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?

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.

TVcheck: The Foursquare for Television

We all know Foursquare (If it’s your first time here or you don’t know a lot about foursquare, just read this blog and check out What you need to know about Foursquare).

Well, The application TVcheck (App Store Link – Free – iPhone) is based on the same principle: when you watch TV, you point your iPhone to the screen and it will automatically detect the program through the photo sensor, with a visual recognition technology (first app to offer this feature). This will allow you to share with your friends what you’re watching on television by checking-in. The goal is to share programs, provide advices, post photos related to your check-in and become the mayor (or master) of a program or a chain, and, like foursquare, earn badges. You can also go on TV shows stages and win many prizes.

Like Foursquare, the application is also connected to other social networks like Facebook, Twitter… in order to share your check-ins and publications.

TVcheck also offers two innovative features: the “pre-check“, which is used to tell your friends that you planned to watch a program, and the “quiz“, centred around a given program, which allows you to earn points and badges.

TVcheck is developed by Orange, a French Telecommunication operator, and is available is France and UK. It will soon be available on other platform than iPhone and other countries.

Foursquare, introducing the taxi 3.0 ?

In late 2010, Rixar Garcia, a taxi driver from Oviedo, Spain, came up with the idea to integrate Foursquare & Twitter, along with more “classical” ways of booking a taxi (telephone, Skype & email). The concept is very simple:
- The customer either twits the cab company at Asturias Airport
- Or checks in on Foursquare in front of the OVIEDO TAXI venue
- The company monitors the check-ins and twits and sends a cab within minutes
- The customer receives a 10% discount on any paths as a reward for using Foursquare

Along with this unique idea, Rixar Garcia offers Internet related tools: WiFi access, printer for boarding passes, and twitpay (a secure e-payment with Paypal & Twitter). The project met a great success and thanks to thousands of followers, Garcia expanded his activity by offering routes to tourist within Spain, and even to France thanks to the awareness he raised.

The car brand Volvo wanted to be part of this notoriety and lent Garcia a Volvo S60 taxi and asked him to give reviews and opinions about the car, along with clients’ impressions.

His success story went overseas and in 2011, his project was to drive 10,000 miles through the 17 largest American cities, with a view to collect specific American badges by checking in on Foursquare.

Garcia summarizes his strategy in 3 steps:
- Think big : raise awareness, people have to know who you are
- Be relevant : by actively taking part to the tools creating that future
- Make people like you and provide customized alternatives

His idea was introduced in New York in 2011. And you, did you meet one of these cabs?

Check out this other brilliant idea on how to use Foursquare as a marketing tool.

French Foursquare users state the app is useless

While I was surfing on Internet, I found an article called “Foursquare: l’appli qui ne sert à rien… vraiment?” (“Foursquare: the useless application…really?). The author of the blog describes his own experience with the application. After one month, he decided to simply uninstall the application. Why did he decided to give up after a month of use?

The reasons explained in his article are the following:

• Become Mayor is quickly boring, feeling that is increased when you leave Paris, as Foursquare is poorly used
• Too much venues outside of city centers make it useless for companies
• Too much social media already exist and Foursquare is not considered as essential for French users

For him, Internet Users don’t have enough time to spend on every Social Networks.

For the French speakers, I invite you to take a look to his article on the following link: Fourquare l’appli qui ne sert vraiment à rien

What do you think about that? According to you, is Foursquare a relevant application in France? Is the opinion of the author really objective? Is it a typical French perception of the application?