It’s all hush hush now and he said, he said. But I never even knew about this.
Smartphone Tech Can Beam HDTV Into Your Retinas
The Sydney Morning Herald has an article with Microsoft’s global chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie who reports directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. While the article is titled: “Tablets might be a flash in the pan: Microsoft global chief strategy officer”, this is what caught my eye.
Mundie went on to talk about a new type of smartphone technology he had seen in the labs. When the user looks at the phone, “instead of seeing a screen it can beam individual rays of light into your eyes right on your retina … [so] you can look at your phone and see HDTV”.
Foursquare’s Roadmap – Thoughts From an Introvert
‘About Foursquare‘ just published what they think is the roadmap of Foursquare, pieced together by comments from Foursquare’s CEO Dennis Crowley. Let’s go through a few, shall we?
The Bad:
iPhone App 2.0 w/improved tips and to-dos: The tips and todos are the main focus of the 2.0 release; they’ve undergone a major rework. We expect to see tips and todos made more prominent in the application, rather than tucked away under the third tab of the venue screen.
Tips and to-dos are probably the one thing I don’t really use much of in Foursquare. For me, it’s always been about the mayorships and competitive points system – which they’ve REALLY been down playing in the last several updates.
The tips are usually silly and not very useful (at least in my experience). Now, bringing them to the forefront of the app might make them more prevalent, but it still won’t make the actual tips any better. So in the future, seeing, “say hello to Betty the receptionist” will be right on my front screen. Yeah.
Facebook Places integration: Foursquare will clearly be integrating Facebook Places in some fashion in the next few weeks. Pushing foursquare checkins, badges and mayorships to the Facebook Places feed is an obvious first step. Pulling in your friends’ checkin data from Facebook Places could also be a possibility.
In another article I wrote (and TheNextWeb stole), I talked about how I really don’t want my 300+ friends on Facebook privy to all my mundane check-ins. That’s one reason I use Foursquare over Places when checking in to silly venus like the coffee shop. Its not something I want to subject all my friends to every time.
Points 2.0: It will be a total redesign of the “gameplay” experience that keeps users checking in. We expect it to be more about getting out, exploring your city and doing things that you normally wouldn’t do than the current points system which focuses mainly on checkins.
Ah! I don’t want to do ‘other’ things. I’m perfectly happy with my routine. Thank you very much!
NOW…the good points.
Photos: Gowalla users have been able to post photos along with their checkins for some time. It’s been one of foursquare’s most requested features, so they’ve pledged to implement them in the near future. You’ll be able to upload a photo to show off your favorite dish or something other users shouldn’t miss while they’re at the venue.
Kinda cool. Although, since I use Check.in I don’t really use the photos that often. But, if it’s available, I’d give it a shot.
How close you are to being mayor: The foursquare website makes it impossible to tell how many more checkins you need before you’ll become the mayor of a location. That’s why a host of third-party apps have popped up to make it easier to understand. In a recent Behind the Shell video with Carson Daly, CEO Dennis Crowley promised to make this a part of foursquare.
Very cool! I’ve often wondered about this and what obscure formula caused me to loose my mayorship.
There are some other features in the works as well such as rewarding more than one mayor and new updates for Android & Blackberry, but overall I’m not that excited about this new update. How about you?
