In March of 2009 a company called Bump Technologies jumped on the scenes with an application called bump. The concept is that you bump two smartphones together and each is then asked what contact info, photos, files, etc. they want to share with each other. Bump? Like physically bump them together? Yes, indeed. Here is a short blurb from the Bump Technology website:
There are two parts to Bump(tm): the app running on your device and a smart matching algorithm running on our servers in the cloud. The app on your phone uses the phone’s sensors to literally “feel” the bump, and it sends that info up to the cloud. The matching algorithm listens to the bumps from phones around the world and pairs up phones that felt the same bump. Then we just route information between the two phones in each pair.
When we built Bump, our number one priority was creating the best possible user experience we could. Security of your personal information is a huge part of that experience. First, all communications between your phone and our servers are encrypted and sent using https – the same encryption that is used for online banking. Second, the nice thing about Bump is that *you* are in control of deciding with whom you share your information. You don’t have to worry about anyone being able to get at your information unless you physically bump your phone with theirs. Finally, we will never share any of your personal information with any third parties. Check out our privacy policy for more details.
When you bump, if we find a match with a phone that felt the same bump, our servers ask each phone to send up the contact information each user chose to share, but nothing more. If and only if both users then confirm that the match is indeed correct will the contact information be sent down to the other person. None of your personal data is ever stored on our servers.
Adding Platforms
This application is currently available for iPhone, iPod Touch, and for the Android platform. However, there are other platforms in process. Of course, they need to have the necessary hardware to sense the “bump”, but we should see this happen fairly quickly. Also, Bump Technologies has stated that they intend to always have a ‘free’ version of this application on all target platforms. As it is new, it currently has no cost, but I am very interested in seeing what functionality might be included in ‘Pro’ versions. This really hits on what Ray Ozzie was saying about apps won’t be the differentiating factor on smart phones. All good apps will come to all platforms.
So, finally, my personal plea: Get this application loaded so that I can have someone to ‘bump’ with!
