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:

Smart Phones have become ubiquitous all around the world. New phones and competing devices are popping up everywhere and new reports are being written on unreleased devices. These mobile devices have multiple uses to them; for example, the iPhone plays music, records video, emails, plays movies, twitters, facebooks….. oh yea it makes calls. Companies and innovators are trying to brainstorm the best idea for these smart phones and the best idea for 2010 has finally come to us. The company is called Square.

Square is not only trying to revolutionize the mobile device market but they are also revolutionizing Credit Card purchases. It’s not just a simple beautiful app and it’s not just a small easy to use attachment, it’s the whole package! Visual Math: New Application + New Attachment + “Web 2.0″ company = very large growth potential for the smart phones and mobile devices, alike.

Square is the brainchild of Jim McKelvey, and backed by Jack Doresy (co-founded of Twitter) and Khosla Ventures. Square is a small credit card reading device that plugs into your headphone jack. To make a purchase, the vendor will type in the amount and slide the card. The vendor then hands their mobile device to the customer who checks the total and signs their signature with their finger. Once that is complete, the vendor enters the email address of the customer and emails the receipt to the customer… and that’s it!

Rumor has it that Square will give the device away with purchase of the app and monthly subscription of services with no commission. This will benefit small business very much by creating a static price for easy expending!

Let me know what you think about this Square idea.