LBS
Urban Spoon [App]
Posted By Jeff On March 31, 2010 @ 11:46 pm
On today’s menu, we’re featuring a lovely Urban Spoon with a side dish of multi-device support topped with a light glaze of amusement. It’s like Shake n Bake, without the Baking.
Instead of arguing about what to have for dinner, why not leave it to chance? Urban spoon provides you with a fun roulette that will tell you quick where, what and how much you’re going to pay to eat with just one quick wrist gesture. You pick the location, then give your phone a slight shake and it will randomly pick what kind of food you’re eating tonight and find a restaurant in that category. The price option is a big help too so you don’t end up buying a $70 steak with rent money (Which is awesome if you’re totally broke like me). When it finds the restaurant, it gives you info on where it is, the phone number, if it has delivery, and often some reviews.
My city currently only has 140 restaurants, which leave a TON of room for improvement. Given how many placed to eat there are around here, this app has almost inspired me to actually travel around my town to new places I haven’t been to before just so I can add some more restaurant onto the list. I’d advise you to do the same, it’s not only a good way to contribute, but this can prove to be a good marketing platform for local businesses.
Urban Spoon is available through their website or mobile site if you just want to do some browsing. You can get Urban Spoon’s addictive little app on Android (2.0+), iPhone, or Blackberry.
Gowalla & Foursquare: LBS smackdown [Apps]
Posted By Jeff On March 31, 2010 @ 12:45 am
Everybody loves doing something else while doing something boring. At least I do. Lately, this is where Location Based Services (LBS) are filling my void. My current loves are Gowalla and Foursquare.
Both of these services allow you to travel around town, and using your GPS you can ‘check in’ where ever you are. I honestly can not figure out why it’s so cool, since nobody actually is looking up where I am, but it’s fun to think that somebody can. 
What intrigues me is that it’s been made into a game in a few different ways. For instance, checking in at the mall, then the coffee place, then at work; I will get 3 points for having 3 check-ins plus a bonus if it is the first time checking in to that location. You can also get ‘badges’ for accomplishing various tasks or at random. They don’t do anything, but you can show them off to your friends.
An added feature is ‘mayorships’. If you’ve checked into a certain place more than anybody else, you become the mayor. In this sense, when somebody else checks in to that place, they see that you’re the mayor. You can also see how many people have been at each place, and who is there now.
What is putting Gowalla above Foursquare in my mind right now is graphics and items. Foursquare is mainly text, where as Gowalla has nice pictures beside it and actually requires you to be within range of the location to check in. Once checked in on Gowalla, you can also pick up items (if there are anythere) or drop an item. When you take one, you need to drop one. The next person that checks in, can then choose to take your dropped item if they want. It’s a fun way to feel connected to those who you don’t know, as it shows the history of an item when you look at it.
I would love to see these become more popular, and it seems to be here in Kingston. I’d love to see 3 of my coworkers checked in at work, to feel connected in suffering. I’m just waiting for a beta invite to Check.In, where I can check-in on both applications at the same time.
Gowalla is available on Android, iPhone, Palm OS (I’m shocked too) and mobile site for those out of the loops.
Foursquare is available for Android, Iphone and blackberry.
Do you use LBS? If so, what ones do you like using, or why not?
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Hoccer [App]
Posted By Jeff On March 30, 2010 @ 1:23 am
Today’s awesome app is named Hoccer. It is available for both Android devices, as well as iPhones, and may be the coolest program of all time.
Doesn’t having to transfer stuff to people suck? I hate having to e-mail something just to attach a picture, or share a song. This is where Hoccer jumps in. With Hoccer, you just need two phones somewhere around each other within 100 feet and you can actually drag it off your phone, on to their phone or throw it through the air. Easy as that, no kidding.
Hoccer uses location based file sharing. In short: You throw it, server catches it. When somebody that is in the same area as you tries to catch it, the server checks recent throws. Theoretically, this means that multiple people can catch one throw if they time it right. That I’d love to see.
A buddy of mine (also using android) and I did this on the bus. We had some issues with actual ‘hoccing’ (it could be because we were on a moving bus at the time) but ‘sweeping’ worked easily enough and he got the .apk file no problem.
I’m going to have to keep playing around with this when I have free time, I would love to throw files around all willy-nilly. Not sure how often I’d use this, but god damn if it isn’t totally bad ass to show off.
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