What good is Foursquare?
 

Several people have asked me "What good is Foursquare?" When I first tried it I wasn't sure if it was worth my time or not, but as with many social media & cloud computing tools you play with it first and then discover how it might be used.

Foursquare is a location-based social networking service (geo-social). It uses GPS to locate nearby places, and participants "check-in" and eventually are awarded badges and mayorships. Friends can be added so your check-ins may be shared. Foursquare can be connected to a Twitter or Facebook account, so your status and comment is posted when you check-in to a venue.

As you visit places you can also add tips or suggestions. For example, I recommended the chicken chipotle sandwich at The Posh Bagel in Mountain View and the chai tea at Tandoori Oven in Los Gatos. It's also fun to be Mayor of places like Mountain View Public Library and the Hungry Hound.

Some businesses see the marketing potential and offer discounts when you visit their establishment or even when you're just nearby. I've taken advantage of a 15% discount on a restaurant bill when I showed my Foursquare check-in.

Organizations are beginning to do more creative things with foursquare - games, tours, etc. A recent blog post, http://mashable.com/2010/04/02/foursquare-brands/ talks about how some organizations are using it. Check it out!

Tadpoles

Recently my husband, Guy, and I rescued a dozen or so tadpoles from a rain-filled, mostly empty fountain. Of course there is no such thing as a free pet. Off we went to the pet store to purchase a small tank and aquatic plants for food. The tadpoles were only about 1/4" long when we first got them. A couple weeks later and they're twice the size.

We've enjoyed watching them scurry around, twitching their "tails" to move. We're also excited about witnessing their transformation from tadpole to frog. It's an almost unbelievable metamorphosis, going from breathing in water to breathing air, trading gills for lungs, growing legs and hopping out of the tank. From egg to tadpole to frog takes a mere twelve weeks. That's a tremendous amount of change in such a short time!

I think tadpoles are inspiring. Humans seem uncomfortable with change, resist it, don't trust it. This amphibian doesn't have a choice but to live through huge changes in the first few weeks of its life! We can learn from tadpoles.

Family Stick Figures

After a stressful day I wanted to do something fun and spur of the moment to cheer myself up. And I was thinking about how much I appreciate my husband and family of cats. At that moment I thought of those decals people have on the rear windows of their cars to show the makeup of their family.

Little did I know the vast amount of choices I'd have and the number of web sites from which to choose. The one I finally chose, http://www.ultimatedecals.com, had a girl with a book and cute cats.

I ordered the decals, and now I have seven figures all lined up on the back window of my car - husband, wife, and five cats. Just for fun.

Google Calendar

Wouldn't it be great if you could sync your work calendar and personal calendar and also view it on your mobile phone? And wouldn't it be great if it could all just happen in the ether without any intervention? It's possible! I installed Google Calendar Sync on my work computer so my work Outlook calendar would sync with my family Google calendar. In addition, I set up my iPhone calendar settings so it would use Google calendar. Now on my iPhone I can view just my work calendar or just my family calendar or everything. Very handy. Very easy. Love it!

This Book is Overdue

I'm currently reading "This book is overdue." It's an unusual book with chapters that tell stories about librarians and libraries. One chapter focuses on librarians teaching international students everything they need to know to be long-distance students, keeping them connected, and establishing an online community for them. They are part of a mostly long-distance Master's program in Global Development & Social Justice - designed to give people around the world useful tools for promoting social justice. This program enables students to remain in their communities while learning how to investigate, document, and fight injustice using the Internet. These activists learn how to become wired to each other and to the world's information resources.

The program has noble goals and takes advantage of modern technology to reach these goals, yet a speaker at the graduation ceremony just didn't get it. He said, "Our obsession with and dependence on technology is frightening." These students learned how to use technology to do good works, to communicate across the world, yet those who don't have hands-on knowledge think of these technologies as time consuming and unnecessary.

How do we communicate the value of social networking tools, cloud computing, and collaborative tools? Use them yourself and share what you know. Show others how easy it is, that it's more about communication than technology. Tell success stories of how these tools have been beneficial. Encourage people to play and explore.

Here is an NPR article about "This book is overdue" - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124316231

Amateurland – A Cautionary Tale

Is it a bad thing that the current online state of affairs allows more amateurs to participate & create their own works? What do we give up and what do we gain by less demand for experts? Does this lower standards or lower the playing field? Is this democratization over a “dictatorship of expertise?” Or is it a watering down and a devaluing of experts? This is the subject of a book, “The Cult of the Amateur” by Andrew Keen that I read recently.

Should everyone be given an equal voice when submitting entries to Wikipedia? Can the masses police themselves and make sure the information is correct? Are we undermining the authority of experts when we empower the amateur? Google presents search results based on popularity of sites. Wisdom of crowds or skewed results?

While it’s easy to see that actual news could be obfuscated by the mass of voices crying out opinions, there are also times when these voices provide us the only access to news, particularly from news prohibiting countries. One could argue that traditional sources haven’t been all that reliable, being driven by their corporate overseers. The argument that traditional “respected” newspapers will deliver more accurate and reliable news just doesn’t work for me. That hasn’t been true for many years.

What about the concern over lost income on the part of professionals? With the proliferation of amateur talent online and pirated music downloads, how does a musician survive? Similar concerns were expressed when recorded music replaced live bands.

These concerns are valid and should be considered, but perhaps they reflect growing pains as we shift our culture. What’s good about the Web? Personal expression, creativity, participation, sharing of ideas. It’s also a way to save money by using free, easy to use online tools. As for the bad and worrisome parts, this is where librarians have a role to play. To point out fact from opinion, reliable source from just some guy in the blogosphere. While being aware of the bad aspects, let’s not throw away the good ones.

iPhone Apps

One of the things I love about my iPhone is the Kindle app. Today I learned that there were many holds ahead of me for the book "This book is overdue." Instead of waiting in line I searched and downloaded it on to my Kindle app in just a few seconds. Yes, I could have waited for the actual printed book version, but this meets my needs, and I don't have to carry around a heavy book. I'm not alone in this practice. Amazon reported that last year they sold more e-books than printed books. This has implications for libraries. I'm not saying that the demise of the book is upon us, but that there is a surge toward more online information easily accessed on a mobile device.

In addition to kindle, here is a list of the types of apps I have on my phone and how I've changed doing things:

• To Do - I can write & store notes with my finger
• Calendar - Syncs automatically my work Outlook calendar & my family Google calendar
• Twitterific for Twitter, which I use quite a bit for professional development
• Facebook, where I connect with my family much more now than before. They post photos of their kids, share links to videos, link to their blog posts, etc.
• Cleartune tuner instead of a separate device to tune my trumpet
• DrBelotte (metronome) instead of having a separate metronome
• Flycast, Pandora, iTalkLite, Public Radio - easy access to radio stations across the country, & I can create my own station with music I like
• Voice Memos - quick voice recorder for taking notes. I've even used it for quick practice session recordings
• iBone - This one is just for fun. You move the onscreen trombone slide to change pitches. One guy actually videotaped himself turning on a jazz tune on his phone's iPod, opening iBone and playing changes over the jazz tune. He uploaded the whole thing to You Tube.
• Visible Vote - I can easily see who has voted for what
• Take me to my car - for those of us who are directionally challenged
• Google voice recognition - I can speak search terms instead of typing them.
• CardStar - By inputting my library card # and type of barcode, I can now use my cell phone to check out books.
• RSS feed reader - When I find myself with a few minutes on my hands (like at the Dr's office) I open this and check out the latest postings. From here I can easily e-mail posts of interest

What apps do others find useful?