Use the following patterns to bring people together at real locations, offline.

You want users to be able to plan around real locations, utilizing addresses and maps.

You want to determine who and what is nearby in real time.

Make events searchable by keyword/category, tags, and date.

Include a mechanism for users to browse through events and filter by keyword/category, tags, and date, as illustrated in Figure 16-12.

Figure 16-12. Meetup features event groups by location and topic (Meetup iOS application).

Show users a list of events being attended by friends in their network (see Figure 16-9).

Give users a way to save events they are going to or in which they are interested. (see Figure 16-13)

Figure 16-13. With Eventbrite, users can save an event they are interested in—whether they are going or not (Eventbrite iOS application).

You want users to be able to create customized and personal invitations for events such as parties.

You want to replace regular email for party planning.

You want to create date-driven events.

You want to find events by date.

Use this pattern with Face-to-Face Meeting and Party.

Make it possible for users to associate an event with a date. You can do this through an event-planning interface or within a calendar interface (see Figure 16-21 and Figure 16-22).

Figure 16-21. Adding an event to Google Calendar (http://www.google.com/calendar).

Figure 16-22. Associating an event with a date on Facebook.

Give the event creator the means to indicate whether the event is public or private.

Make it so that the calendar event can be shared, whether through direct selections from the user’s network, through email, or through RSS, blogs, or other social offerings.

You want to alert others where an event is happening.

You want to encourage sending reminders to a mobile device or email account.

When creating an event, give the user the ability to set reminders or alerts about those events.

If the event creator is inviting attendees, set the reminder to automatically send alerts to the attendees.

Give the user the ability to select from a preset list of reminder times. For instance, Yahoo! Calendar offers to send reminders from 14 days before the event all the way to 5 minutes before the event. With Google Calendar, you can specify an exact number and then it qualifies that number with minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, etc. (Figure 16-25).

Figure 16-25. The Google Calendar reminder setup widget.

Users should be able to send Reminders to an email address and to mobile devices or added to a social networking profile.

Consider allowing two reminders to be set, for example, 14 days and 5 days in advance of the event.

For public events, give people a way to set their own reminders.

If the item is a photo and there is Exchangeable Image File (EXIF) data that includes latitude/longitude information, associate that location string with the object, as shown in Figure 16-27.

Figure 16-27. In the Path mobile application, the user’s location is automatically part of their regular status updates.

Automatically place the item on a map.

If the item has an address associated with it, such as a business, automatically place the item on a map.

Give the user the option to associate an address with an object.

Consider providing users with drag-and-drop capability to place items (photos, listings, friends) onto a map and associate a location with the item.

Offer an address form so that the user can refine the location. Provide fields for the full address, a city/state combo, or even a zip/postal code. Fields should be optional.

Give users a method to enter specific latitude and longitude numbers indicating a point on a map as an alternative to picking a spot on a map (Figure 16-28).

Figure 16-28. Adding a photo to a map on Flickr through selection on a map. Latitude and longitude coordinates are presented in the interface if they are known.

Use the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) format for geo data—for example, geotagged geo:lat=57.64911 geo:lon=10.40744. The first item is the tag “geotagged”, allowing all items to be searched from a common tag. The other tags are “geo:lat” and “geo:long”.

Convert geotags into user-friendly addresses when presenting locations in the interface.

Clearly indicate how the information will be used and be clear about what is private and what displays publicly.

You want to automatically place people, status updates, photos, and other objects on a map.

You want to show relative distance or related location to the user’s current location.

Present the item location with a graphic pointer on the map.

Display other people or items on the map in relation to the user (if the user is on a mobile device or has indicated his location). Provide search functionality for the user to look for items based on location.

Give users the option to plot themselves on a map or announce their locations.

Users should be able to turn off presence or location indicators.

Show nearby businesses or events of interest relative to a user’s location.

The user should be able to select a starting point or indicate a start time and end.

Pair route information with elevation. This is becoming more common with data-tracking athletic services and applications.

Give the user an option to save a route for later.

Include an option for the user to share her route with friends.

The user should be able to make her route public or keep it private.

Give users the ability to select a neighborhood for filtering information. The neighborhood boundaries should include relevant location definitions, including zip code, school districts, explicit metadata, or location keywords.

Present the option to connect to people from the same neighborhood or in nearby areas.

Provide functionality for people to search by neighborhood, zip code, or other relevant location data, as shown in Figure 16-34.

Figure 16-34. Yelp’s mobile application begin it’s searching based on the user’s location.

Provide an easy mechanism for users to switch neighborhoods (see Figure 16-35).

Consider mashing up a variety of interesting and relevant content related to the selected neighborhood. The types of content that can be pulled together include photos, news items, business listings, real estate listings, police blotter announcements, ratings and reviews of businesses, parks and public places, events, and people.

Display the user’s location on a map.

Display relevant content on a map to indicate proximity to the user.