Hottest Indian Startups review : Trackcut – Social networking meets mobile

Year 2005 was the year of social networking and bookmarking websites. I am not sure how many have cropped up since then but the most popular ones were Digg, facebook, orkut, myspace. Since then many applications were launched and the market is already saturated. Since this idea is taken what would be the next big idea? Location based social networking or social networking on the go. Nobody expected mobile phone would be such a phenomenal platform to disburse information. Now, everything is mobile. So should social networking be.

Trackcut is one such startup which aims to provide location based information based on your geo-location. The company will use 3 different modes of tracking your location and provide information based on that. Let us say you travel from Pune to Chennai, and you have trackcut’s mobile application installed on your phone. The moment you reach Chennai your application will pop-up with a list of happenings in the city, list of friends and acquaintances who are in the city or in the proximity. Isn’t that the coolest thing to happen since mobile?

What should I do to make this work?  You either need a GPS phone or you have to download a mobile software from their website and install it.  If you install the software on their supported phone list then you will not need a GPS enabled phone. The service is operator independent.

There are 3 ways Trackut connects you with the network:

1. Using the in-built GPS of the phone for triangulation (ex: Blackberry 8310, Nokia E71)
2. Cell broadcast string based triangulation
3. cell tower data based triangulation

There are services like this available and location based services is the latest trend. Loopt (operator coupled), Whirrl (GPS only) and Whereabouts. Trackut is a cut above the competition in the services and the modes it provides. GPS enabled phones are only  a latest fad in India. So Trackut has gone the extra mile to bring other phones into the ring by using various technologies. For a primer about the triangulation techniques you can check out Techcrunch article here.

Now getting to the scary side of it. I have watched movies like The Net, Enemy of the state and Die Hard 4. Enemy of the state is the movie I most fear of. I thought, for that movie to be a reality it would take good 10 years. I was wrong. If everything is online and anybody and every body can track you then your existence cease to be fun. What if you wanted to avoid some one but still would like to visit the city?

Security is a prime concern for the adoption. If some one gets the list of all phones which are subscribed to this service then it would be like “Spying for dummies“. With the increased number of terrorist attacks and terrorists becoming tech savvy by breaking into wireless networks and using Twitter, this service would help both the terrorists and the government. This would mean that your life can be tracked to your home. This would be a great tool for people who think their spouse is cheating. I guess I need to stop here, because the possibilities are countless.

I might try this for the giggles but I will not stay subscribed for long. Because, like all Indians I am not too much of a sharer. That begs one question.

How much do you want to share about your life?

Share & Bookmark

Author: Sriram Vadlamani

Sriram Vadlamni is a IT professional and an avid blogger. He blogs about India business at Indianomics.com and you can follow him on twitter @indianomics (Email: sriram.vadlamani@gmail.com)

Related posts:

1. INQ Mobile gives India Social Networking Phone
2. Hottest Indian Startups Review : Nearhop.com
3. Hottest Indian Startups review – MovieMart
4. Hottest Indian Startups Review: Pennywise Solutions
5. Hottest Indian Startups Review: Vakow
6. Hottest Indian Startups Review: Edujini Labs
7. Tata DOCOMO now brings Social Networking Free of Cost to your mobile
8. Hottest Indian Startups Review – The Loot
9. Hottest Indian Startups Review: PagalGuy.com
10. Onmobile introduces audio ads on mobile platform: IS it too intrusive?

Tagged as: 3 ways, 8310 nokia, acquaintances, big idea, blackberry 8310, bookmarking, cell broadcast, cell tower, extra mile, location based services, loopt, mobile, mobile application, mobile software, Mobile-phone, myspace, nokia e71, pune, social-networking, tata nen, trackut, triangulation, whereabouts, whirrl