I know I need to be finishing up an ed foundations paper, and I will get to that right away (we're at more than half done, word count wise), but I felt the need to post this quickly. I wrote recently about how I base my technological allegiances on the quality of the product and it's features rather than by pure allegiance to any one company. I just watched a couple of short interviews on techcrunch, and was not overly surprised to find someone else who ascribed to the exact same position. I decided to throw it up here quickly. This guy talks about the subject towards the end of this interview. Enjoy!

What is Foursquare?

I have talked a lot about Foursquare on here, and I stumbled on (through Twitter) a neat video that explains what it is in a nutshell. I've posted it here for all to enjoy!

Good luck on all your final assignments and exams!

How To Unlock Your World With Foursquare on Howcast

Creaky Chair and Technological Allegiances

So, I am starting to feel pretty joyful about the conclusion of this degree. I am trying to work hard to get all my class requirements done, while at the same time finish up my SMOE application. Today is my day to get the essay and lesson plan done for the application, and I am therefore back in my new favorite spot in the Murray Library. I have noticed something annoying both times that I've sat here on the first floor. I don't understand why, but the chairs seem to constantly creak. I thought it was just my chair last time, but I am in a different spot this time and it's happening again. Usually chairs creak when you move, but are silent when you are still. These ones go the opposite way, defying all physics, so far as I can see. Being still doesn't bring silence, and they throw in creaks during movement too, for good measure. It's not loud creaks, just quiet, constant sounds of settling. It's bugging the hell out of me. I'll just put on music loud enough to drown it out; here's hoping that works.

As for the second part of the title, I was thinking this morning about how I'm not really loyal to technological brands or companies for any reason other than utility. I had heard about the fact that Bing maps are adding an ability to visualize foursquare venues on the maps. I was excited about this because it is neat to be able to see what venues are around a spot, and to check out places that I will be exploring with foursquare in the future, to see what's available there.

Although thinking back to many of my experiences with Microsoft products leaves a bad taste in my mouth, I was fully willing to give Bing Maps a try. I didn't discriminate simply based on the company. If Bing had served me well I would have no problem adding it to my list of useful and often used products. I believe I would act the same way for computer brands. I don't love my MacBook because it has an apple on the lid, I love it because of how it operates. If Microsoft were able to create an OS that worked as well as OSX and put it on a machine as reliable and functional as Apple can, then I would have no problem buying one of their machines.

Another quick example to support my conception that I operate this way is my choice to purchase a Kindle, though I knew the iPad was coming soon. I'm not going to read books on a device that doesn't include the kinds of features I like (aka e-ink) just because Apple tells me to. I flip Apple off in this case, not out of spite, but simply because I'm served better elsewhere.

E-portfolio

Well, I think I've finished putting together my e-portfolio for this class. If you've got time, I'd appreciate it if you could take a look through and let me know what you think. Any suggestions for improvement would be great. You can post comments here, e-mail me or message me on Facebook. I may ask a couple of people specifically if they'd like to look through it. I hope everyone is making a lot of headway on their own projects!

My portfolio can be found here:
https://homepage.usask.ca/~dms727/portfolio/profile/profile.html

Foursquare Heat Map

Since this blog has been pretty location-based-app focused lately, it makes sense to toss up this heat map of my Foursquare use. It's kinda cool. It takes my check-in data and creates a map with colour to represent the places that I visit more often. Areas that I frequent are more red, and less are more blue, just like your usual infrared imaging. There's a lot of space that I haven't visited at all, and it definitely shows my main areas as the U of S campus and downtown, which is very accurate. It'll be more fun to play with these maps after a few months of check-ins in Seoul. :)

Foursquare and Gowalla

So, I have not only unlocked a couple of new badges in Foursquare, but I also installed another similar app called Gowalla. I don't know as much about Gowalla, but it seems like it will be as useful for discovering great places to eat, drink, and otherwise explore. It also includes digital objects that you can find and leave in places, and try to collect. I'm not sure I quite get that part, but it might be cool. You can also go on trips, and create trips for others to go on. I'm going to try it out, and see how I like it.

I had been hearing about it for a little while, but I didn't decide to get it until I saw the video below. This video presents a visualization of the different location services that people used during the recent SXSW Interactive conference.

SXSW Interactive Checkin Visualization from SimpleGeo Inc. on Vimeo.

The Foursquare badges that I mentioned above were not difficult to earn. They are both based around evening check-ins, which I have been doing more often because of my need to work on school stuff. Working on school stuff at home doesn't seem to work well, so I tend to spend time on campus. That along with subbing at GGP helped me to get the Crunked and Bender badges.


 Crunked:

That's 4+ stops in one night for you!
Unlocked by Dan S. on Sun Mar 21, 2010 at 6:52 PM @ Starbucks - College Drive in Saskatoon


Bender:

That's 4+ nights in a row for you!
Unlocked by Dan S. on Tue Mar 23, 2010 at 6:03 PM @ Subway - Cumberland

Oh, I also switched my twitter widget on this blog from the crappy one I had before, to one I like much better, straight from the twitter site itself.
Alright, well I think that's enough dorkyness for one post. I'll save some for the next.

JibJab

A friend of mine just showed me another neat website that I can see myself spending a lot of time on. I may also put up the 12 dollars for an annual membership. It's called JibJab and it basically lets you put your face into photos and videos. There's a lot of different things that you can do there. One of the only videos that I found that I could do without a membership is a skiing video. Here it is for all interested:

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!