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 Macrodot's Guide to Using Dodgeball.com:By: kyle on 4-26-2008note: all examples below using 5555555555 would need to be replaced with an actual cell phone number. 5555555555 is just an example.
What is Dodgeball.com?Dodgeball is designed to help you meet up with friends and friends-of-friends while you're out and about NOT while you are in front of your computer. The service interacts with your cell phone TXTing feature. Next time you meet a friend for drinks... send a single TXT message to dodgeball and dodgeball will let all your friends know of your where abouts and alert you if any friends-of-friends are nearby. The point: Meet up with your current friends more and possibly meet more REAL friends NOT "Internet" friends through association.Why you should sign up and a simple example:Lets say you(John A.) have a group of close friends. Lets say you have 10 friends in your group. Tonight you are going to go to Ace Bar...Once you are there, you "check-in" by sending a single message "@Ace Bar" to "dodge" (36343)... First, you get a message returned immediately like the following... "OK! We just sent a message to your 10 friends in Phoenix letting them know you're at Ace Bar. (5 other dodgeball users are also here!)" Second, your friends receive the following TXT message... "dodgeball says: John A. @ Ace Bar (123 Some Rd, Mill Ave and University) at 10:15 PM. Reply w/ "@venue name" to check in!" Note that 5 other dodgeball users are also at Ace Bar... you start wondering who else is here thats a dodgeball user. This is what makes this fun! Your friends get a quick message letting them know where you are. If they want to hang out, they can stop by Ace Bar or call you or TXT you back. How to sign up yourself: (2 ways)
How to sign up your Friends via your phone:If you are out and about and you tell someone about dodgeball, here is how to sign them up and add them to your friends list.
How to add someone to your dodgeball friends list: (2 ways)
How to block dodgeball users and prevent the whole "stalker-ish" feeling:HOW NOT TO EXPOSE YOUR PHONE NUMBER: No dodgeball user ever knows your cell phone number from looking at the website. There are only 2 ways the dodgeball user "knows" your cell phone number. Either you told them it OR in the following situation... When you receive a message from a friend via dodgeball the message will be something like... "John A. says 'hi, here is my message' reply to 5555555555 to say hi.". The only way the sender will ever know what your cell phone number is is if you "explicitly" send a TXT message directly to 555-555-5555. The initial message is coming from DODGE (36343) not the senders phone. This is simple, dont send TXT messges to phone numbers you dont recognize. Since a TXT message you send to a regular number is coming from your phone not dodgeball servers, if you dont know who is sending the message and dont want to expose your cell phone number, just simply dont TXT the persons phone number. Also, remove them from your friends list. You shouldnt have people on your friends list that you dont know anyways. Note, you can straight up block any user. If you get a message from someone and you want to stop receiving message from this user immediately, from your phone, simply reply directly to the message (which goes to dodgeball (36343), not the sender) the words "block" and wala, sender removed and messages stopped.If you are super paranoid and/or dont care about the social networking aspects of the service and only use it for your immediate friends list, here is how to "stalker-proof" your account... Login to your account online dodgeball.com and set the following...
Read through the cheatsheet below for more useful tools. How about I want Emails instead of SMS TXT messages OR both:Dodgeball was designed for TXTing on your cell phone, however, it does also have an email feature. On your account online, click on PREFS -> my phone. You will see a section labeled "Send dodgeball messages to my...". As you can can see, you can have your messages sent to an email address instead or to both your email and your phone or just your phone. This could be handy if you have one of those nifty All-in-One phones like a Blackberry or an iPhone.Additional Features:Friends of Friends: This feature lets you know when friends-of-friends have "checked-in" within 10 blocks of you. It allows you to broadcast content to anyone within 10 blocks of you. This feature is on by default so if you dont want to use it you need to turn it off under PREFS -> my dodgeball. This feature is the fun part of the service and is what makes the service function as a social networking tool.Crush List: This feature is interesting. Basically, if you look at someones profile online you can mark them as "Add to your crush list". Whenever you check-in, we'll check to see if any of your crushes have "checked-in" nearby. If so, we'll send a message to your phone letting you know that someone on your crush list (we won't tell you who!) is somewhere within 10 blocks (we won't tell you where!). At the same time we'll ping them with a message letting your crush know where you are...and if they have a camera phone, we'll send your picture along too. Who knows - if they think you're cute, maybe your crush will stop by. Whats interesting is that the crush-ee can remain completely anonymous. Its up to them unless of course you only have one crush on your list. Then its obvious at that point who it is. You can only have 5 crushes on your list. http://www.dodgeball.com/crush_list Block: No longer want to receive check-in messages from a certain friend or friend of friend? Now you can block them when you're out too! Just reply to their check-in message with the word "block" and that person will now no longer receive your messages, nor will you receive theirs. It's the same as managing them on your online account and you can go there to un-block them if you wish. http://www.dodgeball.com/manage_friends or to unblock Friends-Of-Friends goto http://www.dodgeball.com/history Sets: This feature is neat. Lets say you have a 100 friends. Well, you can group them into "Sets". Once you do this, you can send messages to "Sets" instead of your entire friends list. http://www.dodgeball.com/manage_sets Digest Mode: Lets say you have a gazillion friends and you get alot of messages. You can turn on digest mode to limit the messages to one an hour in summary. To turn on or off just TXT "digest" to 36343. This will group all your check-in messages into one message per hour. Or change the setting online at http://www.dodgeball.com/my_dodgeball
For new users, on your first weekend evening, you will get a single message saying...
"dodgeball says: Time to get your dodgeball on! Reply w/ @venuename (e.g. @ Bar 74) to let your friends know where you are!"
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| Feature | Command | Description |
| CHECK-IN | @ | Broadcast your whereabouts to your friends.
On your phone TXT "@ace bar" to DODGE (36343) |
| SHOUT | ! | Broadcast a message to your friends.
On your phone TXT "! anyone want to go to the movies?" to DODGE (36343) |
| CHECK-IN W/ A SHOUT | @...! | Broadcast your whereabouts to your friends and tell them a little something extra about what you're doing there.
On your phone TXT "@ace bar ! open bar till 10pm!" to DODGE (36343) |
| LOOKUP | ? | Look up the address / cross street of a bar or restaurant.
On your phone TXT "ace bar?" to DODGE (36343) |
| FIND YOUR FRIENDS | locate | If you've had Dodgeball off for the night, send "locate" to get a quick update of where you can find your friends (last 3 hours).
On your phone TXT "locate" to DODGE (36343) |
| GET HELP USING DODGEBALL | help | Send "help" to us and we'll send you back a brief cheat sheet describing how yo use the main features.
On your phone TXT "help" to DODGE (36343) |
CHANGING YOUR DODGEBALL PREFERENCES
| Feature | Command | Description |
| TURN DODGEBALL ON/OFF (FOR THE NIGHT) |
on / off | Stop receiving Dodgeball messages for the night by sending "off". Turn Dodgeball back on by checking-in or sending "on".
Dodgeball will automatically turn itself back "on" at 7am the next morning. On your phone TXT "on" or "off" to DODGE (36343) |
| TURN DODGEBALL ON/OFF (VACATION MODE) |
start / stop | Stop receiving Dodgeball messages indefinitely by sending "stop". Turn Dodgeball back on by sending "start".
On your phone TXT "start" or "stop" to DODGE (36343) |
| GET MESSAGES IN DIGEST FORM | digest | Digest mode allows you to receive one msg per hour featuring all your friends' check-ins. Turn Digest Mode on/off by sending "digest".
On your phone TXT "digest" to DODGE (36343) |
MANAGING YOUR FRIENDS
| Feature | Command | Description |
| SIGN UP A FRIEND FOR DODGEBALL | Join | Get your friend signed up for Dodgeball right from your mobile phone. (send this from YOUR FRIENDS' phone)
"join [your mobile number] [your first name]" On your phone TXT "join 9175551212 dennis" to DODGE (36343) |
| ADD A FRIEND TO YOUR DODGEBALL PROFILE | Add | Add your friend to your network right from your mobile phone. (send this from YOUR phone):
"add [friends' mobile number]" On your phone TXT "add 6468883434" to DODGE (36343) |
| BROADCAST MESSAGES TO SETS OF FRIENDS | setname@venue, setname!message | Send messages (check-ins/shouts) to a subset of your friends. Learn more about this and set up your sets here.
Check-ins: "[set name] @ [venue name]" On your phone TXT "happyhour @ ace bar" to DODGE (36343) Shouts: "[set name] ! [message]" On your phone TXT "happyhour ! let's meet at Ace Bar at 5pm" to DODGE (36343) |
| BLOCK PEOPLE RIGHT FROM YOUR PHONE | block | If you get a message (friend or friend-of-friend) from a person you no longer want to send/receive messages from, just reply to that message with the word "block". You can always go into your manage friends page (for friends) or your history page (for friend-of-friends) to un-block them. On your phone TXT "block" to DODGE (36343) "REPLYING" to the message you just received |
Summary:
I think this service rocks! I hope you sign up and check it out. I will add more to this if I think of anything. I am kyleMACRODOT on dodgeball. |
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