{"id":592,"date":"2010-12-09T15:07:05","date_gmt":"2010-12-09T20:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/?p=592"},"modified":"2019-05-06T13:07:58","modified_gmt":"2019-05-06T18:07:58","slug":"my-foursquare-christmas-wishlist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steveholt.com\/home\/?p=592","title":{"rendered":"My Foursquare Christmas Wishlist"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love Foursquare<\/a>. I love the friendly competition. I love reading the tips at locations that I check into so I can discover things that perhaps I didn\u2019t know about that place. I am proud to be mayor of so many places.\u00a0 And I love the badges<\/a>, of course! But there is also another side of Foursquare that I don\u2019t like. Little things that just bug me, or that I wish would be included in the product.<\/p>\n

As a point of information, I use the latest Foursquare app for Android which came out 12\/6\/2010. I have seen some good improvements every time the app is updated, but there are still some things that I \u2018wish\u2019 for. If I am mistaken about any of this, please make a comment so I can correct it.<\/p>\n

1.\tThe initial list of places bugs me<\/strong> \u2013 listed at the top of my \u2018places\u2019 list is my local pharmacy, and it is listed as one of \u2018my favorites\u2019. The problem is that it isn\u2019t. I never flagged it as a favorite, and I am actually not even sure how you do that. In fact, I have only checked-in there maybe once?? Also, my most visited places never shows up. Sometimes a few of them will show up, but not all of them. I mean, I visit a certain handful of them\u2026 every\u2026 single\u2026 day. Foursquare knows this. You would think that they would literally show up as my \u2018favorites\u2019, but they never, ever do. That is just dumb. Fix this please.<\/p>\n

2.\tSearch has gotten worse<\/strong> \u2013 because my most visited places don\u2019t always show up on my place list, I have to search for them. In the previous version of the app I could open up the menu and choose \u2018search\u2019, which would then take me to a search field where I could search for what I am looking for. Now it takes me to another screen that lists some places and I have to hit the menu button again and hit \u2018search\u2019 again. That is double the work to perform a search. Why is this???<\/p>\n

3.\tHomescreen widget <\/strong>\u2013 I have the Droid Incredible by HTC. I love the ability to put Android (and HTC) widgets on my various homescreens (I have 7 of them). However, I only have 1 Foursquare widget available to me, which shows me a list of my last 5 friends\u2019 check-ins. While that is useful information, I already get an email on my phone every time someone checks-in somewhere. So this widget is overkill for me. I would like a homescreen widget that allows me with 1 press to \u2018check-in\u2019 to my most visited places. This would be awesome.<\/p>\n

4.\tBuzz me baby<\/strong> \u2013 I would like for my app to buzz on my phone when certain things happen. For example, if I am near a place that one of my friends has checked into, I would like my phone to let me know. If I touch down in a new city, I would like my phone to let me know that, because of the history of where I eat at home, I would probably enjoy a meal at this place or that place. I would like to be buzzed when a nearby place has a special. I realize that these things I want may not be possible with the level of GPS integration that we have right now on our phones, but hey, this is MY Christmas list, so don\u2019t be a buzz kill.<\/p>\n

5.\tLet me see who is there<\/strong> \u2013 it would be great if I could see who is checked-in at a place before I check-in. For example, if there is a game tonight it would be nice if, as I was driving by the place, I could see who was checked-in. And I am not just talking about my Foursquare friends, I am talking about everyone who uses Foursquare. That might persuade me to go to the game if I knew who was there, plus I could discover new friends that way. And again, I don\u2019t want to have to check-in to do it.<\/p>\n

6.\tLet me be a super-user<\/strong> \u2013 Gowalla has a nice feature that allows certain Gowalla users to be \u2018Street Team Elites\u2019. These STEs have the ability to correct incorrect information that they see on a venue, as well as get rid of duplicate venues. Foursquare supposedly has the same thing called a \u201cSuperuser\u201d. I have the Foursquare \u2018Superuser\u2019 badge, but I can\u2019t edit venues, so this badge obviously has nothing to do with it. Yes, I can edit the details of a venue that I created, but there are too many venues that need fixing. I can help, if I am allowed to.<\/p>\n

7.\tGet rid of the junk<\/strong> \u2013 there are too many duplicate venues in Foursquare because newbies to the service start creating new places everywhere they go if they don\u2019t mind the venue listed on their places list. (read #1 above please). These people also are too lazy to search so they perpetuate these duplicate venues. If you click the \u2018add venue\u2019 button, Foursquare should force you to search for your venue first to see if it already exists. That would be such a simple fix. I have flagged duplicate venues many times but nothing ever seems to happen. I wonder if anyone is even looking at those flagged venues??<\/p>\n

So there you have it. I don\u2019t ask for much, right? Santa, are you listening? Or more importantly, Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai, are you listening?<\/p>\n