Archive for category Fun
Foursquare launches contest for new US city badges
Posted by Chris Thompson in Badges, Fun on January 24, 2012
Inspired by President Obama’s #VisitUS initiative to encourage travel around the US, foursquare has launched a new contest to create lists of the best spots in each city around the country. Three of the best lists will be chosen, earning their respective cities one of foursquare’s coveted city badges.
Foursquare’s lists are easy to create, either alone or with help from your friends. To get started, visit foursquare.com/lists and create one (be sure to include the #VisitUS hashtag in the name). Add 20-30 of your favorite spots in the city (don’t forget tips and photos!) and submit it to foursquare. See our tips for creating a great list to give you some ideas.
When you’re done, you can either submit it to foursquare or share it on Twitter and Facebook with the #4sq and #VisitUS hashtags. The deadline is next Friday, February 3.
For foursquare, this has the side benefit of getting users to create quality lists in cities all over the country. Users have already created more than 500,000, but many of them are of foursquare’s generic variety. Lists are a great tool for finding things to do — especially in a new city — but finding quality ones is often a challenge. This move should help by encouraging users to create more lists in cities both large and small.
I’ve already submitted mine for Cincinnati. I can’t wait to see your lists in the comments.
What can you learn about a city just from the words people use there on foursquare? A lot apparently.
Posted by Chris Thompson in Fun on January 20, 2012
I’m always amazed at the bits of information foursquare is able to glean about an area based solely on the enormous data set they’ve gathered over the past three years.
Foursquare machine learning engineers Max Sklar and Ben Lee took advantage of that data and created a project during the last internal hack day to find some of the most popular words used on foursquare in select cities.
They were kind enough to share their results for a few cities on Twitter:
- New Orleans: bread pudding, cafe au lait, bloody mary, who dat, hand grenade
- Boston: clam chowder, lobster roll, north end, red sox
- Chicago: french toast, sweet potato, deep dish, celery salt
- Honolulu: mai tai, shave ice, loco moco, acai bowl, garlic chicken, royal hawaiian
It’s amazing how spot on their findings were. They paint a quick picture of each city based on just a few words.
If they did a search for your city, what do you think they’d find?
National Animal Shelter Checkin Day is this Saturday
Posted by Chris Thompson in Fun on November 8, 2011
Every day there are dogs just waiting to be adopted in animal shelters all over the country. The problem is that once in a shelter, they’re pretty much invisible. Only the people who seek them out even know they exist.
That’s why the Best Friends Animal Society has come up with a novel strategy for this Saturday, November 12. They’ve designated the day as National Animal Shelter Checkin Day. Foursquare users are encouraged to visit their local animal shelters and check in. While you’re there you can visit with the animals, adopt one or volunteer.
The BFAS hopes the day will shed more light on the problem of “invisible dogs” by shedding light on those animal shelters with the help of foursquare checkins.
“This single easy action will help bring awareness to the unseen dogs waiting in shelters to be adopted,” said Jon Dunn, senior manager of online strategy at Best Friends Animal Society in a press release. “When supporters check in at the animal shelter, the shelter’s location will be shared automatically with all of their connections via social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. And we’re asking people to not just ‘check-in,’ but to adopt, volunteer or simply take a photo of a dog available for adoption and share it with friends.”
Animal shelters across the country are being encouraged to participate. The BFAS has supplied posters to encourage people to check in and offered webinars on how shelters can claim their venues. They’ve even worked with foursquare to add a category for animal shelters.
As an animal lover and father of two shelter dogs, I’m really excited for this day. I hope it will help to illuminate some of the invisible dogs just waiting to be adopted all over the country. Please seek out your local animal shelter this Saturday, check in and share it will all your friends.
Find foursquare freebies with Poorsquare
Posted by Chris Thompson in Fun, Specials on November 7, 2011
Whether it’s free cookies, free drinks or free food, if you look hard enough on foursquare, you can almost find enough free offers to get by on. If you live in New York, a new hack from Jeff Novich makes hunting down those freebies a lot easier. It even includes some fun references to the 99% of Occupy Wall Street.
Poorsquare is a freebie search engine powered completely by foursquare specials. You tell it what neighborhood you’re in, what kind of offers you’re looking for and whether you’re hanging out with friends (they come in handy for acquiring friend specials). It spits out a list of the freebies in your area that are yours for the taking just for checking in. They’re ranked, with special icons to alert you to items that are completely free or only available during certain hours.
It’s New York only for now, but says “100 US Cities” are coming soon.
The app was a winner in the Reinventing Local hackathon and it’s easy to see why. It presents a simple interface for searching foursquare specials and finding freebies. The clever references to the Occupy Wall Street movement certainly don’t hurt either!
Transformers star in new foursquare-based game
Posted by Chris Thompson in Fun, Mobile Apps on October 26, 2011
If you’re a fan of the Transformers series of movies and of foursquare-based gaming, you’ll like an app that was recently released by Paramount to promote the launch of Transformers 3 on Blu-Ray and DVD. Transformers 3 Battle Zone lets you deploy an army of Autobots or Decepticons to attack or defend nearby venues.
When you first join the game, you’re asked to choose a team, either Autobots or Decepticons. From there you can attack and (hopefully) take control of nearby venues — courtesy of the foursquare venue database — and protect them from the other team. You deploy a portion of your allotment of protoform soldiers to defend the venue while you’re away.
As you see some success in the game, you’ll be promoted and can trade your protoforms for more effective weapons like tanks and attack helicopters, all the way up to the supreme fighters, Primes. Additional challenges are announced occasionally on the Tranformers Facebook page. For example, anyone who takes over Willis Tower in Chicago today wins an extra 5,000 soldiers.
Foursquare users can optionally check in to venues directly from the app. There are also options for sharing to Facebook and Twitter.
Astute observers will notice a lot of similarities with Foursqwar, one of the earliest foursquare-based games. TF3 Battle Zone is essentially a white-labeled version of Foursqwar, built by the game’s original creators, UK-based Project Zebra.
TF3 Battle Zone is available for free on iPhone, Android, and even Facebook. Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments.
Check in for a chance to ride in the Conan Blimp
Posted by Chris Thompson in Fun on October 25, 2011
It’s always been a dream of mine to fly in a blimp. I don’t know what it is that I find so appealing, but floating so peacefully beneath a giant bag of gas just sounds like a lot of fun. Two lucky foursquare users will soon get to live out their own blimp-riding dreams under the biggest, orangest bag of gas there is: the Conan Blimp.
TeamCoco and foursquare have teamed up to award two blimp rides (each for the winner and one friend) over New York City next week. The winner will also get a basket of Conan goodies.
To enter the contest, you’ll need to do one of two things (or both things if you want two entries) before noon on Friday:
- Spot the Conan Blimp and check in to it on foursquare. You’ll get a digital badge, a real-life badge and an entry to the sweepstakes.
- Check in to the New York Museum of Conan Art at the Time Warner Center. You’ll get a t-shirt and an entry to the sweepstakes.
This is a really cool prize, so if you’re in New York, keep your eyes on the skies or make your way over to the Time Warner Center and check in!
/Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Buy and sell foursquare venues with web-based game Fourocity
Posted by Chris Thompson in API Apps, Fun on October 18, 2011
A few weeks ago, we wrote about a Monopoly-like game called Foursquaropoly. It turned out to be one of our most popular posts ever. Since then the students working to bring it to life have rebranded it as Metropoli (to avoid the obvious legal challenges) and launched a Kickstarter project to get it funded, but the project is currently less than 20% funded.
Meanwhile, a team of developers built a similarly themed app during the most recent Foursquare Hackathon called Fourocity. It’s a simple game, but it’s picked up a surprising number of fans.
With Fourocity, you pick venues anywhere in the world and “buy” them using your initial $50,000. For each person who checks in there on foursquare — whether they play fourocity or not — you earn $1,000. You can then use that money to buy ever more popular venues. Venues are “appraised” by Fourocity based on their popularity to determine their initial selling price.
Unfortunately, joining Fourocity now is a lot like playing Monopoly where the board owner automatically gets Boardwalk and Park Place (each with a hotel) before the game even begins. Many of the most popular venues — NFL stadiums, Disney World theme parks, train stations, airports — are already purchased by the game’s earliest adopters… and they have zero incentive to ever sell them (even if an option to sell were available, which it’s not).
The game is structured in such a way that the early adopters will only continue to amass money that lets them buy more venues — and, thus, amass more money. With no access to the most popular venues, there’s literally no way for latecomers to catch up to the leaders. That, sadly, takes most of the fun out of the game before you even begin.
Hopefully the game’s creators will be able to transform the game into more than a paradise for early-adopting collectors. I’ll be checking back regularly, because the concept here is pretty intriguing.
Have you tried Fourocity? What do you think?
Foursquare invaded by zombies
Posted by Chris Thompson in Fun, Mobile Apps on October 13, 2011
Location-based gaming is really just beginning to take off. It seems that zombie games are the first movers on that front, since there are now two zombie role-playing games that are foursquare based. Zombie Hood (above right) launched in July and Please Stay Calm (above left) launches in the US today (after launching in Canada late last month). Both are free and only available for iPhones.
Both games follow the “zombie apocalypse MMORPG” format. You scavenge nearby locations for supplies (and check in on foursquare if you’re actually there). The supplies and cash you find can then be traded in for other items that will help in your quest. Scavenging, of course, takes energy, which takes time to rebuild (or can be bought in the form of an energy pill/drink).
You’re always in constant danger of being attacked by zombies, so you have to keep an eye out for them while scavenging. In Zombie Hood, you can fight to defend yourself, whereas Please Stay Calm lets you go out and hunt the zombies and fight them. You pick a local foursquare venue as your safehouse (in Please Stay Calm, your friends can join you there to help strengthen it).
Missions/Achivements are another way to get experience in both games. Complete the tasks you’re given and you’ll add points. As you gain more experience, you’ll level up, which unlocks more and better equipment, weapons, etc.
That’s pretty much everything available in Zombie Hood, but only a portion of Please Stay Calm, which has a more developed story. You can create outposts and duel with other survivors to try to gain cash and supplies. Please Stay Calm includes a detailed tutorial that walks you through all the options available in the game, which is quite helpful given the game’s depth.
Of the two, Please Stay Calm seems to take the cake. It’s depth, storyline and graphics make it a winner in my book. If you’re into zombie games, both are fun to play and explore, especially as the first decent entrants in the location-based gaming space.
Have you tried either game? Which one do you like better?
OtterBox to trade cases for foursquare checkins at the Dew Tour Championship
Posted by Chris Thompson in Fun on October 7, 2011
The Dew Tour Championships kick off next weekend in Vegas, and our friends at OtterBox will be there handing out cases for simply checking in on foursquare.
OtterBox is offering their OtterBox 1000 case when you check in and stop by their booth in Festival Village at the Hard Rock. The 1000 is a waterproof box that’s great for keeping things like phones and other electronics dry.
I picked up one of their Commuter cases for my iPhone a few weeks ago when my previous (non-OtterBox) case fell apart and I’ve been loving it. It’s got a silicone case and a hard outer shell that makes me feel like my phone is well protected, but it’s still thin enough that it doesn’t feel bulky in my pocket.
You can follow OtterBox on foursquare.
DISCLOSURE: OtterBox is a sponsor of our podcast. Comment on the most recent podcast for your chance to win the OtterBox case of your choice in the next drawing.
Watching soccer at your local MLS pub could make you a winner
Posted by Chris Thompson in Fun on October 3, 2011
MLS has launched a new foursquare-based campaign to encourage soccer fans to check in at their official pubs. The prizes range from custom jerseys to a VIP trip to the 2011 MLS Cup.
To enter, you must register and connect your foursquare account on the MLS Viewfest site. Each time you check in during a match at one of their official pubs (each city with an MLS team has 5–12) you’ll receive an entry to the contest.
At the end of the contest on October 23, the fan with the most entries will win the VIP trip to the MLS Cup, which includes airfare, hotel, tickets to a VIP party, pre-game hospitality and sideline passes for the game. Each week, one random participant will be selected to receive a custom MLS jersey of their choice. The pub with the most entries at the conclusion of the contest wins a viewing party with drink specials, player appearances and more.
Legends New York is currently leading the pub battle with more than 50% of the checkins in the entire contest.
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