Five Rules of Foursquare

I'm not gonna lie, I love foursquare. I've been waiting for an online networking site whose network was based on geography and location rather than solely social connections.

For those of you who live in a cave, foursquare is a mobile app that allows the user to "check in" at "venues", anywhere from liquor stores to baseball games, airports to restaurants.

As great as it is, there is plenty of room for the app to be abused. After searching for the official bros icing bros rules and foursquare rules to no avail, I thought I'd put together a few of my own rules of foursquare etiquette.

Rule 1 : No checking in at work - enough said.
Rule 2 : No more than two check-ins per day at any location - foursquare will let you do this, but I think its cheesy.
Rule 3 : When choosing a venue from a list of duplicates ALWAYS go with the one with the most accurate and complete information.
Rule 4 : No Facebook foursquare spamming - Foursquare has great facebook integration but users need to exercise caution if they are updating their facebook status every time they check-in. My rule - if you really want to TELL people where you are, update facebook but if you don't have a real reason, stick to your foursquare network.
Rule 5 : No retroactive check-ins - If you forgot, you missed your chance.

Do you have any other rules suggestions? What do your foursquare friends do that annoys you?

9 Reasons I Ditched the iPhone and Joined the EVOlution

As an early adopter of the iProducts, this post is particularly difficult to write, just as the reality is difficult to swallow. Apple products really are works of art. I'm anxiously awaiting the next generation of Apple products but the time has come for me to abandon my iPhone.

That being said, generally speaking, the biggest reason I got rid of my iPhone is certainly AT&T but there are several reasons I decided to make the switch to the HTC EVO on the Sprint network.


The EVO's screen is absolutely gargantuan and despite taking a little while to get used to, I feel like the EVO is my communication hub. I always felt that the iPhone was an amazing tool with great apps that doubled as a communication device but it never felt like a true hub, something that incorporates all my social media, email and messages.

So why did I ditch the iPhone and join the EVOlution?

1. I needed a new phone - My original iPhone was showing its age. The smoothness of movement and responsiveness simply wasn't there. Years of numerous applications and use were showing the phone's age. The phone was a great purchase and served the post well but it was a time for a replacement. IPhone 4 would mark the third update since the so called "iPhone 2G"- a name I never liked.

2. The Edge network - The old data network had all but stopped working. It got to the point where I couldn't even do a simple google search reliably - let alone update my PAID apps efficiently.

3. AT&T no longer offering unlimited data plans - Depending on who you ask, this wasn't an issue. I read reports that original iPhone customers with the legacy 20 dollar data plan would, at a minimum lose that (be moved to a 30 dollar data plan) and possibly lose unlimited service. Regardless, with this move, I can no longer trust ATT to honor "legacy" plans.

4. Apple no longer offering support for the iPhone "2g" - Why the hell not? People spent up to 600 dollars to adopt and promote the first iPhone only to have their phones be relegated to the antiquated list by Steve Jobs himself!

5. No iOS4 support - No more updates for the iPhone 2g. They won't even add the functionality to use pictures as wallpaper backgrounds like in the iPad OS and iOS4.

6. Idiotic ATT "Rules" - Still ready to purchase an iPhone4, I went to the ATT store to change my unlimited text plan (20 dollars per month) to the 1500 per month plan (15 per month). Despite having only started the unlimited text plan three months ago, I was told that if I removed the unlimited text plan that I would lose my 20 dollars per month unlimited data legacy plan. This was the straw that broke the camels back. I entered the store, ready to buy an iPhone4 when it came out, I left thinking that ATT had lost a customer.

7. Package deal - AT&T's original exclusive deal with Apple was for a year but was continually re-upped. Even with the announcement that Verizon would be getting the iPhone in 2011, it was too long to wait and too many questions remained for someone who needs a new phone.

8. The EVOlution - A friend of mine had recently purchased the EVO and I was very impressed with some simple functionality that Apple has simply left out. Video backgrounds, widgets (not just apps) and an even sleeker implementation and faster execution of visual voicemail.

9. The Sprint Family Plan - Four members of my family will all be paying less despite having a more robust plan. Two of us left ATT for this reason.


It's been hard to get rid of the iPhone but the EVO is proving to be the perfect tool for someone who wants to escape AT&T and still have a great phone with an affordable plan.

The Niche

I've always struggled with the fact that this blog is of the potpourri variety. I've written about an extremely wide variety of topics which, while fun for me is not particularly intriguing to readers, my friends excepted.

In my desire to learn and write one common theme persists- Geography. So tonight I'm announcing my new niche World Geography Blog. So far I'm pleased with its appearance and I look forward to writing and interacting about a great passion.

Cheers!

Contributing to the Spoken Wikipedia WikiProject

Today in my search for web-based knowledge I discovered a new WikiProject which allows users to upload Ogg Vorbis (.ogg) audio files of wikipedia articles. It seemed like a nice little nerd project to begin on a relaxing day off from work.

I first needed to find a program that would allow me to record, edit and export audio files in the .ogg file format which is the only format wikipedia supports. I went with the free program Audacity. The program is fairly intuitive. I've never really used any audio editing software but was able to at least get by without reading the directions which, in general is the way I like to do things :)

Given my current obsession with Namibia I went ahead and tackled the country's main wikipedia page.

I dove right in, recording sections individually and compiling them using Audacity. After about two hours of recording I had a complete file. As I went back to the wikiproject page I realized that there were a couple spoken wikipedia conventions I hadn't abided by. I later discovered that, being a new wikiproject, these conventions really are just guidelines and it even states if they would prevent you from using a file its probably best to just upload it anyway.

I thought that I should include the recommended introduction and concluding statement. Going back and adding in parts to the Audacity project was difficult. I ended up having to make minor additions to each of the 20 or so separate tracks which ultimately made up the .ogg file.

Once that had been taken care of and the file was ready to go I discovered that in order to upload files to wikipedia you have to be an "established user". In order to be autoconfirmed as an established user you need to have an account active for more than four days and have made ten or more contributions or edits. I have made a few but not ten, so before I could upload my file I had to find a few more things to edit in the wikiworld. Once I reached the threshold I was able to upload the file.

At 27 minutes 10 seconds the audio file is quite long but if you're interested in hearing all or parts of it just go to the Namibia wikipedia article and click on the audio icon in the upper right corner.

Africa and Google Search or Burkina Faso's Assault on the Internet

Two recurring themes on this Yuppie blog include Africa and Google. I use Google Analytics and Google Earth almost every day. I also think about traveling to Africa each and every day.

A few weeks back I created a map that displayed the number of tweet mentions per African country per million residents. I found it quite fascinating.

This post is similar but instead of tweets it simply compares the number of pages a Google search will find for each country (in millions). This number can be found at the top of any google search.

I...hypothesized that there would be a big discrepancy in what I expected to be the big dogs such as South Africa and Egypt and the lesser known countries like Equatorial Guinea or Eritrea (which I swear NOBODY seems to know about despite the conflict in and around the area).

Well, I was half right. SA and Egypt came in at number one and three respectively. Number two in our countdown, however, is the biggest of several unexpected placements.

Burkina Faso? Seriously? Now, there were a few unintuitive results I half expected (haha- how can you half expect something :) whether it be Chad placing high because it's also a name or Somalia's search results being inflated because of the American twenty-something's fascination with pirates, Guinea, being part of Guinea Pig certainly would rank high- What I'm getting at is that I knew there would be some surprises but I wasn't expecting this many.

I thought and thought about why Burkina Faso would be so high. I looked at the first few pages of results hoping for a clue but nothing. I thought to look at the google adwords that popped up on the side: Burkina Faso Pictures, Burkina Faso Girls and Burkina Faso, Trip Advisor. After seeing the second result I thought perhaps Burkina Faso was the new Russia when it came to mail order brides...I don't think that's it though. So I ask you, please help me solve the mystery of Burkina Faso in Google Searches. WHY?!

I know google can be sensitive to location and your own search history. I wouldn't think that the number of results found would change from place to place as I'm pretty sure that number would remain relatively static but if you find anything different than what I have, I encourage you to comment and let me know (cause this sort of thing really fascinates me for some reason).

In the map below the countries towards the red end of the spectrum have the highest number of search results whereas the green end of the spectrum indicates fewer google search results. I've included the full list of countries and the number of results in millions below the map.

I was also surprised to see Zimbabwe second to last. For a country that has been in the news a LOT in the last couple years, it sure doesn't have a big presence on the internet, er...I mean Google. The internet is much more than Google....right? :) Ethiopia was much lower than expected too.

I was surprised to see Burundi have more search results than Rwanda, and Mali! Mali is another place nobody seems to know about. I'd venture a guess that more American's have heard of Timbuktu than Mali. Although Timbuktu only has just over 2 million hits on a google search.

And here is our map:



South Africa 214
Burkina Faso 182
Egypt 166
Mali 135
Nigeria 123
Kenya 118
Guinea 113
Angola 110
Congo (Kinshasa) 105
Congo (Brazzaville) 105
Madagascar 104
Ghana 103
Sudan 98.7
Togo 98.1
Morocco 96.8
Chad 94.8
Senegal 92.6
Botswana 91.2
Malawi 89.7
Uganda 89.3
Tunisia 88.8
Sierra Leone 88.6
Algeria 87.2
Mauritius 87
Tanzania 87
Seychelles 86.7
Burundi 86.7
Liberia 85
Namibia 84.9
Gabon 84.9
Lesotho 84.7
Mozambique 81.9
Somalia 80.8
Benin 79.5
Zambia 79.1
Rwanda 77.5
Libya 76.7
Gambia 76.4
Cape Verde 76.3
Guinea-Bissau 75.1
Eritrea 72.7
Djibouti 72.1
Mauritania 72
Swaziland 71.9
Ethiopia 71.7
Central African Republic 70.8
Cameroon 66.4
Comoros 65.7
Western Sahara 57.3
Equatorial Guinea 57.1
Sao Tome and Principe 38.9
Côte d'Ivoire 30.5
Zimbabwe 21.3
Niger 15.7