Tell the world where you are and earn badges with Nokia N900 and Foursquare

The last week or so I've really become addicted to Foursquare. I think that with more and more people carrying around smartphones, sharing you location is gonna be huge, and I think Foursquare is a great example of how location sharing can be done. I've in another post written a bit about Google Latitude, but for me Google Latitude has not done the trick, because even after a great deal of convincing, I have not succeeded in getting any of my friends to use it, and since Google Latitude cannot be connected to either Twitter or Facebook it is essential that you friends use it as well. Foursquare is different, of cause it is more fun to use if your friends use it too, but since it has great integration with Facebook it can still be meaningful to use, even if your friends doesn't. With Foursquare you check-in to venues through the Foursquare mobile website. The venues has either already been added or you can add them through the Foursquare website. When you check-in at the venues you earn badges, and so far I have earned the Newbie badge, that you get for your first check-in, and I have earned the Local badge, that you get for checking in at the same place three times in the same week. You can also get to be the mayor of a venue if you are the one with the most check-ins at a venue (atm. I'm the mayor at three different venues.).
Foursquare has dedicated apps for iPhone, Android and Blackberry, users of the Nokia N900 are stuck with the mobile website that looks far from great in the fantastic MicroB browser. But the mobile website is usable and since the only thing you need it for is checking in it is alright.
But we will not be left out for long... BarrioSquare is coming... BarrioSquare is a Foursquare client for the N900 developed by Chris B and is as far as I know in private beta atm.

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Genealogy on the Nokia N900 with geni.com

For some years now I've been interested in genealogy, first I used different offline solutions on my PC for building my family tree, but in the start of 2007 geni.com went into public beta and since then I've used geni.com. Today I'm connected to nearly 35.000.000 profiles with more than 100.000 blood relatives on the tree. With the help of geni.com I now know how I'm related to the Margaret the 2nd of Denmark and I can follow my bloodline back to Yngvi Hálfdanarson born in the year 20. Geni.com is in my opinion a fantastic tool for building family trees because it combines pure genealogy with social networking because you can invite your family to participate in building your family tree. The reason why I mention all of this if because of the fantastic browser MicroB on the Nokia N900 the full flash support in the browser makes it a perfect toll for using geni.com on the go. So far I have not found a single thing I cannot do on geni.com with my N900, I can even navigate the tree.
All this means that I can now do genealogy while I'm on the train, waiting for the bus or even laying in my bed.

The N900 as a TV-remote

Yesterday I got my Nokia N900 to work as a TV-remote. For that I needed Irreco to get that I went to http://irreco.garage.maemo.org/ in the MicroB browser on my N900, I clicked on "Download" and then on the "Click to Install" arrow on the grey banner. That opened the the app manager on the N900 and let me install the Irreco.

I have a old Phillips 32" TV so I opened Irreco and in the app menu I chose "Download remote" then "TV" then "Philips" then "22PFL5403D" then "peter.olby", then "2010-01-02 14:43:32" and then "Download". Then Irreco downloaded the remote and the theme and that was it, my N900 is now also my remote.

Thank you to Peter Olby who ever he is for making that remote.

Google Latitude and N900

I've been a great fan of the concept of Google Latitude for awhile now, but since nobody I knew used it I've not had the opportunity to really test it until now. After I got my Nokia N900 I managed to convince 3 of my friends to try Google Latitude - they have not been too impressed but they have used it enough to let me see it in action.

So how is it to use Google Latitude on a N900? Well the experience could have been much better...

First I used Google Latitude through the MicroB browser. To do that you need to use the mobile version of Google Maps by installing the MicroB extention Maemo-Geolocation and using this URL: http://www.google.com/maps/m. This will update your position and you'll be able to see where your friends are at but it has some shortcomings - you cannot zoom, you cannot scroll, the blue spot you use to center the position on yourself is underneath the "exit full screen button" so you cannot use that in full screen mode and also the whole thing is not touch optimized so it's very hard to use without the stylus.

What to do then? Well there is really no solution for most of the inconveniences of using the Google Maps website just yet, but there is an app that at least makes it a bit easier to update your position. The app is called Google Latitude Updater. This app is still in the Extra Testing Repository so it's basically a beta release, but it does what it promises it updates you position in Google Latitude and in the app menu you can choose between the map-view and the "app-view". What I would like to see in the future from this app is some kind of autoupdate ec. every 5, 10 or 15 minutes.

I've added some screenshots to show how Google Latitude looks on the N900:

My position shown in MicroB:

Friend list shown in MicroB:

Friend options and settings in MicroB:
Friend shown on map in MicroB:

"App-view" in Google Latitude Updater:

Map-view in Google Latitude Updater: