GO HD is a Web and iPhone app that allows you to share photos, videos and tiny anecdotes from anywhere in the world anonymously. And you can benefit from others sharing stuff similarly from all across the globe, all of which is piped to you in real time. It’s fast, always has something new, is sometimes funny, sometimes surprising and always fun.
Yes, that sounds awfully similar to Twitter and a dozen other social networking services like Instagram and Klip—which it is to a certain extent—but it does have some truly unique twists. For starters, it allows you to be entirely anonymous, so you never have to sign up for an account and reveal to anyone who you are.
Furthermore, the social aspect of it is minimal, almost to the point of being nonexistent. The only social bit is that it allows you to share a link to your uploaded media on Facebook or Twitter—and, even then, unless you choose to reveal that it was uploaded by you, none of your followers will be any the wiser that it was your handiwork.
GO HD is about broadcast and serendipitous discovery more than it is about sharing stuff with your friends. Packed inside a gorgeous and fluid interface is a lively, constantly updating stream of photos, videos and 36-character comments from users all over the world. Most of them are anonymous and some have usernames, but you never need to worry about who uploaded what.
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If someone does have a username and they are prolific in their uploading habits, you can choose to save them as a favourite by tapping and holding on their username. You can also save tags are favourites, so you can keep track of the latest coffee-related uploads, for example, or all the musical performances shared on the service.
Everywhere you go, you’ll see screens split into Recent and Popular tabs, so you can take a look at everything that comes in or limit yourself to the stuff that other users of the service have found interesting enough to ‘surge’. You surge something by tapping on a lighting bolt icon attached to every piece of media that shows up on GO HD.
There are four ways to go through all the content—the map, which allows you to zoom in to any part of the world and see the stuff being shared from there; the list, which shows everything being shared, regardless of location; the search, which allows you to look up tags or users; and the favourites list, which is the collection of tags and users that you have chosen to keep track of.
If you want to upload something yourself, hit the pink button in the centre of the tab bar to bring up the Post screen. From here, you can proceed to snap a photo, shoot a video or type something out, as long as you limit yourself to 36 characters. A future version of the app will add the ability to bring in existing photos and videos from your camera roll as well.
Other options in the app include the ability to flag something as inappropriate (if you happen to stumble upon adult content, for instance), grab a username for yourself if you’d like others to be able to keep track of everything uploaded by you and invite your friends to join in on the fun.
It’s worth noting that, due the location-centricness of the service, it does not let you upload anything that isn’t geotagged. And since the app uses the phone’s onboard GPS to fetch your precise location, you may want to be a bit careful when sharing stuff uploaded by you on Facebook and Twitter.
Overall, we found GO HD’s approach to be fresh and the iPhone app’s UI fun. It’s a great way to just tune in and find out what is happening in the other hemisphere or in your immediate locality. The app’s anonymity and no-nonsense approach to sharing content makes it a hassle-free way to broadcast anything you want to the world.
Given the price of free, and with an Android version set to go live soon, we expect GO HD to do well, despite the extremely crowded market it has waded in.
➤ GO HD | via Addictive Tips
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