Android Review: Foursquare

I’ll start my review of Android apps that help travelers with Foursquare.

I’m not really all that keen on the whole concept of Foursquare, but it has been fun for a bit.  The whole premise is that you use a GPS enabled phone such as an iPhone, Blackberry, Android, or even WinMo and check in at various venues.  This lets your friends (and facebook and twitter) know where you are.  If you are the person who has checked in the most at that location you become the mayor.  Checking in also gives you points and badges (now it’s like scouts or something).  Apparently some places do something special for the mayor, but I don’t hold the mayor position at any restaurants or coffee shops so I’m not sure.

I had Foursquare on my Fuze, but the version I downloaded from the Marketplace didn’t use cell triangulation so if you didn’t have a GPS lock it thought you were in Baltimore, Newark, or Palm Beach.  Before ditching my Fuze I did find a newer version that did use cell triangulation, but by then I had already ordered my Backflip.  With the backflip it usually gets pretty close just from triangulation, but if I turn on the GPS it usually lists my location as the first on the list.

There was some application called Autosquare that was supposed to automatically check me in, but it must not be compatible with Android 1.5 because it would just crash right away after rebooting and attempting several times.

It could be useful to let many people know where you are, but it is a little too public for me to want to use this app long-term.