New Plazes Review (paid!)

Hinweis: Dies ist ein von trigami vermittelter bezahlter Eintrag. Notice: This is an of trigami mediated paid entry.

This is an exclusive sneak preview into the new version of Plazes. Even though it´s been around for a year we are now actually coming out of Beta!
We’ve kept and improved all the things you told us you like and added a bunch of new features that we can’t wait for you to try out!

This was the first part of an email I got from the Plazes team and this was the text to a payed blog post from the trigami network. And this is the point where it is different than my other reviews. All my other reviews have been for free. All I got was a beta account and some time. No money was payed. When I first visited the new Plazes I wanted to write a review as well, but my time was short. But now that I can get paid for writing this text, my motivation jumped and I want to write an in deep review of it (maybe with some feedback for the Plazes team – who actually must read my blog :))

What´s new? Make sure you catch some of the new goodness. We´re talking creating Plazes as you wish without the Plazer, telling others where you WILL be, creating groups of People and Plazes and some other new things we´re really excited about.

I will write a little bit about all those changes and if I like it or not.

What the new Plazes has to offer

• Plazesvision, a Google Maps mashup that show new updates from users
• Updated maps view. Locations are grouped together and by zooming in they show up as own Plazes
• Webupdater, no need to use the Plazer software or short messages to update your location
• “What are you up to?”, a Twitter like one-liner about the things your are doing
• Future Plazes, inform your friends where you are going and what you are doing there
• Groups for grouping members and locations

Plazesvision
The new welcome page of Plazes shows you again a map, but this time interactive and with a live view of users and where they are right now. This page is not (yet?) personalized. You don’t see the locations of your friends or a list of your own places.

More interesting is the dashboard part. You can choose between viewing what your contacts are doing and what the Plazes world is doing. This is exactly that kind of service people are using today. Everybody wants to know what others are doing. There even is a RSS export for you favorite reader.

Your Plazes are now in one huge list (well, for me the list is very, very long and I haven’t found any browsing option…). And here you will find the next big feature and change of Plazes. You can add, where you will be in the future. Lets say you are going to an Event/Party/BarCamp/Webtuesday you can tell Plazes “I will go to <PLAZES NAME> on <DATE> and will do <THIS AND THIS>”. This is cool. But the question will be, if everybody is going to update this. Maybe it would be great to someday enter this data into one service and it gets updated on all pages. Or do you want manually to update Dopplr, Plazes, Upcoming?

(Full resolution)
The video above shows how the Plazes are grouped. First you see a number and as soon as you zoom in, the Plazes show up as single locations. This is pretty cool and the Google Map loads faster. I am using an own mashup with up to 300 pins. Loading takes very long and the loop is endless :-). Maybe I should copy their idea…

The biggest improvement I could find is the option to build groups. Not only can you group people but you can create groups of Plazes. Lets say you are going to Los Angeles and need some coffee. Well, help is here: There is a group for exactly that purpose. Or you could create groups for all theaters in a city… Of course, you can do the same with Google’s MyMaps or with your own mashup. But it is nice to have everything on one place and interface. And I am waiting for an option to tell Plazes, this is a FON hotspot, not only a free hotspot.

What I don’t like
The website itself. I own a notebook for traveling, small, lightly and it was cheap. And it has a “low” resolution of 1280×800 pixels. This is the problem with the new Plazes. They must have huge 26″ Dell monitors. On my display all the buttons, input fields are extremly large and I have to scroll down on every page even if there is no content (for example the “future Plazes” view).

Things to come
The Plazes team wants to launch the new version in the next days (or weeks, begin of June). And I found some other pages that have no content yet. If you have an idea what “Explore” could be, post it in the comments. And of course we all wait for the new Plazer Software.

Some special notes: I got paid for this review. And I want you to profit! The first three people who comment will get 5-10$ (depending on how much value your comment has). If you write a comment, please leave your PayPal email address. And sorry, only PayPal! And don’t expect the money within a few days. You have to wait until I got my money from trigami 🙂
If you like this idea of sharing my revenue, I will accept more paid reviews and give a way the money.