The balloon race – realtime user interaction
Sunday, December 6th, 2009We went walking yesterday on the south downs, near to where we live and found a balloon.
It had travelled from Birmingham, all the way unaided to land in a National Nature Reserve called ‘Castle Hill‘. (If I was a balloon, that’s the sort of place I would want to land in).
A school girl called Raju, had sent this up into the sky in the Midlands not knowing of whether she would hear from her balloon again,
It was this interaction if she had not done it, that would not have affected us either way, but because we did it lifted our spirits on a cold winters day and got us thinking about the smile on her face when she learns about the adventures of her balloon.
It has travelled approximately 180 miles. Some made it across the channel to France, how ever her’s decided to land on the footpath we were walking down a day or two later.
We wrote to the school to tell them that we had found the balloon, along with the two photos below of Fiona and the landing site.
Interaction with users in real life, much like social networks where people who wouldn’t normally connect have the chance to share experiences and captivate their lives as well as others around them.
This is the good side of social networking.

Map showing distance ballon travelled

Fiona holding the balloon tag

Landing site – Castle Hill nature reserve
The company’s reasoning for endless beta cycles has never been clearly explained, and Google always insisted the tag would be removed once the product was ready. I suspect Google’s motivation for beta tagging is a combination of:

