From the Foursquare Blog
- Hey LA, now its your turn to save $5 on every Restaurant Week meal! - (01/23/2012) - New York Restaurant Week partnership with American Express, saving Card members $5 on every lunch and dinner they have at over 300 New York eateries. Today, we're excited to extend the same deal to hungry explorers in Los Angeles: Spend $21 hundreds of restaurants participating in dine LA's Restaurant Week, and you'll get a $5 credit back on your American Express statement. Redeeming your free money is just as easy as with past American Express specials:Check in at a Restaurant Week restaurant. Go to the Special screen and tap the Load to Card button (you'll also be able to sync your card if you have’nt yet).
- Hit the slopes! foursquare Follow Friday, winter edition! #4sqFF - (01/20/2012) - Up for anything? Check out the Best Skiing in the World! In Vermont? This is your list. Aloha Ski and Snowboard Rentals in Park City, Utah has great recommendations, including where to stay and store your gear. Aspen/Snowmassin Aspen, Colorado has great tips and lists on where to eat, hiking spots, and more. Exclusive Resorts has a list of great US ski spots. Or, perhaps Dolce&Gabbanas list of cozy, glamorous snow spots around the world is more your style. We’ve also partnered with a bunch of ski resorts - check out their lists below, and check in when you visit to unlock their badges! Mount Snow in Vermont has tips on how to beat the crowds, food and rental recommendations, and more.
- Where my friends at? #APIHighlight - (01/20/2012) - September Hackathon! ) that show off fun things that can be done with your friends check-ins, like sending you around the globe (or Hogwarts), all while sitting at your desk. If you're working with two monitors, they're a perfect add-on to your second screen. Arrivals is a beautifully simple and visual app that displays your friends check-ins like an old-fashioned arrivals board. Fousquare Notifications is a chrome extension that will alert you with desktop notifications when your friends check in. You can click through to add comments, and also tailor the notifications to certain friends, nearby areas, times when you're at the computer, and more.
- Find what you're craving, and check out the menu too! - (01/18/2012) - foursquare. com/explore, which uses the 1. 5 billion foursquare check-ins from you, your friends, and the foursquare community to deliver personalized results for whatever you're craving, from burritos to bacon. Now, you can find exactly what you want, because were bringing menus to foursquare. We’ve partnered with the awesome start-up Single Platform to share over 13,000,000 menu items at almost 250,000 restaurants in major U. S. cities, with more on the way. Starting today, you'll be able to click through to menus on the right hand side of venue pages that have menu information. At a lot of these restaurants, we’ve also added a pricing icon to give you a quick sense of how fancy a night you're in for.
- Cash back from American Express at all the best restaurants in New York! - (01/18/2012) - Spend $24 (the price of Restaurant Weeks prix fixe lunch special) at any of the participating Restaurant Week spots, get a $5 credit on your American Express statement. If you're doing the math, that means your prix fixe lunches are now under $20 bucks, and your prix fixe dinners are only $30 at over 300 of the best restaurants in New York! Redeeming your free money is just as easy as the past American Express specials:Check in at a Restaurant Week restaurant. Go to the Special screen and tap the Load to Card button (you'll also be able to sync your card if you have’nt yet). Pay with your American Express Card, and you'll see the credit on your statement in a few days!
- A design student helps visually impaired people find their friends using foursquare! - (01/17/2012) - The BlindSpot cane incorporates a GPS-enabled smart phone and corresponding ear piece, and sends an audio alert whenever a friend checks in on foursquare nearby. There’s an option to call, or even navigate to where the friend is using tactile navigation!
From the Facebook Developer Blog
- Platform Updates: Operation Developer Love - (01/20/2012) - This week, we launched the improved auth dialog and over 60 new Open Graph apps. Approving Open Graph Actions We are now approving Open Graph Actions. If you are new to the Open Graph, please review the Tutorial on how to use the Open Graph to integrate your app with Facebook. Please review and check your Actions against the required criteria prior to submission. Writing Questions via Graph API We recently announced the ability to read questions via the Graph API. We are now adding the option to write them.
- Open Graph now available - (01/18/2012) - At f8, we announced Timeline and the Open Graph - the next generation of the platform which enables people to tell their stories through the apps they use. The Open Graph has already had a significant impact on music, news, and video, but this was just the beginning. Starting today, developers can build apps that let people add anything they love to their Timelines - whether it is eating, traveling, shopping, running or taking pictures. As a part of the this launch, more than 60 apps are going live today - including Pinterest, Rotten Tomatoes / Flixster, Foodspotting, Gogobot, and more. These are great examples of how the Open Graph brings experiences to Facebook.
- Launching the Improved Auth Dialog - (01/18/2012) - Over the past few months, weve been testing and iterating on the new Auth Dialog to incorporate feedback from users, developers and other third parties. By introducing new ways for people learn about an app and giving them more control over their data, we believe this update will benefit both users and developers. Today, were making the improved version available and announcing the migration plan for developers. More Control & Clarity for Users Similar to the inline privacy controls people have when they post content, we are introducing a new, inline privacy setting that allows a user to control who can see their app activity on Facebook.
From the Google Geo Blog
- Introducing pyKML - a Python library for manipulating KML - (01/18/2012) - pyKML is an open source Python library for generating, parsing, and modifying KML, the geo-spatial data language used by Google Earth, Google Maps and a number of other GIS platforms.
From the Factual Blog
- Factual PHP Driver - (01/23/2012) - We are pleased to report the availability of the official PHP driver for the Factual API. This driver wraps our Read, Crosswalk, Resolve, and Schema APIs, providing five-line access to our 55 million global places and other structured data.
From the InMobi Blog
- Handset Stats - 2010-2011 - (01/17/2012) - What a difference a year makes! You can download the full set of statistics from the InMobi Research Centre - here are some highlights. World We're close to hitting the point when half the advert requests we get are for smartphones. While sales of smartphones have taken off in recent years - there are still millions of people using regular phones. Are you targeting them all? Europe In Q4 of 2010, Android accounted for around 16. 7% of advertising impressions in Europe. In Q4 of 2011, it rocketed to 32% - zooming past iOS. North America With dozens of manufactures churning out lots of different models, it's always really interesting to see who's up and who's down.
From the PlaceCast Blog
- Text Tops Smartphone Usage, While Check-Ins Decline - (01/20/2012) - Insight Express released the latest update to its quarterly Digital Consumer Portrait which reveals some very interesting observations on the mobile behavior of mainstream smartphone users. As Kathryn Koegel pointed out in her AdAge column yesterday, there is an overwhelming counter-intuitive trend emerging from the data: some advanced mobile behaviors are not on an ever-increasing trajectory. Specifically, that text continues to top the charts for usage, while novelty behavior like check-ins are in decline.
