At Tourism Queensland we have been running a foursquare promotion for the past three months, information on our foursquare promotion can be found on our website www.queenslandholidays.com.au/foursquare

I am very interested to see some of the facebook places promotions which will surely be rolled out by Destination Marketing Organisations (DMO’s) this year.

This post is not specifically about location based services though. The idea of checking-in and letting your mates know what you are up to is progressing beyond the location based check-in and that is what this post is all about.

I have been trying out two applications (Miso and GetGlue) which allow you to check-in to what you watching on television or what’s entertaining you. Depending on the application you can check-in to television programs, video games you are watching, books you are reading or movies you are watching. Why on earth would anyone want to do that?

Some of the benefits to using this type of an application:

A record of the shows you have watched. You could use these applications to know whether or not you have watched a program, rather than watch it for 10 minutes and then remembering you’ve already seen this episode.

The gameplay element, incorporating earning points and badges. With each check-in you have the possibility to earn badges. The badges are themed relative to the style of program you watch and also to individual programs.

Obtain discounts from production companies or television stations. I saw the Discovery Channel offer a discount code for “Deadliest Catch” merchandise.

Understand the content your social network is consuming. I’ve bought a book (From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor) after having seen someone I know check-in as reading that book (@teamgoodguys)

ReadWriteWeb wrote an article about miso http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/miso_a_foursquare-like_app_for_homebodies.php which was posted in March 2010. In that article the author (Sarah Perez) questioned whether Miso was “Foursquare for the Boring?”. The article also has an embedded video about Miso which is good to watch.

I am not sure how many users Miso has, but GetGlue apparently has 600,000 users. (Reference http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/getglue/id377615302?mt=8#)

From the iPhone application for Miso I can see that the television programs I most frequently watched (with the number of times watched after the show name) in 2010 were:

NCIS – 24
Deadliest Catch – 18
30 Rock – 13
Breaking Bad – 13
Community – 12
The Fixer – 12
How I met your Mother – 12
Eastbound & Down – 12
Law & Order SVU – 10
The Event – 9

NCIS and Law & Order SVU are time fillers, I generally have those running as early morning television while I am on the laptop and before Kylie and Jackson are awake.

I’m finding Deadliest Catch less interesting now, but it’s a show about crab fishing in the sea between Alaska and Russia and it has been entertaining. It was very sad to see Captain Phil die….

Breaking Bad is a great series produced by AMC in the USA. For a season one 60 second breakdown check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK3EWNnb824. The story is about a science teacher who is told he has cancer and he starts making and selling drugs to pay for his treatment. It’s got Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcolm in the Middle) as the main man and he does a great job in this role. I like this show, season three has just finished.

My other current favourite on that list would be Eastbound & Down. Kenny “freaking” Powers! This is a story about a baseball player who has passed his career peak, his life spirals out of control and he ends up running off to Mexico to start his life over. There’s a lot of inappropriate stuff on this show, youtube search it (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=eastbound+and+down&aq=0) for a giggle. Funny program!

One of the most useful purposes of applications like Miso and GetGlue, like the location check-in applications, is that you have a record of what you have watched. I was surprised at how much television I watch. Even just in the ten most frequently watched programs I watched, there’s 104 hours of programming. Four days! Even though most of that would be passive, in that I’d be on the laptop doing something else, that’s still too much television…. I could be doing something more productive. Somehow, I dont think the makers of these apps want to slow down your television consumption, but maybe I can use GetGlue to check-in to more books, or one of the location services to check-in outside and doing something more productive.

Eventually a service which allows you to check-in to a location, a television show, a book, a movie, a computer game, drinking a certain type of wine and so on would be very useful.

I would also like to see the location based services take on some of the functionality from services like Miso. It would be really useful for foursquare to extend their reporting / statistics page (http://foursquare.com/ckjchambers/stats) report on a period longer than the last month.

Have you used miso or GetGlue? What do you think of the premise for these apps & why would you use one of them?

I regularly have a word on the tip of my tongue, which I just can’t quite remember WHAT the hell it is I am trying to say. I know it’s a very, what’s the word…? pertinent thing to say, but I just can’t…. remember what it is. Now, I use http://chir.ag/projects/tip-of-my-tongue/ which is designed to help you find that word! You can search for words by three different methods, including parts of a word, the meaning of a word, or letters in a word.

Not really sure of a completely USEFUL application for this, but it is pretty nifty! http://www.sevenwires.com/play/UpsideDownLetters.html Allows you to type something into a box and copy / paste the results, which is your typed in information UPSIDE DOWN into another site.

Having again had a look at some of the cards on JackCards, I still think this is a very useful site! Use JackCards to organise cards for your valued friends and family and make sure you never miss a special day again. http://www.jackcards.com/

In a completely different light, this is something which I saw on a site a while ago. I would NOT want to catch one of these while out on the Logan River with dad… http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article817553.ece

1/ on the weekend we cleaned out the fish tank. we put in some faux plants (i got sick of the “real” ones not growing). I cleaned out the filter which was disgustingly dirty and cleared out most of the “duck weed” which was growing in the tank. it looks 100% better & the fish are much happier.

2/ my post on boxedup appeared on technorati and someone from boxed up sent me an email to let me know that very soon they will be adding a feature to their product which will in fact allow you to pick an image to use if you aren’t presented with an image you like. It’s a great improvement to the boxedup tool and I’ll keep playing around with the site to see how it goes.

3/ i’ve spent a fair bit of time mucking around on facebook over the past few days. my page has been updated and I’ve added a few different things, including a sports betting challenge and a book case which can show the books i have & want to read….. chris’ page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=603703031, or linked in the right hand navigation in this blog.

over and out

How’s this for a cool idea? As you are surfing around on the web you just happen to come across that Retro 1989 Raiders jersey you have ALWAYS wanted… You can’t believe you’ve found it. But, it’s an off pay week, or you’re saving for a big holiday, or you think your wife would think you’re a loser for buying a lime green coloured football jersey AND then wearing it out in public…. well – this sites for you (though it will not help with the “your wife would think you’re a loser for buying a lime green coloured football jersey AND then wearing it out in public….” bit).

boxedup.com

I’ve only just started using it, and it seems pretty nifty.

As you’re surfing around on the web and see items you would like, you save them to your list and then you share that list with your friends and they know exactly what you think would be a great birthday present for your upcoming 33rd birthday (December 23rd by the way).

One think I do not like so far is that it doesn’t seem too good at picking up the images of the items and I cannot see how to save an image of the item.

They do have blog & facebook integrationable (new word) products. See the right hand navigation boxedup flash thingy.

I’m going to keep having a look for how to save an image to it, or a product which lets you do that.

chris

a friend of ours, Kimmy, who has been living in the states for many years now and tripping back and forth a little – has recently launched a new web site and great idea called “jack cards” – a new greeting card business.

You can find out how it works: how jack cards works. basically, you set up a calender of important dates and you can subscribe to receive cards of your choice posted out to you, which you then write in your message on and pop-it in the mail… presto, never forget an anniversary or birthday again!

www.jackcards.com

We had a nice dinner over at my mum and dad’s last night to celebrate Dad’s birthday.

Today we zipped over to carindale to do some shopping. We talked to kimmy this morning to sort out some details of our NY stay and Kylie has honed the itenerary a little bit more. We found a very nifty service by AMEX, where you can order your travellers cheques online and get them sen out to you, instead of having to go into one of their shops….

Tonight we’re off to blue smoke, which is an american ribs restaurant. we’ve been there once before and the food was great, so we’re looking forward to it.

example is we can look at this layout of the QF 747-400 and know that our seats for our BNE-LAX flight are “ok” (or at least they arent labeled as bad) and over the wing.

Unfortunately, the site doesn’t tell me if the people sitting in the seat in front of us are likely to recline their seats all the way back.

nifty!