Dopplr – Geo-Visual Affordances

Dopplr, a new Web 2.0 geo-based social service for travelers that I know very little about (since it’s still in private beta), is using some cool tricks to create what they term “visual affordances” for their users. When users set their location on the site, the colour of the site’s logo, their user profile as visible to other users, as well as the site’s favicon, changes to a unique colour code that represents their current location.

They explain on the site’s blog that this is achieved by taking an MD5 digest of the city’s name, and then converting it to a hex colour code. It’s simple things like this that really make a site stand out and a pleasure for their users to visit.

Update: Thanks to Matt, Dopplr’s developer, for the invite! I also just noticed that if you’re an employee of one of the Dopplr 100 (including IBM), you can get into the beta now.

Check out my customized logo in the upper left of the screen cap above. The maroon squares represent my trips back and forth to Denver, while the green is a trip to Mexico I have planned for February.