Flook, a sort of StumbleUpon for location-based discovery from Ambient Industries, has extended its content creation tool beyond the iPhone so that users can create ‘cards’ via a standard web browser.
The new Web Card Creator takes advantage of modern web browsers’ support for HTML5. You can upload a photo, have your browser detect your approximate location (or tell flook the location that you want to create the card for), add a title and description etc. for your point of interest and you’re good to go. If you don’t have a photo for your discovery, the app will automatically search for suitable photos on the web with the applicable Creative Commons Licenses.
The idea, presumably, is to encourage more locations and points of interest to be recorded, especially in retrospect, which might be a better workflow for some users. Stopping what you’re doing and faffing about with a smartphone isn’t to everyone’s taste.
Since its launch in late 2009, flook has added several content partners including the British Library, NextStop (now part of Facebook) and The Wildlife and Wetlands Trust. Most recently, flook was the official iPhone app for the Open House Weekend event held in September, which the company says drew in thousands of new users and drove “unprecedented” usage of flook around London during that weekend.
So unprecedented in fact, explains flook co-founder Roger Nolan, that the company was “on standby on Saturday morning buying extra server capacity and even recalling our server guy from his Honeymoon to keep up with the load.”
That’s dedication.