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Meetro

Meetro messenger with chat windows and profiles
Developer:Meetro, Inc
Latest release:0.99 Beta / Jan, 23, 2007
OS:Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X
Genre:Social messenger, Instant Messenger, Social Networking
Website:meetro.com
Meetro is a multi-network social messenger with location-based services (LBS). It is compatible with AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, Gtalk, Jabber, and ICQ. Meetro's features make it useful for meeting people with similar interests in a given area, as well as bundling multiple messaging protocols into one program. Meetro is located in San Francisco, California.

Meetro is software that runs on Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

Launch and Early History

Meetro launched on June 1, 2005. On August 14, 2005, Slashdot reported a rumor that Meetro was in talks to be bought out by search giant Google [1]. Paul Bragiel, CEO of Meetro, has stated that the whole story was nothing more than 'rumors' although the publicity did bring a wave of new users.

How it Works

Meetro differs from the other popular messengers in that users can input location specifications to see other online users in surrounding areas. Its location finder is currently strongest in the Americas and Europe but works the world over. Users unable to obtain a location can input latitude and longitude details to see how far away other online users are at a particular moment.

Meetro works by actively scanning for the MAC addresses of wireless access points around a user's location. Then Meetro contacts the main database server and compares the MAC address to a list of known access points. Subsequently it does some mathematical calculations to determine the latitude and longitude of a location. Once Meetro has calculated the general area (usually a quarter mile) of a user's physical location, it then compares it to others users and displays who's online within a quarter mile, half mile, mile, etc... A user's exact location is never displayed to other people on the network for privacy and security reasons. Meetro will only present that a user is within a range of 1/4 of a mile. Users can choose to make information of their location public, such as "I'm at the cafe on 2nd and Broadway."

Recently, Meetro added support for business address look-ups in the United States as an alternative method for users to report their location.

Features

Enlarge picture
Meetro's Local Landing page in the Dashboard
Meetro allows users to create custom profile pages which can be searched and browsed by other users nearby. Meetro's profiles support feeds for videos, photos, and blogs in addition to the typical social networking profile questions. Users have the option of embedding dynamic feeds from their YouTube videos, Flickr photos, and their personal blogs directly into their profiles. Meetro is one of the few services offering 'profile aggregation' - crawling the web to aggregate a user's digital persona.

Meetro is different then other social networks and messengers in the fact that as soon as you signup, you're able to talk with other users who are nearby instantly, even if they're not approved 'friends'. This is to encourage communication between nearby people.

Towards then end of 2006, Meetro introduced features to display places and services that were nearby (in addition to people). Meetro will display nearby restaurants, cafes, and bars on a map. Meetro will also display the local weather and nearby geotagged photos.

Meetro has introduced a number of location based web widgets. Including a StatusBadge that will display a user's last known real-world location on their blog, email, or personal webpage.
Enlarge picture
An example StatusBadge


Meetro allows users to create real-time personalized groups within the client. These groups can be configured to show a specific subset of Meetro users grouped by any combination of: Status (away/available), Gender (male, female, unspecified), Minimum Distance, Maximum Distance, Keywords, Relation (friend, friend of a friend, unrelated, MeetroHQ). For example, you can create a group that includes all users that are between 3 and 4 miles away and are currently online. Meetro is one of the only messengers to have a rule-based grouping system, as opposed to other messengers which do not use any personal descriptors or location to sort and filter users.

Company Background

Meetro originally started in Chicago, IL with a small team working and living out of the same house. The team moved to Palo Alto, CA in late 2005 and continued the same live/work situation. Meetro grew and enjoyed press coverage for its atypical live/work ethic, including a front page story in the San Francisco Chronicle. [2] Meetro is currently headquartered in San Francisco's SoMa district.

See also

External links

References

Software development is the translation of a user need or marketing goal into a software product.[1][2] Software development is sometimes understood to encompass the processes of software engineering combined with the research and goals of software marketing
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A software release is the distribution, whether public or private, of an initial or new and upgraded version of a computer software product.
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An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer. An operating system processes system data and user input, and responds by allocating and managing tasks and internal system resources as a service to users and programs of the
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Microsoft Windows

Screenshot of Windows Vista Ultimate, the latest version of Microsoft Windows.
Company/developer: Microsoft Corporation
OS family: MS-DOS/9x-based, Windows CE, Windows NT
Source model: Closed source

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Mac OS X (IPA: /mæk.oʊ.ɛs.tɛn/) is a line of graphical operating systems developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc., the latest of which is pre-loaded on all currently shipping Macintosh computers.
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Computer software can be organized into categories based on common function, type, or field of use. A list follows of common software categories.

Categories of software

  • Applications

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Instant messaging (IM) is a form of real-time communication between two or more people based on typed text. The text is conveyed via computers connected over a network such as the Internet.
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A social network service focuses on the building and verifying of online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others, and which necessitates the use of software.
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A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN.
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Location-based services (LBS) (or LoCation Services, LCS) are services developed and distributed by wireless carriers and their partners which provide information specific to a location.
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AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) is an advertisement-supported free proprietary instant messaging and presence computer program which uses the OSCAR instant messaging protocol and the TOC protocol. It was released by AOL in May of 1997.
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Yahoo! Messenger is a popular advertisement-supported instant messaging client and associated protocol provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo! Messenger is provided free of charge and can be downloaded and used with a generic "Yahoo! ID" which also allows access to other Yahoo! services, such
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MSN Messenger is a freeware instant messaging client that was developed and distributed by Microsoft in 1999 to 2005 and in 2007 for computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system (except Windows Vista), and aimed towards home users.
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This article or section contains information about computer software currently in development.
The content may change as the software development progresses.
Google Talk

Modern Google talk beta screenshot.
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Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is an open, XML-inspired protocol for near-real-time, extensible instant messaging (IM) and presence information (a.k.a. buddy lists).
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ICQ is an instant messaging computer program, owned by Time Warner's AOL subsidiary. ICQ was first developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis. The first version of the program was released in November 1996. The name ICQ is an oronym on the phrase "I seek you".
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City and County of San Francisco
"The Painted Ladies"

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Nickname: The City, The City by the Bay, San Fran, Frisco,[1] Baghdad by the Bay[2]
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This article has been tagged since July 2007.

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Google Inc.

Public (NASDAQ:  GOOG ), (LSE:  GGEA )
Founded Menlo Park, California (September 7 1998[1])
Headquarters Mountain View, California, USA

Key people Eric E.
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In computer networking a Media Access Control address (MAC address) or Ethernet Hardware Address (EHA) or hardware address or adapter address is a quasi-unique identifier attached to most network adapters (NICs).
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equator divides the planet into a Northern Hemisphere and a Southern Hemisphere, and has a latitude of 0. Latitude, usually denoted symbolically by the Greek letter phi, , gives the location of a place on Earth north or south of the equator.
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equator divides the planet into a Northern Hemisphere and a Southern Hemisphere, and has a latitude of 0. Longitude is the east-west geographic coordinate measurement most commonly utilized in cartography and global navigation.
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Digital Persona (DP) is the electronic representation, an information model, of an individual's public personality based on and maintained by transactions or secondary information, and is intended for use as a proxy for the individual.
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Geotagging, sometimes referred to as Geocoding, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as websites, RSS feeds, or images.
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web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. They are derived from the idea of reusable code that has existed for years.
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City of Palo Alto

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Location in Santa Clara County and the state of California
Coordinates:
Country United States
State California
County Santa Clara

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The 2005-07-27 front page of
"The Voice of the West"
Type Daily newspaper
Format Broadsheet

Owner Hearst Communications
Publisher Frank J. Vega
Editor Phil Bronstein
Founded 1865
Price US$ 0.46 + tax Daily
US$ 1.
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Soma (Sanskrit: सोमः), or Haoma (Avestan), from Proto-Indo-Iranian *sauma-, was a ritual drink of importance among the early Indo-Iranians, and the later Vedic and greater Persian cultures.
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? Symbian OS, Palm OS.
AIM Yes Dropped (4.7.1333) Dropped (1.5.286) No No Yes ? Palm
aMSN Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No ? Nokia N770, N800
BitlBee Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? ?
BitWise IM Yes Yes Yes No No Yes ?
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Location-based services (LBS) (or LoCation Services, LCS) are services developed and distributed by wireless carriers and their partners which provide information specific to a location.
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