The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Science & Nature => Topic started by: Carlos del Vaca on January 11, 2012, 09:59:14 pm
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I finally joined the 21st century and got a real actual smartphone last month, and as expected I am now a total smartphone dork.
One application that I kind of enjoy is Foursquare, which allows you to "check in" to local businesses and such, and then it can notify your appointed friends that you are at that place. Theoretically, one could then come and hang out with you, if they're in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, Foursquare notifies you (if you have that turned on) of check-ins by your friends for your entire city. You can't narrow it down to a radius of, say, a mile or two. Which is too bad, because in my case I give a crap if anyone checks in anywhere in Maryland, because that might as well be 500 miles away. If someone checks in at a bar in my own suburb, that would be worth knowing. But right now it's all or nothing, and I have it set to nothing. I have to actually look at the app to see that local check-in, and by the time I see it, it may well be too late.
Furthermore, I would very much like to post my rules of checking in:
1. You should not check in to your own house, or into other people's houses. The idea is that you are checking in to public spaces, so others might come track you down.
2. You should not check in to your own place of employment. If you are the mayor [the person with the most check-ins] at Old Navy, that should be because you love Old Navy and shop there all the damn time, not because you WORK there.
3. You should not check in to Metro or subway stations, or the bus, or the Pennsylvania turnpike. That's just dumb. Check in to places that others might actually find interesting. (An exception would be made if you were in Paris or something. Then people might actually think that's of interest.)
Yes, all of these are based on real-life examples. If I post this on Facebook I will probably lose some friends.
Anyone else on this goofy thing? Or other social network-y smartphone apps I should scope out?
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I have never been able to see the point of Foursquare, and now I understand why. It's because it only makes sense if you have real-life friends.
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I check in on my FB app (when I remember) but just to make my friends jealous about the cool time I am having.
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I got the app recently, but haven't played with it much. I did, however, get because some of my RL friends had checked into places nearby where I actually could have shown up and attained coolness but couldn't for lack of said app. What remains to be addressed is the fact that my damn smart phone spends a lot of its life with a drained battery because its an energy pig.
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I have never gotten the point of this thing. I guess it makes sense if you use it to see where people are.
this one guy I know checks in at every bus transfer point, at his own house, etc. It is nuts.
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I opened this thread expecting this:
(http://cdn.thenextweb.com/files/2010/09/old-school-foursquare.jpg)
Dang. I loved foursquare when I was in Junior High. There was a strong core of 6 or 7 of us in the neighborhood who played every afternoon. We had dozens of optional rules (e.g. slams/no slams, spins/no spins, "stonewalling" and so forth) so that once a new server rose to square one it required a 30 second recital of which rules were in play for that particular round.
Good times.
If I checked in everywhere I went I'm afraid it would look too much like an unbroken procession of "Work. Gym. Home."
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AW, that type of foursquare is fun and not stupid. A can for you.
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So... can we turn this into a recommendations thread? Because I too just got a smartphone and I have no idea what I can do with it past its immediate communication capability.
What are the fun things to do with a smartphone, TOUAMB?
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Two that I am fond of that make good use of GPS stuff:
Waze is a realtime traffic monitoring and navigation app. Crack it open when you get in the car and let it run while you drive, and it sends info on your direction and speed to the central server. They then aggregate that data from all their drivers to show on the map where the trouble spots are. You can also report known incidents (accidents, cops, etc.) on your route, and view those reported by others. I pop it open when I'm leaving the office, and pick my route home based on what shows up.
Glympe allows you to send a persistent GPS feed-type thingy to someone via e-mail or text message. If they get it via e-mail, they can open a browser page that shows where you are, and if you put it in, where you're going. If they have the Glympse app, they can view your progress on the map in real time for as long as you've set it up for them to do so. So as an example, yesterday I worked in the city, and I was supposed to meet the missus and kids for dinner. Rather than calling or texting, I sent her a Glympse as soon as the Metro was out of the tunnel, and set it to be active for an hour. So she could follow my progress home from that point.
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Whoa, fancy.
I read my email and surf the web. The only apps I use are the weather report, and the one that tells me which giraffe I shouldn't eat if I don't want to destroy the planet. Once in a while I use it to listen to the radio or a podcast but that drains the battery really fast.
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Angry daggone Birds.
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I have purposely avoided Angry Birds, because I am sure I would become horribly addicted.
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Weather dingus, AlaskaAirlines, PDXbus, ESPN ScoreCenter, IMDB, eBay, Pandora, Carcassonne, Sporcle, DungeonRaid, Mint.
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just downloaded this dumb game, Zenonia. it is like an SNES RPG. It was free.
I mostly listen to podcasts and music. And read twitter.
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Yay, who just impulse-bought a $25 app (Remember the Milk) without checking the free version first and got stuck with something that will never be used?
Sigh.
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Twitter, Urban Spoon, MegaWorm and a free flashlight app.
Oh also USB disk. I upgraded to pro because it's got a wireless drive function, otherwise you need to use itunes to put stuff on it. It's not the best substitute for a flash drive for that reason but it is quite nifty for downloading stuff on the go and I use it as my default pdf reader.
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Yay, who just impulse-bought a $25 app (Remember the Milk) without checking the free version first and got stuck with something that will never be used?
I use RTM all the time, albeit the free version. The only benefit I know of to paying is that you can sync your phone app to the web version at any time--for the free version, you can only sync every 24 hours. I would like to be able to do it more often, but not for $25 I don't.
I know there are to-do list apps that add RPG functionality. Like, you set "levels" for your tasks, and when you complete them you get experience points and treasure and stuff. I need to track down one of those.
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Sigh. All I wanted from RTM was that it would remind me of shit I was supposed to do, but it doesn't seem to have an alarm/reminder type of thing. What are my notes good for if they just stay there in the device? I need this motherfucker to come to life screaming and kicking when it's time for me to get shit done! I know RTM is supposed to have reminders. Maybe I need a slightly less smart phone, but I can't for the life of me understand how they're supposed to work! Same problem with Evernote...
Any suggestions?
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I use RTM for an overall to do list--tasks that I need to do but that don't have a specific date or time associated with them. You can set a due date on RTM tasks, but unless you actually go into RTM and look at "Today," you won't notice. I think you can also set it up to have you e-mail you with the days tasks.
For things that I have to do on a specific day, I use the out-of-the-box Reminders app on the iPhone. That you can set up to have it notify you at a specific date and time. Also, my reminder sound is the "Sherwood Forest" trumpet blast, which sounds awesome.
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I see. So, the hunt continues...
By the way, Google Goggles is officially the future, now. I feel like Deckard in Blade Runner running that bad boy on the most inane things imaginable. "So apparently this is a 'bag' of something called... 'Doritos'? Mmm."
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Here's an article on the to-do RPG app.
http://lifehacker.com/5616472/epicwin-turns-your-to+do-list-into-a-role+playing-game-available-now
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OK, here is a useful feature on Foursquare: I took my "restaurants I want to check out" list, previously maintained in a text file, and put it in Foursquare as a "to-do list." Then I can call it up and it will show me them on a map, tell me what's close by. That'll be useful when out and about in the city.
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Sigh. All I wanted from RTM was that it would remind me of shit I was supposed to do, but it doesn't seem to have an alarm/reminder type of thing. What are my notes good for if they just stay there in the device? I need this motherfucker to come to life screaming and kicking when it's time for me to get shit done! I know RTM is supposed to have reminders. Maybe I need a slightly less smart phone, but I can't for the life of me understand how they're supposed to work! Same problem with Evernote...
Any suggestions?
Is it an android phone? You can set (recurring) events in google calendar and have it email/text/etc. reminders in addition to popping up as regular old alert on your phone.
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Yep, Android. I'll try some of that and let's see how it goes.
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I don't have a smartphone so I don't know from foursquare, but I just made a 2400 mile trip with a 25 year old who loves it. She checked in everywhere we went. I must admit it seems like a lot of fun, but I was probably just feeding off of her enthusiasm.
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2400 miles in a road vehicle with a 25-year-old . . . . you are either going to really get into whatever she's into, or the trip is going to end in 50 miles, I'd think.
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She's a very sweet young lady. Very easy to get along with. And she went along with the flow well.
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Vaguely back on topic - this thread made me think "oh yeah, Foursquare!" and now I have that app. The end.
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I have discovered that one guy is mayor of 52 locations in and around our town, including nearly every store in a particular shopping center. I wasted some time researching that, and figured out that if you just take the seven restaurants he's mayor of in that shopping center, he has checked into them 132 times in 60 days. So he eats pretty much every meal in those places, plus snacks.
Or he's a cheater who does "drive-by check-ins," which Foursquare discourages, but apparently can't prevent altogether.
I will destroy him. (Haven't figured out how yet.)
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Hold up - this thing actually characterizes a person as "the mayor" of a location if they visit it the most? I thought that was just a thing you guys were doing.
Hm.
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I have discovered that one guy is mayor of 52 locations in and around our town, including nearly every store in a particular shopping center. I wasted some time researching that, and figured out that if you just take the seven restaurants he's mayor of in that shopping center, he has checked into them 132 times in 60 days. So he eats pretty much every meal in those places, plus snacks.
Or he's a cheater who does "drive-by check-ins," which Foursquare discourages, but apparently can't prevent altogether.
I will destroy him. (Haven't figured out how yet.)
See, my first thought is that he is a mall security guard, or one of those people who cleans up trays in the food court. So, yeah, you could get a job at that mall. Then you could work side by side, bond with him, get to know all about his life and share some common interests. Maybe the mall has a movie theatre, and the two of you could go check out the latest shit movie just so you could trade smart quips about how shitty the movie is. Over time you could hear all about his children and his wife and dreams for the future. Maybe you could even share things you've never shared about yourself and let him see the inner-most part of your spirit. You could create an inside joke about that one cashier with the big jugs at Jamba Juice that only the two you you would understand, and it would come to a point that, with only a glance, you would each know what the other is thinking.
Then you could slit his throat in the bathroom while screaming "who's the fuck*ng mayor now, Pedro?! Who's the fuck*ng mayor!!?"
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For a while I thought you were reimagining Bill Cosby's Revenge (http://grooveshark.com/#!/s/Revenge/2WFZYR?src=5), but it got a little dark at the end.
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Wow, I never heard that before. Bill Cosby was such a great story teller in his day. He's right about the rules of snowballs though. It's all light fun until someone throws a slush/ice ball. Then it's war.
As for the violence, it was hard for me to imagine how one would catch up with someone who's built such a massive lead unless one were to make absolutely certain he would no longer be building up on what he already had.
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Workin' a little dark there, Mel, but still bringing the heat.
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See, my first thought is that he is a mall security guard, or one of those people who cleans up trays in the food court.
Good idea. Actually, he's a real estate agent (his Facebook account is linked to his Foursquare account, so it was easy enough to find his full name.)
Perhaps I should act like I want to buy a house, then pull out at the last moment saying "I can't work with someone who would be so dishonest as to cheat at Foursquare."
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Perhaps I should act like I want to buy a house, then pull out at the last moment saying "I can't work with someone who would be so dishonest as to cheat at Foursquare."
Now that would be awesome.
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I'm sorry, but I am the mayor of my workplace. My workplace wasn't even on foursquare until I added it, and as far as I can see no one else has ever checked in since I did add it.