We had an awesome turnout at last nights meetup and saw a bunch of new faces. I think we had the best turnout last night and we quickly filled up the back room of The Admiral Benbow. My account of the meetup will be vastly different to some others as we quickly split up into smaller groups; this made conversation much easier and there were quite clearly lots of topics floating around.
Apple iPad
When a bunch of geeks get together shortly after an Apple product announcement, it is inevitable that we talk about it at length. Myself, @jamiebiddle and @bryns spoke about the iPad for a good chunk of the night, and the topic kept coming back up.
The general consensus of everyone I spoke to about the iPad was that it was a shiny new apple product and they wanted one, each for their own reasons but they were all highly legitimate. Presentations would be awesome on an iPad. In @bryns case, instead of lugging around a laptop, a ton of cabling and a projector; he could just take a projector and the iPad. The sight of the iPad would make the whole thing look more professional and also reduces the bloat of a full blown laptop just for showing a presentation. The notes application looks really good and is one of the main reasons why I want an iPad, taking notes on it for College and later on University will be a breeze compared to on the iPhone.
Location-based Applications
A very interesting talk on location-based apps came after @bryns added The Admiral Benbow to foursquare. (@KirstyBurgoine added The Admiral Benbow to Gowalla 
)
Lot’s of ideas were thrown around at how useful location based apps such as foursquare and gowalla could be. Take up would increase an order of magnitude of more venues got involved with the services and offered benefits to users of them. Even if someone doesn’t use Gowalla or Foursquare they would see a sign and instantly want to find out more about it.
There were even a few ideas at how apps could make the most of the data. We also discussed how these apps could help you find a restaurant in a new town or city and how we could get as much value from them as possible.
Twitter, Facebook and Online Privacy
What kind of a meetup would it be without some talk of Twitter and Facebook? We discussed how useful both services are to different types of people such as journalists but also how valuable a strong network of people is. What use is 700 followers on Twitter if 400 of them are all spam bots?
Another strong talk was based around privacy on these types of websites. Even if you protect your tweets or facebook updates people can access them. Facebook has access and the police can gain access from facebook. Even if these things are protected they are not protected form everyone. @martinchilds said you should only post things on Twitter or Facebook if you would be happy for that to be posted on a billboard, in all other cases don’t bother.
Overall the night was a huge success. Everyone was friendly and all had interesting views as always. I cannot wait for the next meetup!
So…