Sometimes opening foursquare, tapping check in, finding the place you’re looking for and tapping check in two more times is just too much work. That’s why some enterprising developers have created a new solution, Picalogo. It’s a free iPhone app (Android coming soon) that checks you in automatically just by snapping a picture of the business’ logo.

Whenever you go to a restaurant or a shop, you’re no doubt surrounded by that company’s logo. It’s on the napkins, the menu, the shopping cart, everything. Picalogo aims to make checking in simpler by letting you check in on foursquare and Facebook Places with just two clicks — one to open the app, one to snap a photo of the logo. It magically recognizes the logo (and by magicially, I mean I suspect there’s some Amazon Mechanical Turk “magic” going on) and checks you in to the closest nearby venue that matches.

Picalogo is still in beta, so it’s not perfect. I’ve had a few instances where the logo wasn’t recognized, in which case Picalogo asks you to pick from a list of nearby venues (you can skip the picture step completely and jump right to the list, but if you’re going to do that, you might as well check in via the foursquare app). For the most part, though, Picalogo has done fairly well. It’s checked me in to the right venue on foursquare and Facebook Places without a problem more times than not, even if it’s sometimes a little slow in recognizing the logo.

Beyond just checking in, Picalogo can also deliver location-based deals from Groupon and other services. I haven’t seen any pop up for my checkins yet, but it adds another interesting aspect to the app.

I’m perfectly happy with the foursquare checkin process myself, but if you’re one of those that wants to reduce the number of clicks it takes to check in, then Picalogo might be worth a try. If you give it a go, let us know what you think in the comments.

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