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Foursquare Mapping

I’ve been a fan of geohacking for a number of years, so when Foursquare showed up it seemed like it made geotracking easy and popular. Which is good for me, because I like geodata. (Some call this stuff “LBS” or “Location Based Services.”)

Foursquare I recently added a Foursquare widget to my blog. It’s in the right column and titled “recently at” and it just displays a short list of recent checkins. (It’s a simple WordPress Plugin that I was going to write, but since someone else did, I figured I’d just use theirs. Thanks Andrew!)

I’m also a believer that visualizing data makes it more powerful, so after digging around in Foursquare’s App Gallery, I found a few interesting things.

CheckoutCheckins

CheckoutCheckins is a nice little web site that mashes up your Foursquare data with the Google Maps API to show you where people and venues are. The creator is also on Twitter as @CheckoutCheckin aka @dannypier.

wheredoyougo.net

wheredoyougo.net was written by Steven Lehrburger in a Mashups class he took in school. It shows a heatmap of where you’ve been. (He’s also on Twitter as @lehrblogger and is working on something called Wanderli.st.

FoursquareX

FoursquareX is a Mac OS X native client which lets you just use your computer instead of your phone to do the Foursquare thing. It also has a nice map view, again using Google’s mapping services. (One thing about FoursquareX, the first time I used it connected to my home wifi network, it didn’t work at all. I tested at work on our wifi network, and it worked fine. So I’m not 100% sure when it will work versus when it will not work, YMMV, etc.)

Twitter was probably one of the most instrumental in leading they way showing why you should provide an API to your users, and I applaud Foursquare for making their API available, and I’m glad to see more and more services doing it.

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Funding by Kickstarter

Kickstarter is described as a new way to fund and follow creativity.

While I’m pretty sure this model of fund raising isn’t entirely new, I don’t know if it’s been used this successfully before. Kickstarter got it’s biggest boost from the Diaspora* project which was profiled in the New York Times. The Diaspora* team gave themselves 39 days to raise $10,000, and amazingly enough, they raised it in just 12 days. At this point 6,479 people had donated over $200,642 to help them make their project happen. (Yeah, I’m one of them.)

Since Kickstarter got it’s name out there, more and more people have been utilizing it to help fund their projects. Right now if you go to kickstarter.com you’ll see people trying to find funding for their projects dealing with such things as art, film, food, technology, dance, books, comics, and on and on. Pitch a dollar here and there – it may be the cheapest way to support the arts.

And Kickstarter doesn’t just provide an infrastructure to make this happen, they actively work towards publicizing projects. On the home page you’ll find a “Project of the Day”, and on Twitter you can follow @kickstarter, or for the real highlights, see the Kickstarter Blog.

As for the people looking to fund their projects, it’s in their best interest to promote what they are doing, and to drive people to their project page. For instance, Natali wants to start an “UberDork Cafe” in Milwaukee. You can track the progress of how much money has been raised, who is backing the project, any comments from people, and updates from the project starter. (There’s even a film starring Leslie Nielsen listed on the site!)

When I started my film a few years ago, people told me they would back it, but none (except for KeVRoN) really followed through (which is fine, as I’m committed to finishing it with our without external funding.) If Kickstarter had been an option for me back then, I probably would have considered using it. While I said I would complete the project even without funding, there’s no doubt funding would have a hand it making things happen much faster, because as it is, it’s a “passion project” and it always ends up taking the back seat to paying work, because if the bills don’t get paid, well, we’ve got a bigger problem.

I plan on keeping an eye on Kickstarter though, and pitching in when projects come along and interest me, and as a supporter of the arts, I’d love to see you do the same.

Worth reading: Kickstarter FAQ, Kickstarter Guidelines.

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Twitter Apps Reviewed

There are a lot of choices in Twitter apps for the iPhone (and now the iPad) but how do you choose which one you should use?

Obviously there is one criteria that is most important when looking at Twitter clients… Which one has the cutest icon?

Twitterrific Twitteriffic: I’m not a fan of birds, but the name “Twitter” and “tweet” and what not, it’s part of the Twitter brand, so it makes sense. This icon is probably cute if you like birds, but as I said, I don’t like birds.


Twitter Twitter for iPhone: This is the “official” Twitter client, and it’s not very cute. Another stupid bird. I’m not a fan of birds. Couldn’t they make a cute bird instead of this goofy silhouette bird?


Twittelator Twittelator: OK, this isn’t even a bird, it’s an egg! How is an egg cute? I guess if you don’t like birds (like I don’t like birds) then maybe Twittelator would be cute. Well, cuter than a bird anyway. (Though it appears to be a bird egg, so maybe it will be a bird someday.)


TwitBird TwitBird: Another bird? And this is really the most uncute bird of them all. It’s worse that the “official” Twitter for iPhone bird. Who wants to look at this bird? Not me! (The bright orange sunburst is sort of nice though…)


EchoFon EchoFon: Finally, not a bird! It appears to be a word balloon type thing. I suppose that’s better than a bird, but as far as being cute, this is not cute. Unless you somehow think word balloons are cute. Plus, it’s just one word balloon, not two, so it’s not even a proper conversation, it’s just one person shouting.


Osfoora Osfoora: Like EchoFon, Osfoora has an uncute name, and an uncute icon. Not one, but two word balloons! If one isn’t cute, how are two going to be cute? At least it looks like a conversation, which is what Twitter can and should be, unlike the one EchoFon balloon that looks like just one person talking.


HootSuite HootSuite: Finally, a cute bird! It’s an owl, and I really like owls. I like when they turn their heads around and rip apart mice. Owls are cool. HootSuite has a cool looking owl. It’s a bird, but not a stupid bird like other apps have. Owls are the best birds.


Brizzly Brizzly: OMG! From what I can tell, this is a bear wearing a bird costume! How freakin’ cute is that!? I mean, bears are way cuter than birds, but this bear has stepped it up a notch by masquerading as a bird, but he’s not really a bird. The cute-o-meter is almost up to 11 on this one!


Seesmic Seesmic: Home Run! It’s a raccoon! I mean… Come on! How cute is that little raccoon!? He’s got big eyes, and he looks a little startled like maybe you scared him, and he’s wearing a mask, because he’s a raccoon!


Wow, things got exciting at the end, eh? I mean, a bear and a raccoon battling it out for the supreme titled of Best Twitter App (based on how cute the icon is.) It’s a tough decisions… Bear or raccoon? I really don’t think you can go wrong with either one.

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Now you can Like it!

Sure, RasterWeb! has been around since 1997, but you’ve never really had the opportunity to ‘Like’ a post, well except for passing on a link, or blogging about it, or socially bookmarking it, or, whatever…

But here at RasterWeb! World HQ we see the value in ‘Liking’ something. Sometimes you like something but you don’t feel like leaving a comment. Even if it’s a one word comment like ‘Cool!’ or something. It just seems like too much work!

So now, thanks to the i like this plugin for WordPress, you can simply click the little plus sign to let people know you like a post here. That’s it.

I Like This

But wait, why didn’t I use the Facebook ‘Like’ button? Because the only reason to do that is to more widely spread the ‘Like’ info into the Facebook universe, and while we haven’t quit Facebook (but salute those of you who have) we decided that there’s more value in making the ‘Like’ function exist completely outside the walled garden of Facebook. Yes, the web exists as a great interconnected network, and can go on existing without a central controlling point. In face, we’ll all be better off if that is the case. Of this I am sure.

So with that said, if you like this post, use that new ‘Like’ feature!

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Snake or Software?

This is a game I made for the June 2010 Web414 Meeting. You have to guess… it is the name of a snake, or the name of an open source software project.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this game! Check out Web414 any second Thursday of the month at 7pm… at Bucketworks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.