Mapping The Neighborhood Aura

How’s the aura of my neighborhood today? How are people around me feeling? Recently launched iPhone app Glow attempts to give an answer to these issues by mapping of feelings and sentiments in urban districts. Glow lets you easily share your feelings using a simple star-based rating system. Feelings are then geolocated and tagged to a map that shows how people around you feel, represented by glowing colored orbs that range from blue (“awesome”) to red (“not so awesome”). In addition, the app has an Augmented Reality component that shows layered ‘glows’ on top of reality.

“Street view uses your camera as a window that lets you see how people are feeling around you by mixing reality with Glow. Think ’emotional terminator vision’. (…) Use the options panel to filter feelings by age and value, or limit the view to show only your feelings. You can use the Home and World buttons to quickly zoom in and out.”

In a digital world in which it became normal to share about anything, Glow is another interesting initiative. Nevertheless, these kinds of apps succeed or fail depending on the number of users, and that reveals Glow’s problem — it simply lacks a decent number of users. Furthermore, it could probably be too much of a ‘one issue’ app. “Harnessing ’emotional intelligence’ could go a long way if the right approach is designed”, a commenter argues on Read Write Web. Who knows…