Global Foursquare Hackathon This Weekend Promises New Apps

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?)

or

  • 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.

Link Post for June 2nd through June 3rd

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  • Class Action Filed Against Facebook Over “Instant Personalization” – A Rhode Island lawyer has filed a class action lawsuit against Facebook over their new “Instant Personalization” program on behalf of Derrick Rose of East Providence, Rhode Island. The suit is a bit questionable as the class action published on the lawyer’s website states “Facebook is abusing personal information for private profit”, although it’s pretty clear that Facebook is not directly profiting through the Instant Personalization program.
  • Facebook Looks To Stop App Spam By Verifying Developers – Last night Facebook announced that developers would now be required to verify their Facebook accounts before publishing applications to the Platform. It’s a small hurdle for developers, but it should hopefully create at least one more barrier for those who were spawning new applications and creating phantom Facebook accounts to spam users. All developers need to do is confirm their mobile phone or add a credit card to their account.
  • Facebook Launches U.S. Politics Page To Track Domestic Political Activity – This morning Facebook launched a U.S. Politics Page to track the various domestic political activities taking place across the site. There are numerous political Pages throughout Facebook and the number is only increasing. This Page will serve as a hub to help users become aware of the activity of politicians, elected officials, and political campaigns.
  • Facebook Launches New Resource To Educate Users On Privacy – This afternoon Facebook announced a new “Facebook and Privacy Page” which will help further educate users about privacy settings on the site. According to Facebook, this new page will serve as an ongoing resource and a venue for having discussion with the users about Facebook Privacy. The company plans on posting resources that help educate users on how to control their information on the site.
  • Open URL Sharing Protocol OExchange Gets Support From Google, Microsoft, Et Al. – OExchange, a simple specification for URL-based content sharing on the Web, was introduced today by a number of online service providers and social networks. The open link-sharing protocol has gained support from Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Digg, Instapaper, StumbleUpon, Clearspring Technologies and a handful more.
  • 4 Social Media Efforts to Aid the Gulf Coast – The far-reaching Gulf oil spill tragedy has left many people feeling powerless to help out. But beyond the official Deep Horizon response, pockets of non-profits and people are starting to use social media tools to organize grassroots activities throughout the Gulf region. Here’s a quick look at four tools and efforts geared towards delivering aid and cleaning up crude oil in local coastal areas.
  • Philo Is Twitter + Foursquare For TV Fanatics – A new web and iPhone app [iTunes link] called PHILO makes watching TV interactive by having users “tune in” to TV programs as if they were checking in to venues on Foursquare or Gowalla, then discuss shows in a Twitter or Facebook newsfeed-like conversation stream while they’re watching.

Link Post for April 16th

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Link Post for March 30th through March 31st

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  • Mobile Firefox Comes to Android (Sort of) – Fennec, the mobile version of the Firefox web browser, is now available in an early build designed for Android handsets thanks to a fan-compiled download posted on an Android developers forum. And by early, we mean unofficial, pre-alpha, device-specific and downright buggy. But for anyone interested in mobile browser developments, this port is an interesting sneak peek into the future of Firefox's mobile plans.
  • Global Pulse 2010 Wants Your Solutions to Global Challenges – Global Pulse 2010 is a completely online virtual event running through tomorrow where you can participate in a global conversation whose stated goal is to “create innovative solutions to the most pressing social issues of our time.” Sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Global Pulse 2010 is also being supported by the U.S. Departments of State, Education, Commerce, and Health and Human Services.
  • Judge: Isohunt Must Remove Infringing Content – One of the largest BitTorrent search engines in the world, Isohunt, has been ordered by a US judge to remove all infringing content from the site. The ruling follows similar ruling against torrent tracker Mininova which has lost a great amount of traffic after complying with the order to remove copyright-infringing links from the site.
  • Board Games on the iPad: Oh Yes, This is Going to be Big – TUAW has a preview of an iPad application called Game Table. It costs 99 cents, and it lets you play classic board games, such as Chess, Poker or Checkers, on the iPad.<br />
    <br />
    The beauty of its approach is the fact that it’s not really a game – it just gives you the necessary components and the mechanics to play a variety of games. And, when you think of it, for many users this app (or similar apps like it) might be the killer app that makes the Apple iPad worth purchasing.
  • 10 Amazing YouTube Magic Trick Videos – Who doesn’t love magic? Whether you’re obsessed with finding out “how they did that,” or you just like to gaze with child-like wonder at a good trick, YouTube has become a wealthy repository of illusion.
  • Google Earth Helps Deputy Make Arrest – Google became true-blue crime-fighting tool for one Florida Panhandle deputy this week. The law man, Deputy Gregory Barnes, recently made use of Google Earth to arrest a man charged with illegally dumping his one-ton boat.
  • iPad, Meet "Star Trek" – In Star Trek, members of the crew are carrying a tablet-like device called the PADD, or Personal Access Display Device. It comes in many shapes and flavors — there’s even a horizontal one. And, circa 2151, the device that was in common use looked pretty much like the thing we’ll be frantically testing this weekend: the Apple iPad.
  • Gmail Adds OAuth Support for Safer 3rd Party Sign-ins – Google announced the addition of OAuth support in Gmail in a blog post today, which is a highly positive move that allows you to give third party applications access to the contents on your email without having to give them your password. You may be familiar with the term from Twitter, who added OAuth support back in April of last year.
  • Automattic Announces VaultPress Security Plugin – (Via @glenngabe)
  • Facebook Squeezes Digg Into A New Business Model – While I personally love using Digg to find my news content, the majority of the internet is perfectly satisfied finding content through their friends. While Digg is in the process of rolling out a new version of their site, Facebook’s decision to release a “like button for the internet” could significantly impact Digg. Combine that with their previously released share analytics and share button, and you can see how Digg is getting squeezed into a new business model.

Link Post for March 17th

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  • Facebook’s Beacon Lawsuit Settlement Approved – The 2008 ‘Beacon’ class action lawsuit against Facebook that claimed violation of consumer privacy has now been settled by a federal judge. The Beacon program, which Facebook terminated in late 2009, publish information about consumer purchases — such as movie rentals, which is contrary to law — to the Facebook Wall of the purchaser and to their friends’ feeds. In one instance, a to-be-surprise gift of jewelry was broadcast to one user’s Facebook network, obviously ruining the surprise for his wife.
  • ALERT: Facebook Password Reset Confirmation Is Fake – Facebook users are currently reporting that they’ve been receiving an email that states “Facebook Password Reset Confirmation” but as usual, this email is completely fake. In fact, it’s not only fake but it also contains a virus. Facebook is currently letting users know that the email -Error Icon-is fake but they need help in spreading the word, so be sure to let your friends know!
  • Posterous Now Lets You Schedule Posts for Later – Posterous — the e-mail-to-blog-to-everywhere platform — has just introduced a new feature that will let users schedule posts to be published in the future via e-mail, web or bookmarklet.
  • YouTube Is Huge: 24 Hours of Video Now Uploaded Every Minute – YouTube has just announced that it has surpassed yet another milestone, and this one’s a doozy: 24 hours of video is now uploaded to the social video site every sixty seconds. Every second you are browsing YouTube, a full 24 minutes of video is uploaded to the site.
  • Mobile App Market to Surge to $17.5 Billion by 2012 [STUDY] – Lithuanian-based GetJar, an independent mobile phone application store with more than 60,000 mobile applications for major mobile platforms such as Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile, commissioned a study that predicts a huge surge in the number of mobile app downloads and the overall size of the mobile app market.
  • Our Social Media Obsession by the Numbers [STATS] – From the time we wake up in the morning to the moment we call it a day, and every moment in between (think bedroom, bathroom and dinner table), we’re checking in on our favorite social media sites.
  • 10 Features I Want to See in TweetDeck – I have a love/hate relationship with TweetDeck. While TweetDeck is a great tool that does so many things so well (the Love), it doesn’t do everything I want and need it to do and it still suffers from some pretty annoying technical issues (the Hate).

A2SM Podcast #10: Loic Le Meur of Seesmic


In this episode:

- Neal and Seth introduce the latest Social Media Addict, Jody Raines of WebMarCom.

- Interview:  Loic LeMeur, the mastermind behind the amazing Seesmic brand of  Social Media apps (Be sure to listen to the whole podcast. Loic lets slip some BIG news about new features! Remember, you heard it here first!).

Enjoy!

Link Post for January 25th through January 26th

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Link Post for January 24th through January 25th

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Link Post for December 23rd

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Link Post for December 4th

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  • Apple in Talks to Acquire Lala: Report – GigaOM – Apple is on the verge of acquiring streaming music site Lala.com, known for its 10-cent streaming songs and digital music locker service, CNet is reporting. Terms aren’t being disclosed, but the report implies that an agreement is in place, with only a final sign-off remaining to complete the deal.
  • Top 5 Digg Milestones in the Last 5 Years – As of today, Digg is five years old. Think about that: that’s around 1825 days of story submissions, front page wrangling, and explosive growth. Hell, Digg is older than Twitter and YouTube.
  • YouTube and Universal’s Vevo Music Service to Add Last.fm – Next week will see the launch of the Vevo premium content music video service from Google and Universal Music Group, slated to bring Universal’s extensive video assets into one new destination.
  • Twoddler: The Baby Toy That Twitters – Earlier this year, we looked at devices that are integrating Twitter in remarkable ways, from enabling your plants to tweet when they need water to automated updates from bakeries when stuff comes fresh out of the oven.
  • Facebook Looks to Kill Beacon For Good With $9.5 Million Settlement – We’re finally coming to the bitter end of Facebook’s erstwhile Beacon program, which shut down completely in September after user complaints of privacy violations.
  • Sexy TwitPics Become Vogue Fashion Spread [PICS] – Love it or hate it, we’ve become an oversharing society that capitalizes on the convenience of mobile devices to point, shoot and publish our lives to the Web. The December issue of Vogue Italia captures this digital phenomenon with a spread by Stephen Meisel inspired by Twitter and TwitPic.
  • Latest Droid Ad Mocks iPhone’s Beauty, Tiara Wearing Habits [VIDEO] – In their latest Droid Does TV ad, Verizon and Motorola clearly mock the iPhone as a self-obsessed beauty queen that may be pretty on the outside, but slow on the inside.