any info about the person you just shot. Does this scare you?
See more about it in these images-

See this pdf for higher resolution wireframes and flow (WIP)-
wireframesprint.pdf

Site for StrangeMap
(This is work in progress)

Why are you doing this?
Cause I don’t like familiar strangers who don’t talk to me? No. Is it urban voyeurism? Or is it about eventually getting to know strangers you see everyday? Eventually you wouldn’t need this app to mark your strangers.

Will there be a day when a familiar stranger who you shot becomes your friend?
Maybe.

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Comment

  1. A comment on the WHY as I see it…In one word – Memory…

    I used to take the T (Boston subway) from Alewife to Harvard Sq on a daily basis for about 2 years.

    Used to see some familiar faces getting on/off at their usual stops.

    Always knew I would not be living there or doing the daily T thing after my 2 years at Harvard.

    Those familiar faces from then are a blur now. If I had this tool, I may have used it to capture faces as memories of my daily life during those years – which I knew was a temporary phase in my life.

    Like for you, your daily routine as it is today will most likely change after 2 years. Would you like to have as documentation or some visual artifact, the things that you associate with your daily life today? If you’re enjoying yourself and happy with your daily life as it is today, chances are you might want to do this. On the other hand, if you’re hating life as it is now, you probably don;t want to have any memories associated with this time of your life.

    — Shuchi · Mar 6, 00:19 · #

  2. (1)There are a lot of kooks out there…since this is a public app, how would you guard against misuse?

    (2) The whole idea of the current social networking scene on the net…and even on the mobile (like Gobs’ dip idea) was to build a community by leveraging the connections that you have directly to make indirect ones with people – the FOAF approach…This does not subscribe to that approach.

    (3) But I also feel that communities of strangers is where things are headed anyway…with the kinds of subcommunities forming on orkut and myspace, and other comm. tools of the new web, around shared interests, among people who don’t necessarily know each other.

    So, yeah, a community of strangers around the “idea” of strangers is what you’re building.

    (4) But if I put myself in the shoes of a female who is not part of this community but is an “object” of discussion by virtue of having been photographed and uploaded to your db, I’m sure I’d feel VERY uncomfortable at the thought.

    — Shuchi · Mar 8, 01:54 · #

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