Damien Mulley

Logged into Foursquare today and noticed I got a local ad/special offer:

When you click through:

People were wondering how Foursquare would make money and how businesses could use Foursquare for business. So you pay Foursquare for you to reward repeat customers or potentially new customers. See other post on Foursquare. I look forward to Irish Foursquare apps too.

Additional note: Expect to see more stuff like this photo of Cafés saying they’re on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare. Kanum on Mespill Road already mention in their pamphlets that they’re on Facebook.

For those giving and getting iPhones and iPod Touches from Santa and elsewhere, here are a few apps to have a look at. Apps.ie also contain an impressive list of Irish-made apps. Not being big into games, I’ve gone for more utility apps.

1. Encyclopedia Wikipedia App
Encyclopedia Wikipedia App for iPhone. Made by Patrick Collison. Costs €6.99. Allows you to view and search the whole of Wikipedia on the iPhone/iPod Touch with and without an Internet connection.

2. Shazam – Guess that tune iPhone style
Shazam is simple. Put the phone near the radio and it’ll tell you the song playing and you and you can go buy it.

3. eirtext – Use your free webtexts directly on your iPhone/iPod Touch
Made by Vinny Coyne, eirtext is an Irish App allowing you to use the free Webtexts from Irish mobile providers via your phone.

4. Flickr App – Upload your photos and see what others have
Upload photos from your iPhone to photo sharing site Flickr. Stamp GPS coordinates on the photos and also see other photos taken in the location you’re in.

5. Echofon – Nice Twitter interface on your iPhone/iPod Touch
Allows you to use Twitter on your iPhone. Really handy application. Easy interface.

6. Evernote – Information taking and retrieval
Evernote is a document management system, a note taking application and more. Take a pic, it converts it to text. Add notes to it. It synchs with their website and your desktop if needs be.

7. Facebook
Everything on Facebook except on the iPhone. Very powerful and simple to use.

8. Daft Layar – Snoop on local houseprices
See details about houses around you for sale or rent with this Daft.ie Layar app. Whip out the iPhone and as you look through it via the camera then you can see notes, photos and videos tagged on to buildings and streets. This uses Augmented reality to show off the data (adds links and notes as you look through the screen with the camera).

9. Irish Phonebook
Irish Phone Book. All phone numbers in Ireland, all on your phone. Free and pro versions. €2.39 for pro.

10. Dublin Bus app
Nice app to find our routes and timetables for Dublin Buses. €2.99 to buy.

11. Entertainment.ie iPhone app
Concerts, events, TV and movies. The Entertainment.ie Entertain me app is very handy for finding listings and then connecting to the venues to make a booking. Location aware too.

12. Phantom 105.2 radio app
Phantom, one of the best radio stations in Ireland with some superb music choices now has an iPhone app so you can listen to their web stream from your iPhone or iPod Touch.

13. Skype
Make and receive Skype calls on you iPhone. Crystal clear phonecalls and they can be done for free when you are in a WiFi zone.

14. Foursquare
New to Ireland, Foursquare is building up a healthy following worldwide. Right now a consumer application, it will become more interesting when businesses in Ireland start to use it.

15. Dublin Bikes Layar
Despite the Dublin Bikes people banning a previous app about this. This app is here to use. It uses augmented reality to show off data.

16. WiFiTrak
Via James Cridland is WiFiTrak, a way of searching for open WiFi networks and seeing can you connect to the net via them. Picks up more networks than the iPhone scanner. €0.79 for it.

Way way more out there to put on your iPhone too. Add your own to this list.

Got this via email:

it@Cork, ITAG and ISA in association with Enterprise Ireland would like to invite you to a workshop entitled ‘Managing your SaaS Business’ as part of the New Software Economy. (€100 a pop) These workshops will be held in Cork (Dec 1st), Galway (Dec 2nd) and Dublin (Dec 3rd) and have a limit of 20 places per venue. The workshop will provide insights from key thought leaders on the important topics at the forefront of the New Software Economy.

FourSquare has an API out. Never knew there already existed a WordPress Foursquare plugin. This FourSquare API is going to make things a whole lot more fun. As Drew points out, it was the API that helped grow Twitter and do all sorts of weird and weirder things (and business productive things!) and with all things Internetty now, the network you are connected to is/are more intelligent and creative than you.

Still referencing Drew, I like his suggestion about unlocking bonus/points discounts if you try something different on the menu. Game theory like I mentioned in the last FourSquare post. Perhaps too have secret menus for FourSquare. In and Out burger have a secret menu (though not so secret) and mixing rewards with special actions could be a good way of utlising the API.

I’d love to see maps of caffeine flow and see how far people travel for food and what places people travel most too. Lots of fun and also a stalker’s dream.

Foursquare launched in Dublin towards the end of last week. Foursquare is a service that allows you to share what your location is to people you are connected to on the service. Most of it is done via a mobile phone. Smartphone or ordinary phone It has a prepopulated list of businesses for each city they’re in. So far so what. To encourage people to use the service it rewards you with a points system and a leaderboard to see how well you’re doing. The person that checks in to a location the most becomes a Mayor and they can be ousted etc.

A cool enough way to build a network and they’re already tieing in with businesses. Encouraging them to reward frequent users etc. They are also trialing hyper localised advertising which is going to be where the money is in the next few years, thus Google’s purchase of Admob yesterday for 750Million. Right now they seem to use data from Yelp but maybe we’ll see them tie in with a local provider like hmm WhoseView.ie perhaps?

One of the founders Dennis built Dodgeball a few years back and sold it to Google and was quite blunt at the crap way Google treated them after acquisition. Looks like this is everything Google could have done with Dodgeball. I’ve only been on it a few days but I love it. Right now it appears that there’s just around 100 people in Dublin using this. Tiny numbers but watch how it grows.

Maybe I should have done this as a top ten post and riddled it with keywords for traffic? Ah well.