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

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.

A Foursquare Memorial Day Badge?

On May 28th, the entire United States nation will commemorate the fallen Americans soldiers. It made me think “Will Foursquare create a Memorial Day Badge?”

If you do not remember, Foursquare decided to create a Service badge for Veterans in 2011.

“Today is Veterans Day, so we’ve created a Service badge in honor of all those who serve. You can unlock the badge by checking in at a Veterans Day celebration, or, even after the weekend, if you’re part of a service family and check in three times at your home base.”

This decision triggering an true emotion from the web.

“THIS is cool… as a vet, I appreciate it.” (Webmindset on the Foursquare blog)

“I want to thank all the veterans that have served for our country” (AJ on the Foursquare Blog)

However, some others get angry. Fandra Nally, on her article titled “A Foursquare Badge for Veteran’s Day: Honorable or Tacky?“ published on November 15,2011 explained how mad her veteran husband became.

“It angered my husband. You know how people get angry over how commercialized Christmas has become? Magnify that and you’ll get how my husband was feeling.”

Should Foursquare create this badge? Does it honor Americans who have died in all wars or does the company use them? Would you collect a Memorial Day badge?