One of the hottest genre of Apps right now is location based apps (primarily because of the money to be had from location based advertising)! The leader of this genre is Foursquare! Hence, its inclusion in the Way2Hype iPhone Starter Kit! So if you are still a little fuzzy on what a location based app is I’ll try and clear it up for you!

A location-based app uses your gps coordinates and overlays those coordinates with a map and database (mostly user generated) and allows users to check-in to various venues! The origins of location-based apps stem from conferences (the most famous being SXSW) and the ability to see where everyone is and communicate thru a public medium, such as Foursquare! Ok enough background lets get into the teeth of this app and see what all the hoopla is about!

The Foursquare interface is awesome! It is simple, informative, and easy to navigate and like many successful iPhone apps it has a great website to back up its app, Foursquare.com (I suggest doing most of the initial setup on the website its much faster). Once you launch the app, you are taken to a default home screen, which displays your friends check-ins. The app has four main tabs at the bottom: Friends, Places, Tips, Your Profile (i.e…Rabah)

My Foursquare Home Screen

If you look at the screen shot above you will see that there is some text under people’s check-ins…i.e. Leila R. (who is my beautiful sister if you didn’t know) – “Hanging with the Mamuskers & Steve-o.” This text is composed when you check-in because you are able to add a comment to all your check-ins if you are feeling fiesty or just want to give everyone a heads up on what your are doing at your particular venue (adding a comment is not required to check-in to a venue)! Checking-in is really easy all you do is press the Check-in button in the top right corner! A list will then populate using your GPS location and from there you may choose the venue you are at.

Places Screen

Once you locate the venue you are at just press on it and the app will take you to the Venue Profile Screen where you’ll find three buttons in the middle of the screen: People, Details, and Tips. The People button is by default the one that is selected when you arrive at a Venue’s profile screen. It shows the Mayor of the venue and any other Foursquare users that are currently checked-in. Next is the Details button which provides a Google map view of the venue’s location and a button to view nearby tweets! The last button out of the trifecta is the Tips button. This is where you will find tips and things to try at this venue! Oh No! Something wrong with the info on the Venue’s Profile Screen or just want let everyone know to try a particular dish, drink, etc! The only action needed to Flag incorrect address, Flag Venue as closed, or Add a tip is located on the Venue’s Profile Screen press the icon in the top right corner (square with arrow coming out of it) and voila, up pops a screen to allows the flagging of incorrect info or add a tip!

Venue Profile Screen

If all the info is correct and you want to leave a tip later just press the bright green Check-In button. This takes you to the Check-In Screen and this is where you can add a comment (like my sister did) or leave it blank. You also have the choice to publish to your Facebook, Twitter, neither or both (you can press the no button it will turn red and nothing will be shared or just press the F or t to turn on or off publishing to FB or Twitter). Once you have finished typing your comment and decided who to share with take the plunge and press the massive green Check-In Here button !

Check-In Screen

The more stops you make the more points you get, hence the more badges and mayorships you will acquire! You can become a mayor of a venue one of two ways: be the first person to check-in or the person with the most check-in’s at the venue! This little feature sparks the competitor in most users and is a great incentive to use the app more often, also with the growing popularity of Foursquare businesses are starting to offer perks thru Foursquare to people who check-in to their venue, the perks range anywhere from percentages off the bill to freebies!!! Just press the Close button in the top left hand corner to return to the Venue’s Profile Screen.

From the Friends Tab you can also tap on the user name or the venue to get to that person or venue’s profile page. So I tapped on my friend Josh L. as an example to see what he’s been up too lately (probably no good knowing josh)!

Josh’s Profile Screen

This screen is pretty much the same for everyone and it provides multiple mediums of communication for contacting the person: Text, email, call, facebook (which takes you directly into the facebook app), there is also a twitter contact, but Josh still hasn’t come over to the dark side (if you haven’t either I strongly suggest you do), here is the link, Twitter ( FYI: The Library of Congress is archiving every tweet from 2006 on, here is your chance to become part of history). The other button is the Friends button, which allows you to see everyone of that user’s friends, which makes its really easy to connect with mutual friends. All you do is press on the friend and once on their profile screen press Add “insert name” as a Friend!

Another nice feature on someone’s profile screen is being able to see their accomplishments! You can click on the Badges button and it will shoot you to a Badges page.

*the website is much easier to see accomplishments and mayorships

One more action you can peform from someone’s Profile Screen is enable/disable Pings. What is a ping? A ping is a push notification letting you know that one of your friends checked into a venue. For example, if you were friends with me on Foursquare and I checked into Starbucks, you would receive a push notification (the little blue window that pops up with info, like a text message). Pings are disabled by default, but you can enable them in Profile Tab. (press the profile tab ->press 9 dot icon in top right corner ->scroll to the bottom of the screen and press Pings:Off, repeat to turn pings back off)

*You can control the Ping setting (turn on or off) for each one of your friends from their Profile Screen, use foursquare.com if you want to change a lot of individual ping settings its much easier!

The last feature you are able to access is Shout. The Shout feature is in the top left hand corner of your Friends Tab. This just allows you to publish a 140 character message to either Facebook, Twitter or Both! This is really useful for conferences or events where you want to reach the maximum amount of people with the minimum amount of effort…i.e. Publish a shout to let everyone know where the happy hour is after the lecture lets out instead of individually texting everyone!

As Jay-Z said in the Blueprint 3 (which is awesome!) on to the next one! The Places tab, this is where all the venues will populate (the list is organized by proximity to your GPS coordinates, closest first and so on). Press on a venue to check-in as described above. If the venue isn’t listed you can Search for it in the search bar at the top. When the search shows no results or still doesn’t show the venue you are looking for there are two options: Add this place or Check-in here anyway! Adding a venue is simple and you can simply hit the Add button in the top right corner or you can select a category from the list and even add the specific address to the venue if you know it (selecting a category or adding an address are optional and not mandatory to add a venue)!

Add this place Screen

Next is the Tips tab. This is really helpful because it populates tips about the places near you! Foursquare goes even further by allowing you to press a tip and see who posted it (a quick link to their profile screen is included at the top of the tip). A very useful feature in the Tips Tab is the ability to add that tip to your My To Do’s list: the Add to my To-Do list button is located below the tip along with a I’ve done this button (see screenshot Tip Screen below)! This is really convenient if you want to make a Foursquare Bucket List! To access these To-do’s all you have to press is the My T0 Dos button at the top of the screen and up pops your Bucket list!

Nearby Tips Screen from Tips Tab

* once you have completed the tip in your My To Dos list just press the tip and select the I’ve done this! and that tip will be removed from your my to dos list!

Last, but not least, the Profile Tab. This contains your history, friends, mayorships, and badges! This Profile Tab functions the exact same as the Profile screen of other users, the main difference being instead of an info button there is a history button (foursquare assumes you know your own info, which might be a stretch for some people). The Friends button has a little more functionality and has an Add friends and Pending friend requests button (which shows your pending friend requests) along with listing all of your friends! Foursquare allows you to add friends by: Scanning your address book, find twitter friends, find facebook friends, find by name, find using phone number. I found using the find twitter friends to be quite finicky and preferred finding people thru facebook, name or phone number!

Rabah Tab (Profile Tab)

The last feature the Profile Tab has is accessed by pressing on the 9 dot square icon in the top right hand corner. Once pressed this takes you to the Stats Screen. This shows the leaderboard with your friends! This is also where you designate your ping settings (scroll to the bottom). If you press on the leaderboard it will take you to the Leaderboard screen which allows you to see not only the My Friends leaderboard, but also the leaderboard of your home city just press the link next to the My Friends leaderboard (mine is labeled: All Indianapolis) the leaderboards are refreshed every Sunday night at 11:59 pm!

Stats Screen accessed by pressing 9 dot square icon

Leaderboard Screen accessed by pressing Leaderboard on Stats Screen

Foursquare is a phenomenal app and has really taken the spot as top gun, when speaking in terms of location-based apps. Gowalla is another popular location-based app, but is loosing some traction because of it’s svelte database, meaning you always are having to add places! This app is fantastic and is only going to get better! So don’t forget to check-in and earn those badges! Think of it as a modern virtual boy scouts!

As per the usual I will include download links to both Foursquare and Gowalla and I encourage you to try both because the UI (user interface) of Gowalla is pretty cool (its passport themed!)!

Download Foursquare iPhone App Here 

Download Gowalla iPhone App Here 

What is your favorite location-based app?

Do you like Foursquare or Gowalla better?

Whats your thoughts on location-based apps, love em hate em?

Let me know in the comments section below if you so choose!