Flook was a location-based browsing application and website developed by
Ambient Industries located in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
, initially for the
iPhone. Users of the application created virtual cards, or "Flooks", which were made up of a photo of a particular location and a small piece of text describing that location. These Flooks were then recorded with their geographic coordinates so that other Flook users could see where they have been posted when they are using the app. Users typically upload local secrets, places to go and things to see. The application was therefore a wiki of sorts, but was also a combination of
Google Maps
Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...
,
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon was a discovery and advertisement engine (a form of web search engine) that pushed web content recommendations to its users. Its features allowed users to discover and rate Web pages, photos and videos that are personalized to their ...
and review websites such as
Tripadvisor or
Toptable
Toptable (styled toptable) was an online restaurant booker covering the UK as well as major cities in Europe and New York City established in 2000 and bought by OpenTable in 2010.
History
Toptable was founded in 2000 by entrepreneur Karen Hant ...
.
Ambient Industries was founded by two former
Symbian
Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system
A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typic ...
programmers,
Roger Nolan and
Jane Sales, who assisted in the construction of much of the Symbian mobile operating system, together with
Tristan Brotherton, formerly of
Synapsim,
Roo
Roo is a fictional character created in 1926 by A. A. Milne and first featured in the book ''Winnie-the-Pooh''. He is a young kangaroo (known as a joey) and his mother is Kanga. Like most other Pooh characters, Roo is based on a stuffed toy an ...
and
Fluidjuice, and who assisted in the creation of screening software that is now used by
Kroll
Kroll is a German, Anglo-Saxon, and Scottish surname.
Notable people with the surname include:
* Colin Kroll (1983/4–2018), American businessman; co-founder of Vine and HQ Trivia
* Eric Kroll (born 1946), American photographer
* Fredric Kroll ...
. Flook was launched in December 2009. Ambient Industries had received funding from UK tech investment houses Eden Ventures and
Amadeus Capital Partners
Amadeus Capital Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in European high-technology companies, founded by Anne Glover and Hermann Hauser in 1997.
It is a member of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association and is approved ...
.
In February 2010, Flook won the Mobile Premier Award in User Experience awarded by Mobile User Experience.
In June 2010, Ambient Industries partnered with Geocast to make flook cards from Geocast's local offers.
According to the email sent to their users, Flook ceased service after 25 February 2012, and its
official website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikipe ...
is no longer available.
References
{{Reflist
External links
Official website(offline)
IOS software
Geosocial networking
Mobile social software