Remember in elementary school there was a game called ‘foursquare’. The game had four squares and you stood in a square and bounced a ball… I don’t remember the rules all that well, but most people remember some version of the game. Now, there is an app called Foursquare… but has nothing to do with the game in elementary school.

Foursquare is a smart phone app. It uses GPS or signal triangulation to find where you are in a city. With your location found, the app will find a list of nearby restaurants, book stores… anything that can be named and located. So, I go to my favorite coffee shop, Pour House Cafe in Bloomington, and I click ‘check-in’, the app finds me and gives me the list. On the list I select Pour House Cafe and complete the check-in. This gives me points and I compete with my friends who are on my Foursquare social network. You can manage your friends and information via smart phone app, but the web app is bigger and easier to manage. You can not ‘check-in’ on your computer (or at least I haven’t found how) which is a down side, but it’s fun and you can keep track of your friends favorite places. Oh yeah, you get ‘badges’ for checking-in the most or at a number of different places. Lastly, there are Mayors of places on Foursquare. This means they have been there a lot.

Try it out! Have fun with friends and family, and let me know what you think about Foursquare.

Here are some screenshots: