If you’re a smartphone, you may have heard of the popular location-based game called Foursquare. The premise behind Foursquare is that you “check in” when you visit a bar, restaurant or other business establishment to earn points. You can also earn badges for reaching certain tasks such as going to the gym so many times a month or visiting too many trendy bars.
Foursquare is just starting to take off in the Evansville area, but it’s a bit like the wild west out there right now. In hopes of curbing such behavior, I thought I’d suggest some best practices when using Foursquare:
Your house is not a place to checkin at: Foursquare is about going out, so it makes little sense to checking when you are at home or visiting another persons house. Sure, you might get more points, but you are also clogging up the game for others. Foursquare is looking into implementing private venues, which may be a proper context for checking in at home, but until then it’s a no-no.
Use proper names and spelling: It’s appreciated when you create a new venue in town, but please take the extra few seconds to properly capitalize, punctuate and spell the venue name. As the creator, you have full control over that places information until a superuser is designated for town. Everytime I see “Ihop” rather than “IHOP” or “little cheers” instead of “Little Cheers” I die a little inside. As the creator of a venue, it’d also be nice if you could take the time to properly tag and address it when you are at home.
Friends and Foursquare don’t mix: I am personally pretty protective of who I follow and allow to follow me on Foursquare. Since I am giving out my specific location, I don’t accept anyone that I don’t personally know to see my whereabouts. Just because we may be Twitter buddies doesn’t mean we are Foursquare friends.
Foursquare is not a billboard…yet: Even though Foursquare is in its infancy in Evansville, I’ve already noticed a realtor in the Owensboro area creating venues for each of his open houses. This is wrong on so many levels. Foursquare encourages businesses to partner with them to offer specials and benefits for people who checkin using the application, but it’s most definitely not for listing real estate. If you do have a local restaurant or pub that would benefit from a Foursquare promotion, I’d recommend looking into it.
Have fun!: Above all else, Foursquare is supposed to be a fun game you can play with your friends. I love unlocking new badges and fighting for the mayorship of my favorite venues. Don’t take the service too seriously, but do do your part to make the game enjoyable for others that may happen upon your newly created venues.
I’m an avid Twitter user. In my Courier & Press column this week, I will be talking about how I use Twitter for keeping track of mainstream news. As part of that, I mentioned two Twitter lists I use to keep track of what’s happening around Evansville. Lists is a new feature of Twitter that allows you to group Twitter accounts in any way you desire. You can create subgroups that contain your work colleagues, friends, or celebrities. As Twitter allows you to subscribe to other people’s lists, you can also follow the lists as well.
Evansville News — Accounts for local news outlets and reporters.
Local news outlets WFIE, and subsequently WEHT, recently set all their news anchors and reporters up to use popular micro-blogging service Twitter to interact with viewers and discuss what they are doing on location, on set and behind the scenes. For a few months outlets, including the Courier & Press, have offered Twitter accounts that syndicate new article notifications to the service, but this is the first I’ve seen locally of actual reporters and anchors embracing the technology.
I’ve been following the news crews tweets via the Nearby feature of my favorite iPhone Twitter client Tweetie. Nearby allows you to see tweets that are posted within an approximate range of your current location. Given that there are not nearly as many Twitter users in the tri-state area as in other parts of the country, an influx of a few dozen reporters in the stream is quite noticeable.
The integration of this new technology with news reporting seems natural and a smart way for traditional media to embrace new media. Much like the oft reported demise of print media, I feel that traditional television news broadcasts will be going the way of the dodo in favor of digital.
I’ve always been a fan of watching the extras on a DVD to get a glimpse of how the film was made and that’s the same feeling I get when following these local reporters online. Each day a reporter is telling a story, but it is more than just what makes it into a 3 minute segment on the 6 or 10PM news. I can now follow the reporter as they get their assignment, where they are heading to find the facts and what events happen leading up to the actual on-screen reporting.
WEHT’s Brad Byrd is also Twittering and giving a behind the scenes look at what an anchor is doing leading up to a broadcast and even during the show. From cutting promos to prepping copy, you’re able to see what goes into preparing a nightly newscast. It’s an almost perfect use of Twitter.
I’m always happy to see locals embracing these new cutting edge technologies, but I can’t help but feel that both stations are clutching to an old media paradigm and trying to shift it forward. As the newscast gets closer, many of the reporters start posting news teases to their stream much in the way they are done during television commercial breaks.
In one instance, WFIE’s Brandon Bartlett tweeted, “Find out when each EVSC project will start. 14 News is the only station with the list. See you at 10!”
While I don’t find anything wrong with promoting content from your organization, I think trying to lead someone reading your Twitter stream to a traditional media device like the 10 o’clock news is the wrong route to take. Anyone using Twitter is more likely to get their local news from the Web via news stories on the station’s Website or online video rather than making appointment viewing at 10PM.
The Twitter experiment is in its early stages and will likely evolve in the coming weeks and months. While I doubt it’s going to make me tune into the local newscasts, it is drawing me to their Web sites more. I hope other local media outlets, this paper included, continue to embrace these new media technologies.
If you want to learn more about the Twitter integration at WFIE, CJ Hoyt was the guest on my radio show on WNIN this week. Listen live Friday at 12:30 or Sundays at 6:30PM on 88.3-FM
If you’re looking to make a new friend on Facebook, may I suggest Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel? Mayor Weinzapfel is now on Facebook with a resounding 459 friends. Perhaps you could be his next one.
Any other local celebrities on Facebook or MySpace we should know about?
While I was in Nashville yesterday, I got warning that it was a pretty window day here in Evansville. Driving back I saw the tree limbs scattered along the streets and many parts of town without power: including my house. I’m still without power this morning and have sought refuge at my favorite Starbucks by Eastland Mall.
For this week’s Plugged In, I want to do a quick segment on this and suggest things to do when the power is out. Help me out. Try to be creative with this one. I don’t just want a straight list. If I use it on the air, I’ll give you credit.
My suggestion: lassoing the cat with your Ethernet cable.
If you’d like to listen to the first episode of my radio show, Plugged In, you can download it directly from the Website or subscribe to the new podcast. I’ve submitted the podcast to iTunes, so if someone wants to fast track it over there, I’d appreciate it.
On the first episode I had on David Chartier of Ars Technica to talk about the Apple announcements from earlier in the week and Dr. W.R. Mack, a political science professor at the University of Southern Indiana, to discuss how the new media information we are posting today might affect the future political candidate.
How did the first show go? I think the content is interesting and close to where I want it to be. I still think I have a ways to go to be an interesting and engaging host. It’s not bad for being my first real show ever though. Radio really exposes what words you crutch on in the English language. I really need to work on that.
Last time I’ll self promote this on here for a while.
One of the projects that has been taking up a bit of my time over the summer was going down to the WNIN studios and fleshing out a new radio show. After several test shows, I’m pleased to announce that my new technoloy radio, Plugged In, will debut this Thursday at noon (replay Sunday at 6PM) on 88.3 FM WNIN. That would be your local public radio and NPR affiliate.
When I went down to WNIN to talk about doing a show, the first thing I told them was that I didn’t want to do the traditional call-in for support tech show that has been done time and time again. I tend to find stuff like that to be incredibly boring. The problem being discussed is usually only of interest to the caller.
Rather than focusing on when technology doesn’t work, Plugged In will focus on how we use technology in our daily lives. We’ll cover the latest tech news as well as cover a different subject in-depth each week. As an example, test shows have covered the iPhone 3G launch, buying a laptop for college and getting started with digital SLR photography. I’m building a stable of incredibly smart guests to help the show along. It’s a formula I think can really work for tech.
The radio show is a bit of an extension to my Courier column, but will allow me to expand a bit further than 500 words a week will allow. Plugged In isn’t where I want it to be just yet and will evolve over time. I hope you’ll tune in Thursday and give me some feedback on the show. I’m also working with WNIN to get a proper podcast setup as well so you can get it straight to your iPod each week.
If you have any topic suggestions you’d like me to cover on the show, let me know in the comments or email me.
The Courier has posted an article announcing that Google Street View has finally come to the Evansville area. Street View is a part of Google Maps that gives you a first-personal angle of the roads of major metropolitan areas.
The Street View car was rolling around town last summer. It was a greenish Chevy or Geo car with a silver apparatus on top of it that would capture the images for street view. The chatted briefly with the guy who was driving the car at the Shell right off the I-164/Lloyd exit. Quite an odd fellow, but I guess thats to be expected when your job is to just drive around with a big camera on the roof. I snapped a photo of the car from my iPhone and uploaded it to my Flickr account. Here it is a bit closer up (thanks to stormbear.com.
Street View is useful for someone visiting from out of town since it gives you an easy way to get reference points for directions. I’ll scour around it and see if I can’t find anything interesting/odd in our streets when the camera was driving by.
The latest edition of my Courier & Press technology column is both in the print and online editions of today’s paper. Each Friday I write about what I’ve encountered in the past week technology wise. It’s really a giant scam to justify the amount of time I spend on the Internet.
This week I about some of the early gems I found in the iPhone AppStore. You can read it by clicking here, or go pick up a copy of the paper so you can see my mug shot up close and personal.
If you want to read my past columns, check out the dotColumn archive.
Note: I was planning to do this for my Courier Column this week, but there is no way I can cut 1600 words down to 500. Enjoy!
There is no denying that Apple is a marketing juggernaut. In hub cities like San Francisco and New York lines went for blocks around AT&T and Apple Stores to purchase the new iPhone 3G. Large Apple product launches in these cities is nothing new. The introduction of Mac OS X Leopard back in October saw hundreds of people waiting in line on a Friday evening to purchase a fresh version of an operating system.
What makes the iPhone 3G launch different is that this hysteria even took roots in Evansville. While the closest Apple Store is two hours away in Louisville, the three east side AT&T stores had people waiting in line early Friday morning to pick up the new phone.
If you’re a smartphone, you may have heard of the popular location-based game called Foursquare. The premise behind Foursquare is that you “check in” when you visit a bar, restaurant or other business establishment to earn points. You can also earn badges for reaching certain tasks such as going to the gym so many times a month or visiting too many trendy bars. 
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I’m an avid 
One of the projects that has been taking up a bit of my time over the summer was going down to the WNIN studios and fleshing out a new radio show. After several test shows, I’m pleased to announce that my new technoloy radio, 
The latest edition of my Courier & Press technology column is both in the print and online editions of today’s paper. Each Friday I write about what I’ve encountered in the past week technology wise. It’s really a giant scam to justify the amount of time I spend on the Internet.
Tagging your links in 
Tagging your photos in 