Hasta La Gadget!

Mar 19

Use Cloak to avoid social-network frenemies in real life

(Credit: Cloak)

A new iPhone app called Cloak promises to help you keep your distance from contacts in your digital circle who you’d rather avoid in real life.

The application, which bills itself as an “antisocial network,” is as simple as they come in that it has a single purpose: to alert you to the nearby whereabouts of flagged Instagram and Foursquare “friends.”

The idea is to let you construct the opposite of a contact list, so that you know when your overly loquacious acquaintance Joe is inching dangerously close to your current location.

Cloak connects to your Instagram and Foursquare accounts and uses the location data associated with your friends’ updates to find out where they are. The app plots people on a map and lets you flag friends to track. When a flagged contact is within a specified range of one block, half a mile, a mile, or two miles, you’ll get a push notification so that you can avoid the approaching person if you’d prefer.

Though it could come in handy when trying to avoid awkward social situations, the iPhone application seems more social shtick than actually antisocial, considering the complex ways people use social networks.

Cloak has at least one major flaw in logic and, thus, practice. Presumably, the people you real… [Read more]