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[Carlos del Vaca]

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?

[wombat]

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.

[Nabubrush]

I check in on my FB app (when I remember) but just to make my friends jealous about the cool time I am having.

[jaydub]

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.

[theinevitable]

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.

[AugustWest]

I opened this thread expecting this:



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."

[Carlos del Vaca]

AW, that type of foursquare is fun and not stupid. A can for you.

[dejavroom]

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?

[Carlos del Vaca]

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.

[wombat]

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.

[AugustWest]

Angry daggone Birds.

[Carlos del Vaca]

I have purposely avoided Angry Birds, because I am sure I would become horribly addicted.

[Nabubrush]

Weather dingus, AlaskaAirlines, PDXbus, ESPN ScoreCenter, IMDB, eBay, Pandora, Carcassonne, Sporcle, DungeonRaid, Mint.

[theinevitable]

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.

[dejavroom]

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.