Our smartphones have become indispensable tools especially because they carry apps that are essential to our current modern way of life. I’m talking about Facebook, Google Maps, Twitter, but also about Foursquare, Instagram and others. More and more people check-in from their mobile devices, tag places where they eat or just having fun. And even if they’re part of your network, you don’t really consider them friends, so you’d just want to avoid them. Then you need to download just one more app to help you with that – Cloak.
This is how Cloak‘s selling line sounds like – “Avoid exes, co-workers, that guy who likes to stop and chat – anyone you’d rather not run into”. To put it in other words, it uses social check-ins and other geo-location information to help you avoid people you would prefer not bump into. Cloak ‘scrapes’ Instagram and Foursquare for locations, but more social networks will be added with a future release. Also, at the moment the application is only available for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users.
Of course, the application is built on the premise that we live in a incredibly dense and agglomerated environment where a huge number of people keeps tagging their location wherever they are. This idea is a little bit preposterous, but I’m sure you have at least some friends or acquaintances who are like that. But judging from the positive reviews it’s been getting, it seems that the apps has found to be really useful:
I love this app! I use it all the time to avoid my personal acquaintances. For example, if I want to get a bacon cheeseburger at Buddy’s Burgers but my ex-wife and kids are there. Now I know! Then I can just walk around the corner to Burger Bistro for their mushroom Swiss burger but then cloak would also warn me if my boss is there (mean old Mr. Edwards) so the. I can just jump in the bus and make it on over to Harlan’s Hamburgers and Hot Pies instead. Love this app!
The app is the creation of programmer Brian Moore and former Buzzfeed creative director Chris Baker. Moore is known for multiple projects, one of the most recent being the Unicef Tap project where ff you literally put your smartphone down on a flat surface for 10 minutes, corporate sponsors would donate money to be used towards water, sanitation and hygiene programs. Baker has recently developed a start-up called Rather, which gets rid “of the stuff you hate on Twitter and Facebook.” And their common project seems to be both creative and funny. What’s your take on this?