Blindsquare uses Foursquare to help blind people in urban areas

Smartphones offer new perspectives in the field of disability, particularly in terms of mobility. The application BlindSquare goes even further by integrating data from Foursquare.

With more than 20 million users worldwide, Foursquare lists an impressive number of places, whether restaurants, bars, shops, parks … The application BlindSquare now allows blind people to consult this address list thanks to the VoiceOver technology and  to iPhone GPS to find out “What is the most popular coffee in a radius of 400 feet? Where is the post office?” etc..
BlindSquare includes different categories like nightlife, shopping, or art. Addresses, nearby places, notices, street names or orientation are stated aloud. The user simply shake the phone to find popular sites listed around him. It also has the ability to mark and share information about these places with his friends.

For now, the application is only available in English, Finnish and Swedish and costs $14.99 on the Apple Store. To ensure that its use is entirely appropriate for the visually impaired, BlindSquare was tested in the United States, Finland and Australia by the blind.

We are delighted to discover this new service and we hope that this application will soon be broken down into French!

And you, do you think smartphones can improve the lives of blind people?

Starbucks donate $1 to fight against AIDS for every Foursquare check-in !

The Coffee Giant imagines a beautiful operation to fight against AIDS.
1 check-in = $1
So don’t wait and grab your smartphone!

From June 1st to June 10th, the Red Rush to Zero operation is launched.

What is it?

This process, commonly called “Social Goods”, has for main purpose to collect the maximum of funds to fight against HIV. Several brands are taking part in this campaign:

• Foursquare,
• Bugaboo (a strollers brand),
• Red (the association that raises funds),
• Penfolds (via the Bonefish Grill restaurants network)
• and Starbucks.

This giant partnership will enable to finance the prevention campaigns conducted by Red.

The concept is very simple: you go to your favorite Starbuck and check-in via Foursquare, subsequently $1 will automatically be donated to Red Association.
During 10 days, Starbucks will post a counter on the “Red Rush to Zero” website, showing the gains results in real-time. The goal would be to reach $250,000!

Anyway this is such a beautiful marketing operation which strengthens customers’ sympathy for these brands and increases the traffic to their points of sale.

So let’s enjoy a good coffee while doing a good deed!

Citypoly: Real Life Monopoly in Nantes, France

In the dynamics of the Open Data (open public data), the city of Nantes has launched a call for proposals in March, to build smartphone applications. The final date for submission was May 18 Of the 34 selected projects, one in particular caught my attention: Citypoly.

This is almost the only game of this call for proposals; the others are more practical applications. The concept of Citypoly is quite simple: create a life-size Monopoly, with the game board as the city of Nantes. As in the famous board game, at the beginning you have a certain amount of money you have to grow. Here we do not buy street but symbolic places of Nantes, as the town hall, tram station, the library, the LU tower… But you don’t definitely buy them; you have the concessions for seven days.

You are geo-located thanks to your phone, and on the screen you can see all the places listed in the game in a 500m radius. Green tags indicate the places available, the red ones indicates those which are not, the blue ones are places belonging to you and the yellow are the ones that will soon be re-listed.

Another difference with the classic Monopoly, when you go to a place you do not lose money, but you win! Each passage reward the visitor and the owner. This encourages players to keep their phones close to hand when they travel to Nantes. They visit the city and discover places while having fun. As soon as you check-in a place you can find all the information on it. Contact information (address, telephone number), its price and rent in the game, and a link to its website.

Each transaction (gain, purchase) and the player’s ranking are recorded in the home screen.

Currently this is only the first version of Citypoly, updates are already in preparation for the next weeks. Eventually prices and rents are bound to fluctuate depending on the passage, which will also raise or lower purchase prices. This will be to the player to find the places most profitable. The goal is still to gain a maximum of “Citos”, the currency in Citypoly.

The designers also want to give this real life Monopoly, a dimension of social network. The owners will know who passed by its properties, a kind of playful Foursquare.

Citypoly is available for free on Apple and Android platforms since May 23 and has already about 200 users.

We spoke a few weeks ago about another check-in game with more or less the same principle, mixing foursquare and monopoly.

The all new Foursquare coming soon?

On May 30, Foursquare’s announced the arrival of an “all new foursquare coming soon“. Revealing 2 previous of this “all new foursquare“, Foursquare started teasing, trying to get its community excited and ready for Foursquare’s new … design? features?

Maps. There are many others like it, but this one is yours. The #allnew4sq is coming soon! bit.ly/L0fbOy

— foursquare (@foursquare) May 31, 2012

A lot of speculations were heard but nothing concrete was reveled by the social app. What is the likely scenario for the next Foursquare? New look? New features? New app? Would the new Foursquare be full of surprises or just a sexiest packaging?

More information is the next couple of days…

Meshu turns your check-ins into unique jewelry !

As we noted throughout this blog: Foursquare may become a powerful tool for companies that do not hesitate to use it in their marketing campaign or to develop new business concepts. However, one of the last things that you might expect with Foursquare is that jewelry can be designed based on your check-ins! It is certainly not an official product from Foursquare, but another service called Meshu.

So how does this work?

You must first import your check-ins into Meshu database, which will then create unique patterns depending on the places you visited. These places are represented by dots and are interconnected through straight lines (as shown below), which will ensure you to have a very unique jewelry!

Next step: the designs are printed in 3D and are finally available for sale as necklaces, earrings, cufflinks that will cost you between $75 and $150, depending on the choice of material used. This is certainly a unique and creative way to keep track of your passage during special events (bachelor party, graduation party, pub crawl, etc..) or just the places you used to visit regularly and you want to keep track before moving to another country? Whatever the reasons and routes if you want to make your own custom jewelry or for more information, I invite you to visit the official website: www.meshu.io