As many loyal BrightKite users already know, BrightKite has been down for the better part of 72 hours and the BrightKite Community has been awaiting it’s return.  This extended service interruption was a result of their BrightKite 2.0 release that was only supposed to take a few hours.  Obviously, there were some serious hiccups along the way, but finally BrightKite 2.0 arrived at approximately 3AM EST (GMT -5) Friday morning.

Change Log Details about the 2.0 Update can be found at: http://blog.brightkite.com/2009/10/06/its-here-brightkite-2-0

However, almost immediatly upon the release of BrightKite 2.0, bugs were once again sprouting up like a wild patch of Kudzu with an IV of Miracle Grow tapped into its roots…


Facebook & Twitter Integration
Early this morning I began testing BrightKite’s Social Media integration modules to verify their operation.  I quickly realized that neither Twitter nor Facebook were receiving my BrightKite posts, even though the admin panel indicated otherwise.  I was able to rather quickly and easily disconnect the FB/Twitter feeds from within BrightKite (and I verified this from within the admin panels of Facebook and Twitter), then I reconnected the feeds which got integration working again.

As the morning progresses, reports continue to pour into Facebook, Twitter, and on Brightkite about the sporadicness of the SM integration.  I assume that the BrightKite engineers are hard at work trying to get this functionality fully operational again.  If the above procedure doesn’t produce results, I suggest giving it an hour or two and try again later, as they might be in the middle of fixing it as of currently.


Mobile SMS Notifications
While checking the other settings within BrightKite, I noticed that my account was no longer associated/authorized for my mobile number, but was authorized with an unknown number which I did not input into the system.  It was quite easy to designate my correct mobile device number into the system, but it would be beneficial to anyone who uses SMS (text) Notification Messages from Brightkite, to at least verify that your information is indeed still correct.


Flickr Integration
Another quirky issue with BrightKite 2.0 is the fact that Brightkite is currently sending my images to Flickr and tagging them as PRIVATE posts instead of PUBLIC, which is what BrightKite used to do.  Depending on your preferences, this may be ok, but for me personally, it defeats the purpose of sending the photos to Flickr if I can’t share them with my friends and family.


Placemarks within the BrightKite Mobile & iPhone Applications
Finally, I also noticed that within the Brightkite mobile web browser and the iPhone application, not all of my placemarks were showing.  I think it’s safe to assume that when Apple finally approves the BrightKite 2.0 iPhone Application, that this should be fixed.

Story by NauticalUrge

Tags: BrightKite, BrightKite 2.0, iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone Application