Love Lost In Foursquare Breakup

As a hardcore Foursquare user, I hate to admit it but the service has lost a bit of its mojo with the recent update which split the service into two components – Foursquare and Swarm.

The new Foursquare functions similar to Yelp and expands on the service’s previous efforts to focus on local discovery and recommendations. Foursquare continues to deliver on both aspects but now relies on Swarm, its sister app for new location data.

Swarm functions much like the original Foursquare and is faster than its predecessor for check ins. Some of the components migrated over from the original service include the ability to see nearby friends, check in to various locations, and view venue specific info. Added to the service is an increased awareness of your location when you open the app, stickers to represent actions, and similar to Facebook’s recent “Nearby Friends” feature, the ability to broadcast and share your location with friends to increase the chance of impromptu meet-ups.

Core components missing from the new apps include the stat board, badges, points, and Foursquare's popular Mayorships.

The Foursquare breakup while not perfect isn’t a death sentence for the location service necessarily. It’s likely only the beginning of the next chapter.

As a longtime underdog in the social media world Foursquare has adapted and changed with the times. It has proved it can be resilient and focused on an established vision. All being said however with its increasing age, it runs the risk of losing ground to newer apps on the market. One of the most notable is Move. It was recently acquired by Facebook and tracks movement and location without the need for user driven check ins. Paradoxically, it’s powered by Foursquare for location data.

For now I’m still in, even if it means I can’t be the Mayor of my favorite spots.

New Thread for the Web

Happy to announce joshuaholland.co is now live! As explained in “Adding Another Thread to the Web,” the site will serve as a central hub for me on the web and is an updated version of a childhood dream.

It’s not perfect but after hacking it together from scratch I've learned a website shares a lot of similarities to crafting a blog post. There is no perfect. At some point you have to let it go and make improvements along the way by creating additional content through other posts or in this instance, website updates.

Big thanks to the School of Visual Concepts for a crash course in HTML and CSS and Rich Kim for hosting the site. Take a look around and let me know what you think! 

[Photo courtesy of Flickr user jamesrbowe]

Sunrise Reinvigorates the Calendar Management Process

After months of struggling to seamlessly integrate my various calendars, I discovered Sunrise - a calendar service created by former Foursquare employees. Using data from my Facebook, Google Calendar, Eventbrite, and LinkedIn accounts, Sunrise creates an itinerary which is emailed to me every morning in an easy to read newsletter format. This personalized email includes weather information, friends' birthdays, and upcoming appointments. Sunrise even adds a bit of visual flair into the calendar process by including photos of people I'm meeting with and clever icons that match the activity - e.g. wrapped packages for birthdays and speech bubbles for meetings.

Sunrise also recently took a step outside of the inbox by creating its own iOS app. A natural evolution of the service, the app allows users to effortlessly add new appointments, view their complete calendar, and wish friends happy birthday with a Facebook message or text. Perfect for professionals on the go, the Sunrise app creates extra value for this fantastic service. 

If you're sick of your current digital calendar, give Sunrise a try. Its  integrated approach to calendar management is a welcome change. After using the service for over a month, I've found Sunrise to be a good replacement for iCal.

To learn more about Sunrise, visit www.sunrise.am and read more about its development on the Sunrise blog. I've also included a video explaining the service below.

How do you stay organized? Do you stick to traditional paper bound calendars or does your digital assistant know more about your whereabouts than some of your closest friends?

Adding Another Thread to the Web

Call it silly but I'm a believer in fulfilling childhood dreams. Unjaded by constraints of the real world, they often offer up a true look at the person we're meant to be and contain a grand narrative which helps inform the person we become as adults. Looking back at my own dreams, a few main themes emerge including technology, communications, storytelling, and helping others. This post explores my love for the web.

My fascination with the internet started in the 90s when my mom got our first computer. The amount of information available and ability to connect with others to exchange ideas resonated with me instantly. Shortly after discovering the web I began collecting Dragon Ball Z (DBZ) photos from sites and dreamed of creating a website to share my collection with friends and fellow DBZ enthusiasts around the world.

Like many things of the 90s, my full-time devotion to DBZ fizzled out in the 00s. After I entered Orting High School, my passions changed. I became interested in new activities like track, cross country, driving fast cars (see part 2 about my Maxima), and choir. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a HUGE DBZ fan; I could talk to you for days about the deep history and mythology of the series but given the year, I decided to reconfigure my dream to fit contemporary interests.

Thinking about my dream of creating a website through the lens of 2013, I decided it would be good to focus on my love for social media, networking, and photography. The site will serve as a central hub for me on the web and be an additional platform to share my thoughts about digital life and the vast world of communication. To accomplish this goal, I enrolled at the School of Visual Concepts (SVC) where I learned about copy writing in 2012. What drew me back to the school was its commitment to practical education and gritty real world vibe which made it feel accessible.

Despite not having touched HTML since I was an 8th grader at Sagahlie Middle School – formally Sagahlie Jr. High School, the language felt oddly familiar and was easy to pick up. After a month of developing the site, I'm excited to hit publish later this week! I'm also looking forward to continuing to learn more about HTML and other coding languages.

I never imagined myself wanting to learn more about computer languages but I'm slowly finding I actually enjoy the challenge of connecting the various pieces of code and appreciate the way it connects people with information. It's not the path I'd envisioned taking but like most things in life, it's sometimes better to take the long way around and enjoy the sights.



[Photo courtesy of Flickr user johnkay ]