Global Foursquare Hackathon This Weekend Promises New Apps

September 15, 2011 By Michael Weberberger Leave a Comment

This weekend is going to be an exciting one for foursquare and its developer community. Their first global hackathon will be held this Saturday and Sunday (Sep. 17/18).

And it‘s going to be a blast. After last years success (150 developers participated) this year‘s hackathon is breaking the state boundaries. As the foursquare community has grown (over 10 million users including one President), so has its number of developers using the foursquare API. Therefore official locations are not only within the U.S. (New York and San Francisco) but also crossing oceans to be found in Tokyo and Paris. In addition, developers around the world can register their own meetup locations to complete the „round-the-clock-round-the-world“ hacking session.

The output from last years first hackathon has stirred up quite some dust in the industry. Among them 4sq&7yearsago, makethempay or Agora.

Of course, developers are free to hack anything they like ontop of the foursquare API in those 48 hours. Foursquare will assist them with their staff on the official sites and is also open to some co-production development. And they provide a wish-list online, with suggestions what to develop, as an idea pool.

So might well be that by Monday, we‘ll see some of these:

a radar app, that alerts you if a friend checks-in within .25 mile of your house / current location
a Stat tracker that shows you how many times in the last month you: went to gym, ate at an Italian restaurant, go out on the weekend, went to a birthday party, took a photo, etc
an iPad app with an interface to recommend places (explore api?) and recap activity (“what happened last night with me and my friends?!?”)
a Laziness meter (how far do I venture from home?)

an app that makes a printable city-guide from the lists you follow on foursquare for a particular city

I would personally love to see the foursquare Monololy (foursquaropoly) on that list.

What would be an app you would like to see ontop of the foursquare API? Let us know in the comments.

Filed Under: Location Services Tagged With: 4sq, api, app, developer, developer community, foursquare, geolocation, hackathon, lbs, location based service, location-based, mobile apps

A2SM Podcast #60 – The Royal Pain In The Podcast

April 29, 2011 By The A2SM Editors Leave a Comment

In This Episode

Facebook
Facebook Launches Send Button, Replaces Email to a Friend
Facebook Launches ‘Send’ Button For More Selective Sharing, Announces 50 Million ‘Groups’

Facebook’s Response to Groupon Launching Tonight? Probably!
Looks Like Facebook Deals Is Being Unveiled Tonight With Credits And Partners In Tow

Twitter
TweetDeck Releases Major Upgrade to iPhone App
Tweetdeck Releases New, Heavily Revamped iPhone App

How a Tweetdeck, UberMedia deal could cut down Twitter’s bird

How Twitter Can Save $50 Million: Forget TweetDeck, And Go Freemium On Its API

Twitter Looks to Rebuild its Mobile Experience, Hints at New Developer Opportunities

Misc
After Yahoo Buys IntoNow, What’s Next?
Yahoo Acquires TV-Tagging Startup IntoNow for $20M to $30M

YouTube Founders Acquire Delicious From Yahoo

Google Responds To Smartphone Location Tracking Uproar, Says Android Is Opt-In

YouTube to launch video-on-demand soon

Android Now More Widely Used than iOS In U.S. Hopefully it will motivate Apple to loosen up constraints on iOS.

Royal Wedding is in the 21st Century with an iPhone, iPad, Android App: (Android Market Link | iTunes – BBC America’s App)
A2SM writer James Basbas wrote up a great piece for the blog about the Royal Wedding and Social Media check it out.

Random
RIP Typewriters: Last Manufacturer Closes Its Doors [REPORT]

Picks

Neal: Move Over Flipboard: Qwiki is the iPad’s Newest Killer App

Seth: Location Cache Map – Shows you what your Android phone knows about where’ve you been.
The Official Google Doc App Is Here (Market Link)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:12 — 49.6MB)

Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: android, api, apple, britain, chad hurley, delicous, Facebook, Google, iphone, kate middleton, prince william, royal wedding, steve chen, steve jobs, tweetdeck, Twitter, ubermedia, yahoo, YouTube

Twitter’s New Policy Toward Developers Is Bad Business

March 21, 2011 By Seth Goldstein Leave a Comment

Image Credit: socialgrowblog.com

Last Friday, Twitter told its 3rd party developers that they don’t want them to develop 3rd party clients for the microblogging site anymore. They said they wanted their developers to do stuff that’s new and original with the API and not compete with the home-grown Twitter applications.

Now if this isn’t a slap in the face, I don’t know what is. These 3rd party developers are what made Twitter what it is today. Without these dedicated individuals, Twitter would have died and withered on the vine early on.

Another big issue I have is that the native Twitter apps aren’t nearly as useful as those by 3rd parties like Tweetdeck and Seesmic.

Do you remember how bad the Twitter site was at the beginning? Remember how many outages they had? The value of the service really came out when 3rd party developers iterated on the Twitter framework.

Now Twitter is at the top and is deciding that they don’t want to share their success with their developers. They are, plain and simple, being greedy. They are losing sight of what made them great. Their new policy is bad for business and ultimately I believe it will be what destroys them.

A2SM Co-Editor Neal Wiser, over at Twitip wrote a piece where he postulated that Twitter’s current moves are a exit strategy — a way to get acquired. I don’t know what they’re plan is, all I know is that they are shooting themselves in the foot.

What do you think of Twitter’s change of course and approach to their 3rd party developers? Are they hurting themselves? Is this decision part of a bigger plan? Post your thoughts in the comments.

Related Articles

Filed Under: Twitter Tagged With: 3rd party developers, api, Social Media, Twitter, web 2.0

Link Post for June 16th through June 18th

June 18, 2010 By The A2SM Editors 1 Comment

This is the A2SM Link Post for June 16th through June 18th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog – We'd like to highlight three best practices that address some of the most common problems found when crawling and indexing video content. These best practices include ensuring your video URLs are crawlable, stating what countries your videos may be played in, and that if your videos are removed, you clearly indicate this state to search engines.
Introducing the Google Command Line Tool – Google Open Source Blog – Ever wanted to upload a folder full of photos to Picasa from a command prompt? We did, a lot, last summer. It made us want to say:
A Tweet Too Far? Utah Firing Squad Execution Announced on Twitter – Earlier today, convicted killer Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed by a Utah firing squad; the first execution of its kind in the United States in 14 years. Shortly before that, Attorney General Mark Shurtleff announced it with a couple of tweets.
Amazon Secures Patent For “Social Networking System” « On the Docket – Forbes.com – The United States Patent and Trademark Office awarded Amazon a patent on June 15 for a "Social Networking System." The patent allows users to locate and establish relationships with other users and "automatically notify users of personal information updates made by their respective contacts."
Browser Beta News: Opera 10.6 Beta Released, Flock Goes Chromium –

Filed Under: A2SM Link Post Tagged With: api, bestpractice, blog, blogs, cli, cloud, commandline, communications, development, execution, flock, Google, government, linux, mashable, opera, programming, python, search, seo, socialmedia, tools, Twitter, webdesign, webmaster

Link Post for April 21st

April 23, 2010 By The A2SM Editors Leave a Comment

This is the A2SM Link Post for April 21st. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed

5 More Ways to Go Green for Earth Day – There are many ways to take part in the environmental movement on the social web. With Earth Day rapidly approaching this Thursday, we decided to revisit our post from a few weeks ago on ways to go green with social media.
Facebook Reveals FriendFeed’s Future [VIDEO] – Last August, when Facebook bought Twitter competitor FriendFeed, many of its core users were shocked and concerned, even speculating as to whether the social networking giant would shutter the startup and absorb its tech as part of a new feature or product.
Facebook Open Graph: What it Means for Privacy – At Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference today, the company fleshed out its plans to become the social center of the web. With the new Open Graph API and protocol and the ability to integrate websites and web apps within your existing social network, the platform will become more robust than ever before.
Facebook Makes Major Announcements at F8 [LIVE] – Here at Facebook’s F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco, Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is making major announcements to an audience of developers and press.
If You Link Your Facebook Profile Data to Pages, then You Make that Information Public by Default – Facebook’s new user profile Pages transition tool includes an obvious and yet not obvious way that users might make personal information more publicly available. (via @nealwiser)
Facebook’s Plan To Automatically Share Your Data With Sites You Never Signed Up For – In anticipation of a slew of new features that will be launching at f8, today Facebook announced that it was once again making changes to its privacy policy (you can see our post outlining these changes here). One of the biggest changes that Facebook is making involves applications and third-party websites. We’ve been hearing whispers from multiple sources about these changes, and the announcement all but confirms what Facebook is planning to do. In short, it sounds like Facebook is going to be automatically opting users into a reduced form of Facebook Connect on certain third party sites — a bold change that may well unnerve users, at least at first.
Facebook To Release A “Like” Button For the Whole Darn Internet – There will be lots of news leaking about Facebook’s product announcements at their upcoming F8 Developer Conference in April. That’s because they’re already starting to test out a lot of the new stuff with third party developers, and once two people know a secret, it isn’t really a secret any more.
Facebook To Launch Meebo Bar Clone On Its Quest To Take Over The Web – In the last few days, we’ve uncovered some major new features that Facebook is going to announce at its f8 developer conference, including its plan to offer a Like button for the entire Internet and a creepy auto-Connect feature that will share your data with sites you never signed up for. Now we’ve heard from multiple sources about a third major product the company plans to unveil: a persistent Facebook toolbar that third-party sites can integrate that sounds a whole lot like the Meebo Bar.
The f8 Preview: How Facebook Plans to Take Over the Web – Facebook’s third f8 developer conference kicks off tomorrow in San Francisco and online, with the social networking company likely to announce what is essentially a game plan to not only socialize the web, but to marginalize the pre-social web. But while such a plan indicates a tussle with fellow upstart Twitter, the real battle is Facebook vs. Google.
Everything Facebook Will Announce At f8: The Definitive Guide – Want to know what Facebook will be announcing at f8 tomorrow? We’ve got the definitive guide straight from Facebook. In addition to announcing a number of new tools during a keynote at f8 tomorrow, Facebook will be hosting a “New Tools” track for developers focused on four key topics: “Open Graph and Social Plugins”, “Facebook Credits”, the “Graph API”, and “Better Analytics Through Insights”. What do all these things mean? Here’s the rundown.

Filed Under: A2SM Link Post Tagged With: 2010, api, apps, article, articles, bar, button, conference, data, f8, Facebook, facebookconnect, friendfeed, future, Google, graph, green, internet, launch, like, mashable, meebo, news, open, pages, ping.fm, pr, Privacy, profile, public, security, social, socialmedia, socialnetworking, Tips, toolbar, toread, web, web2.0, work, zuckerberg

Link Post for April 21st through April 22nd

April 22, 2010 By The A2SM Editors 1 Comment

This is the A2SM Link Post for April 21st through April 22nd. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

Delete Facebook Apps that Now Have Greater Access to Your Data – Facebook – Lifehacker – At Facebook's f8 conference, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told developers that Facebook applications would no longer have to dump any data they've collected on you after 24 hours. If you've got apps installed that might have prying eyes, here's how to uninstall them.
How to Restore Your Privacy on Facebook – Facebook – Lifehacker – Since posting about Facebook's latest privacy rollback, we've received emails asking how users can protect themselves, and for clarification about what happened. Here, then, is a quick guide to locking down the new Facebook.
Sobees Launches Twitter Client For Android, iPad App On The Way – Twitter client Sobees, is working to create the best social media client on the market, competing with both TweetDeck and Seesmic. Sobees offers a native Windows client, a web-based client and is now venturing into the mobile space for the first time with a Twitter client built for Android phones.
Foursquare Becomes More Business-Friendly – If Foursquare is ever going to be worth more than $100 million to Yahoo or anyone, it will have to add not just a hell of a lot more users, but also a hell of a lot more local advertisers. Currently, there are only about 2,000 live offers on Foursquare from local bars, restaurants, and stores worldwide. It is not a lot, but Foursquare is taking steps to ramp up that number.
Facebook: We’ll Serve 1 Billion Likes On The Web In Just 24 Hours – Today at Facebook’s f8 conference in San Francisco, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made what seemed like a bold prediction. Only he didn’t think it was that bold. According to Zuckerberg, there will be over 1 billion likes across the web in the just first 24 hours of the “Like” button. It launches today.
Mashable’s Google Wave API Contest Winners – After poring over the multitude of submissions we received to the Mashable’s Google Wave API Challenge, we’re proud to announce the results.

Filed Under: A2SM Link Post Tagged With: 4sq, android, api, apps, businessmodel, client, coupons, dashboard, Facebook, foursquare, lifehacker, like, local, mashable, Privacy, security, Tips, toread, Twitter, wave

Link Post for April 19th through April 20th

April 20, 2010 By The A2SM Editors 1 Comment

This is the A2SM Link Post for April 19th through April 20th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

Complete List of Foursquare Badges and How To Unlock Them | Real Time Marketer – Unlocking Foursquare badges has become a hobby and even an obsession for many of the active Foursquare users. Here is a complete list of Foursquare Badges and how to unlock them.
Adding Twitter Anywhere Into Your WordPress Site – WPBeginner has a great tutorial on how to add the Twitter Anywhere service into your WordPress powered site. Twitter anywhere is a service provided by Twitter that enables webmasters to add twitter to a website with just a few lines of Javascript. Not just an embeddable box, but a box that enables tweeting by visitors, a follow button that works, and a slew of other features. I’m not sure if I want to add something like this to the WPTavern website but I suppose if enough people talk me into it, I could give it a try
BuddyPress To The Rescue For Ning Users – Users of Ning who are upset about the recent changes that have taken place regarding the service now have at least one avenue to take. Thanks to Boone B. Gorges, Ning users can now use a special plugin that will transfer both users and their custom profile data. This migration plugin is free of charge. John James Jacoby has also mentioned that people are standing by in the BuddyPress.org support forums to help those that decide to make the migration from Ning to BuddyPress.
So this is the story of how the iPhone 4G got leaked? –
This is What a Tweet Looks Like – Think a tweet is just 140 characters of text? Think again. To developers building tools on top of the Twitter platform, they know tweets contain far more information than just whatever brief, passing thought you felt the urge to share your friends via the microblogging network. A tweet is filled with metadata – information about when it was sent, by who, using what Twitter application and so on.

Filed Under: A2SM Link Post Tagged With: api, buddypress, data, foursquare, Identity, internet, iphone4g, metadata, ning, programming, Twitter, web2.0

Link Post for March 24th

March 25, 2010 By The A2SM Editors 2 Comments

This is the A2SM Link Post for March 24th. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed

WordPress Founder: Open Source Is About People, Not Technology – Mullenweg opened by remarking that open source is not about technology, but about people. He focused a little on the history of open source — he believes it started in 1984 at MIT. Since then, there has been a slow transformation of how we view software, from proprietary to free and open-source. The birth of Linux (Linux) was one of the major turning points for open source.
Profiting from Apple’s war with Google – Apple 2.0 – Fortune Brainstorm Tech – On March 12, we had Brad Stone and Michael Helft's piece in the New York Times about the two CEO's long-running "spat." It included an account of a particularly "fierce" and "heated" meeting in 2008 in which an angry Steve Jobs told Google (GOOG) executives that if they deployed a version of multitouch in an Android phone, he would sue.
Why Your Brand Needs to Be on Facebook Now – With 450 million users globally (and millions more being added each week) Facebook (Facebook) is dominating the web in unparalleled ways. Yet, even as the social network has steadily grown over its short but remarkable history, many brands have remained on the sidelines of the social media revolution.
GoDaddy to Stop Offering Chinese Domain Names – As of today, popular domain registrar GoDaddy plans to stop registering .cn (China) domain names due to the country’s new restrictions that require more personally identifiable information from registrants.
Communications Industry’s State of the State – Airfoil Public Relations – 80% of links from blogs and social media sites are to U.S. legacy media
Twitter Forces Facebook To Open Up Beyond “Friends” – At Facebook’s developer conference (f8) next month, the company is expected to announce a number of services that continue the opening of the platform as well as expanding access to disconnected user data. Soon enough you will be able to more easily access the public information being posted by users if information from our sources is true. While you can already search Facebook users, publicly posted information will be easier to discover through new features and developer APIs.
5 Proven Techniques To Prevent Facebook Jealousy –

Filed Under: A2SM Link Post Tagged With: .cn, advertising, api, blogs, branding, china, conference, domains, f8, Facebook, godaddy, jealousy, links, marketing, mashable, media, open, opensource, Privacy, social, socialmedia, socialnetworking, Twitter, wordpress

Link Post for March 2nd through March 3rd

March 3, 2010 By The A2SM Editors Leave a Comment

This is the A2SM Link Post for March 2nd through March 3rd. To see more of the bookmarks we’ve found, check out our Delicious Feed.

Narus Develops a Scary Sleuth for Social Media – PCWorld – Narus is developing a new technology that sleuths through billions of pieces of data on social networks and Internet services and connects the dots.<br />
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The new program, code-named Hone, is designed to give intelligence and law enforcement agencies a leg up on criminals who are now operating anonymously on the Internet.
Can This Rutabaga Get More Fans Than…? – ClickZ –
Social Media Today | Developing an Authentic Social Media Personality for Your Brand – Social media has revolutionized the way that companies are now interacting with their target market. However, in order to be a successful player in the social media field, you must be seen as a thought-leader with a personality. This is not an easy task to accomplish, since so many companies are now invading social sites every day. I believe that creating an impressionable personality through your social media communications is a huge key to good relationship building.
Twitter Location API to Support Places – I know what you may be thinking: Twitter location API already supports places; that’s why they call it the location API, right? Well, yes and no. Currently, it supports latitude and longitude, which tells the world where, exactly, you were located when you tweeted.
Apple Eyes HTC in Latest Patent Lawsuit – Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, gather round for the latest round of: Patent Lawsuit Theater! The players in this round are Apple and HTC. Apple is alleging that HTC infringes on 20 of its patents related to the iPhone user interface.