At it’s core, TriOut is a location based service. We realized early on that if TriOut was going to be successful, it needed to be versatile. The number one reason for people not using TriOut (right behind “I don’t live in North Carolina”) is “My Friends are on Foursquare” or “I’m already using Gowalla”.

See, there’s this thing called check in fatigue that popped up earlier this year. There’s so many apps asking you to check in, it gets tiresome to check into every single one. Services like Check.in have been developed to help fix this, but we’re going to try and solve it a different way.

I’ll bet you care more about where your friends are than what service they use to check in. I couldn’t care less that Wayne checked in using Gowalla, I just care that he’s at the Krispy Kreme up the street. With that in mind, we’re removing the limitations of service silos and giving you what you want, access to your friends.

The first screen you see when you launch TriOut version 2 is the Right Now screen. This shows what your friends have been up to, on any service you decide to enable. At launch we’ll be providing access to Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook, but look for other services to be added in the coming months.

Each of your friends will be listed with their latest activity. If one of your friends has checked in using multiple apps, we’ll stack them up as a single entry to make it really easy to follow. The best part is, your friends don’t need to do anything on their end to enable this feature. They don’t even need to know what TriOut is!

Naturally we’ll be providing the ability for you to check in using the other services. It only makes sense that an easy solution to read has an equally easy solution to write. But that’s for the next post…

We were one of the first Location Based Services to have photo sharing in the app. TriOut version 2 makes photo sharing even better by optimizing the upload process and adding support for Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr and Posterous.

We’re also adding video sharing to TriOut version 2, so you can show your friends what’s going on. The process is the same as with photo uploading but we’ve added YouTube support as well as the others.

Take a look at the quick video demo to see what it looks like, and let us know what you think in the comments.

TriOut For Business (TFB) is a location-based check-in analytics dashboard for businesses who would like to communicate with their customers. TriOut for business also works as a GEO customer relationship management (CRM) platform that allows businesses to set up first time check-in specials, loyalty programs and coupons. I like to call it “Google Analytics” for people. TFB was launched in July, via the TriOut blog post here “TriOut for Business is Now Live” and since then we have worked with several companies launching location-based promotions.

One of the goals of TFB was to make it a self-service platform so businesses large and small with little time could easily verify and manage their location page on the TriOut platform. We’re really excited about the platform and looking forward to see more local businesses offer check-in/loyalty programs to their customers. Here are five recent location-based check-in specials from businesses using TriOut.

1. Electric Beanz Coffee Bar – @electricbeanz
“Show us that you checked in and get 10% off your order”

2. Market Restaurant – @MarketRaleigh
“Every 3rd check-in, get a free glass of wine or bottled beer”

3. Ruckus Pizza Pasta & Spirits – @RuckusCary
“Every 5 times you check in you get a free slice of Key Lime Pie!!!”

4. Martin’s Curry Rice – @MartinCurryRice
“Every 5 times you check in your drink is on the house”

5. Carole Hoffman, CNDP Holistic Health – @carolehoffman
“Just for checking in, we’d like to offer you a 10% rate reduction off of your first visit.”

Creating a check-in special is simple with TriOut, take a look at the TriOut for business video demo:

If you’re a business and would setup a coupon or first time check-in special for your customers using TriOut visit http://trioutnc.com/business/. To see other TriOut specials visit: http://trioutnc.com/specials

What are your favorite geo/location check-in specials/coupons you have seen?

Also you can download a pdf of the chat here: GEOChat one pdf

Looking for more location-based conversations on twitter? There’s a @LBSchat starting this Thursday at 9:00 P.M. or join us for #GEOChat two next Tuesday.

We’ve shown you two new ways to check in using TriOut version 2. First by using our new Check in Bar, and second by scanning a QR code. Today I’m going to show you our third and final new way to check in.

Back with version 1, we introduced the concept of pre-arrival check in. You could bring up a location in the app, tap on “Go Here” and send a tweet or update your facebook with a message “I’m on my way to…” with a link to the location. This was a great way to let your friends know where you’re going, and it still unmatched in the LBS space.

Today I’m gonna show you the natural progression of pre-arrival check in, Background Check In. Because iPhone iOS 4 allows for multi-tasking, we’re able to track your location even while you’re not using the app. This means that if you tell the app where you’re going, we can check you in automatically when you get there. Pretty crazy stuff.

Check out this video demo of my checking into my favorite coffee shop, 2 miles away.

As you can see, it actually checked me in while I pulled into the driveway. That’s within 100 meters of the front door, pretty good. We’ll be tweaking this in our beta to see if we can get it ever closer.

Privacy note: It’s important to mention that your location is never stored on our servers nor is this feature EVER turned on by default. You have to specifically tell us where you’re going and that you want us to check you in automatically to enable it. Once you reach your destination, location services are turned off and we check you in.

We take this privacy stuff seriously. You should too.

You’ve seen our new Check In Bar interface for checking in and doing stuff at a location. But what if you could check in even quicker? See, most Location Based apps rely on GPS to find your location. That works great when you’re in the middle of nowhere, but what about a mall, or downtown? There’s usually a list of locations nearby to check into.

On the right you see a TriOut QR code. QR stands for Quick Response, it’s a global standard for 2D barcodes. You can store 128 bits of info there, like a website url, or some information from a business card. We love QR codes so much that we’ve included a QR scanner to the TriOut v2 app. So the next time you see a QR code, give it a scan and see what happens.

One of the ways we’re using QR codes is to enable fast check in. Businesses that claim their location on TriOut for Business can print out a special QR code for their location to help users check in. You can put them on our window clings, on table tents, near the register, anywhere users will go. Then when you see the TriOut QR code, scan it with your phone and check in faster than ever before.

Here’s a quick demo of how it works:

Oh yeah, and those Google Local business QR codes you might see out there? Those work too. =)

TriOut wouldn’t be a Location Based Service without the check in. Show up at a location, the app finds you, you tell your friends where you are. Every LBS does this pretty much the same way, using a location service on the phone and finding known locations nearby. TriOut version 2 will introduce two new ways to check in, ways you’ve probably never seen before.

But first, I want to show you how our normal check in works. We’ve got this new “Check In Bar” at the bottom of the screen. It’s used for displaying status messages; where you’re checked in, if a friend messages you, photo upload progress, etc. But you can also activare it to do stuff while you’re at a location.

Rather than try to explain it in words, take a look at this short video for a demo.

Stay tuned later this week for two other ways to check in. If you thought this looked quick and easy, just wait…

Yesterday you learned about the history of TriOut version 1. Today I’m going to share the first full image of TriOut version 2. But first, let me tell you how we got there. (sure you could scroll down and cheat, but where’s the fun in that?)

We ended up with a grid of 9 buttons in TriOut v1. We heard from users that the interface looked great, but was really confusing. Why would I tap on All Locations to search, why can’t I just search in the Nearby section. What is a Check In button after you’ve already checked in?

You’ll notice with everything we do in v2, simplicity is the number one concern. We want to make it easy for new users to figure out what to do. We want to make it fast for experienced users to get what they want and do what they need to do. It really takes launching a v1 to figure out what users want, and I think we’ve done that.

We also cheated a bit and released a mobile html5 web version earlier this year. The mobile version was a test for the user experience we were planning for v2. We cut down from the 9 buttons on the home screen to just 3; Location, People, Events. Search was integrated with the results and a check in could be done on any screen. Couldn’t be easier to figure out.

The results were overwhelmingly positive, but we still think we can improve on the experience. So without any further delay, here’s the first screenshot of TriOut v2.

You’ll notice the design resembles the standard iPhone tab bar user interface, but it’s a little different. We’ve stuck with three buttons for Locations, People and Events, but added two more. You’ll also notice the new status bar at the bottom of the screen.

I’m going to start next week by going into detail on the new status bar, there’s more there than meets the eye.

Let the speculation begin!

Here’s the first version of the beta, released in early October 2009. This was extremely limited; check in and post a message. You could add a location if there wasn’t one, but that’s about it. I kinda miss these simpler times, but the app was pretty boring back then.

We slowly added features and developed the user interface. We played with some different interface combinations before finally ending up with a grid of 9 icons. The first beta release with this design hit late November and we launched the app in late December.

We wanted something between the easy access of the facebook app and the familiarity of the iPhone. Funny enough, the Yelp app came out a few months later with a similar design, followed by Loopt. Now I’m sure they’ve never heard of TriOut, but the designs are pretty spot on.

This design worked well, but there was a lot of redundancy. Why is there a button for search and a button for nearby locations? Couldn’t they be merged to make things easier? Why did the user have to go back to the grid screen in order to check in, or do post a photo while they’re at a location? Where was the back button? We knew we could do better and give users a better experience.

I’ll share what we came up with for version 2 in tomorrows post!

Location-based services are the “hot” topic on the social web with platforms such as @TriOut, @Foursquare, @Loopt, @Gowalla, @Yelp, @Whrrl and more. Millions of users are checking in, sharing their location, posting reviews and uploading photos in real-time. Recently I’ve read a few articles about foursquare stalkers and how others are quitting location-based apps all together due to local wanna be’s social stalking, and still others are quitting location-based apps because they are receiving little or no value from checking in. Regardless, if you’re just learning about location-based apps and/or are cautious about checking in, privacy should be your number one concern as a user.

How TriOut manages privacy
Sadly, not enough location based apps/services focus on privacy and many are launched to get as many users as possible without first educating their community about how to use their platform without worring about being stalked, robbed, etc. With TriOut privacy is our number one focus. By default a new TriOut user’s privacy setting is opt-in, meaning your account is set to private by default. You have the options to add your Twitter or your Facebook account and of course if you tweet or post a message to your Facebook profile then you are choosing to share your profile with your social graph, but inside of TriOut, your profile is still set to private. We also made it where even if your profile is private, you can still take advantage of check-in specials and/or rewards. Also, with our location-based analytics dashboard, your profile stays private and businesses do not have access to your profile. To sum it up, if you’re a private TriOut user it means that your profile and check-ins are not public but if you add friends then your friends are able to see your checks-ins, therefore we suggest you only friend people who you know and trust to see your check-ins.

What you need to know about checking in using other location-based apps
As for the rest of the location-based platforms each one is a little different but they all have similar features when it comes to checking in and privacy. Here are the basics.

• Once you download/use a location-based app and start checking in, you are agreeing to their terms of services, privacy settings and how they use your location data.
• Some services offer you the ability to have private individual check-ins “off the grid” (like Foursquare) or all of your profile can be set to private allowing only your trusted friends to see your check-ins.
• When you check-in, you’re giving location-based services and businesses the ability to see any of your social profile information along with data, time, etc. of your check-ins.
• Be very selective when adding friends. You may want to only add family members, co-workers or trusted friends. If you have a stalker ex-boyfriend/girlfriend, ex-husband/wife or hated enemy you may want to have a private profile or choose an alias. Also, it’s ok to check-in when you’re leaving a location.
• Checking in means some location-based platforms may provide your data to advertisers/brands through partnerships.
• Remember checking in is a choice not a requirement. The last thing I want to read or hear about is someone getting stalked or robbed as a result of using any location-based service.

Location-Based Services vs Geo enabled tweets
Many would say that checking in is a higher security concern than sending a tweet or a Facebook status update. That is true but if you enable the “Add a location to your tweets” it may not give the exact location of where you are but it can let your twitter followers and others know you’re not at home or near a certain location. We’re starting to see more mobile and web apps that aggregate conversations via nearby tweets using Twitter’s API but, having Twitter protecting your privacy in terms of location is as simple as turning on or off your location in your profile settings.

Browsers can check-in and share your location too.
Safari 5, Google Chrome, Firefox and other updated browsers all are geo enabled and can detect your location by IP addresses. Your IP address may not give your exact location but you need to be aware of how websites and HTML5 apps are asking for your location. This can be easily turned controlled in your browser settings.

Education is first
No matter what location-based platform you use, please use them with caution. There’s a reason why the social web and entrepreneurs are excited about the location industry, from connecting users to brands, customers to businesses and providing loyalty programs, there are tons of opportunities for everyone. But educating users about the risks, the pros and cons, should be location-based services number one focus. I can’t speak for the rest of the 60 plus location-based apps but as for TriOut, that’s our goal, educate our users about privacy first, provide value second, build a great platform for business and customers and have fun while doing it.

Photo via flickr by Michael Francis McCarthy