A 3 Step Guide to Enable Location for Your Business

How do you take advantage of the Location craze?

Here are 3 steps:

1. http://mapicurious.blogspot.com/2008/10/step-1-prepare-your-locations-listing.html
2. http://mapicurious.blogspot.com/2008/10/step-2-add-your-lat-lng-to-your.html
3. http://mapicurious.blogspot.com/2008/10/step-3-make-your-business-show-in.html

Thanks,

Maps

Gigapan Panoramas of Bora Bora and Tahiti

Traveling is what we do at Mapicurious, and we most recently traveled to the island of Bora Bora for a nice getaway. What is there to do in Bora Bora if you run a site about maps?.....well, mapping of course.

Here are a few links to Gigapans done during our stay in Bora Bora:

The US forces established a naval base on the island during WWII to protect a shipping lane between the US and Australia. One activity is to visit the 4 remaining naval gun emplacements on the island. Here is a view from one of those:
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/50888/

The largest town on the island is Vaitape. Here is a panorama of the town taken from a private dock.
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/50537/

We drove around the island looking for excellent spots for good shots of the island. Here are a few:

Mt. Otemanu and Mt Pahia:
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/50291/

Another mountain shot:
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/50227/

Matera Beach. The only public beach on Bora Bora:
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/50439/

We travel in style at Mapicurious. Here is the view from our deck in the overwater bungalow in which we stayed. Thanks to the Hilton Bora Bora Nui, we appreciated this view during our stay. Disclosure: Hilton did not sponsor this stay.
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/50505/

The resort is on an island on the other side of the main Bora Bora island, and is a treat to walk around and soak up the beauty. Here is a bunch of other shots we captured just walking around, exploring:

Black rocks and bungalows:
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/50421/

Overwater bungalows:
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/50398/

Flowers:
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/50354/

Between the bungalows on land:
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/50330/

From the water tower (secret spot):
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/50301/

From the spa:
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/50216/

From the walk up to the spa:
http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/50228/

Hope you enjoy. If you take panoramas, you have the ability to embed them into Mapicurious maps. Just let us know if you have questions.

Thanks,

Maps

Hey Foursquare: Just what does it take to be Mayor?

Update: On the 59th check in....I'm now the Mayor!!!! Here is the simple secret: Your account must have a profile image. My account lacked that image on the 58th checkin, but had one on the 59th. Thanks to Tim Barsness for the tip off, and proving that he knows a lot about leveraging social media.

---

This morning I checked-in to Chick-Fil-A for the 45th time. Your first thought may be, "WTF!?" either because someone has been to The Chick that many times or that person isn't the Mayor on Foursquare. You may miss the saddest part, because there are two other guys that visit this Chick-Fil-A more times than me. At least according to Foursquare.

When I first started playing Foursquare, my goal was to be a Mayor before I quit playing and move on to the next great thing. I met people that rode by establishments on buses or walked down a street checking-in to every venue they passed. This is "cheating", but I know from my own LBS experience that GPS accuracy comes at a price that mobile game developers would rather avoid for playability sake.

Now I come to this 45th check-in milestone, and no mayorship. I'm not upset but I am unsatisfied - two others have been anointed Mayor in my time checking-in to The Chick. So the following must be a description of how I avoided being the Mayor.

What!? Me not the Mayor?



I couldn't believe that I could check-in 10 times and not be the Mayor of a place that had no Mayor. Epic Fail!

I thought if you visited the location more than others, you automatically received the mayorship for the location. I started to wonder if my AT&T 3G service was bonkers when playing Foursquare.

I also figured my GPS needed to warm up adequately - so I stood in the parking lot a few mornings to get an accurate reading (according to my own app).

I eventually noticed the location they had, while it's address was correct, the geocoding was slightly off.

Reaching out to Foursquare

My next move was to tweet some difficulty with Foursquare, and I figured this would open a communication path on the specific problem I'm having:



Kudos to their social media monitoring - because I received the fastest response ever. One of this blog's commenters will probably say this was an automated response...but I was impressed:



After that response I tried to submit a problem with the venue via their reporting email, however I received no response. Maybe they don't have my email address. I know this is a free game with unpaid support - I just had different expectations given my Twitter experience.

It would be helpful to let them know the location of the venue needs to be corrected. The location actually is plotted in the wrong area of the massive parking lot where Chick-Fil-A sits.

The Squeeze, The Squirt, and The Scam?

Trying to be the Mayor I discovered The FourSqueeze. My friends aware of my quest with access to this location kept telling me they were checking-in there, and that was why I didn't receive the coveted Mayor. I termed the pressure to check-in because your friends are trying to grab your potential mayorship as The Squeeze. Maybe Foursquare could add this competition awareness component to their game - it would help me distract my friends from my Mayorship.

After not getting success I encountered The FourSquirt. I mean I visited this location about 75 times, but only checked-in a portion because it just didn't seem to have an impact on the game. The times I go to a location where I've previously checked-in and not checked-in I termed as The Squirt. If Foursquare could remind me to check-in when I get near the location in question that would help me dominate my potential competitors. It might help with the cheating too.

And then finally - What kind of campaign do you have to run to be a Mayor? The FourScam. I use "scam" completely lightheartedly - and here are the emoticons to prove it ;) ;) ;) ;) I just want to know what more I need to do to accomplish my only goal with Foursquare, for now I'm the chump at this table. I've checked-in 45 times and not received a Mayorship!

Yo bro, you are STILL not the Mayor!



Guess how surprised I was to see Edgar L as the Mayor on my 34th check-in! It instantly gave me this brilliant idea to start showing the Mayor photo to the Chick-Fil-A staff. Only one said he might be a familiar face. I will say I explained Foursquare about 5 times to everyone - and thankfully I had a friendly reputation before showing my investigative skills.

And then the biggest surprise this morning - Edgar L totally dethroned! This guy Jason F shows up overnight to claim the title. Hey Jason F: Did you see me at The Chick today or the day before? I'm now looking for you dude! And my employee friends are on the lookout for you too. Your days are numbered as Mayor here...that is if 50 check-ins gets the job done. ;)

So here is my Foursquare offer

If either or both Mayors reach out to me, I'll be more than happy to buy them each a Chick-Fil-A lunch and learn their Foursquare secrets. We can term this as the Chick-Fil-A Summit.

If one of the Foursquare team members needs a lunch there too, I'm happy to oblige them as well.

And finally: I'll be at Wherecamp this April in Mountain View. I'll pitch a session about my experience with LBS games - and maybe a Foursquare-ite will be there to chat. By then I hope to be Mayor of Chick-Fil-A!

Here are a couple of disclosures

You may have encountered similar issues, so I'm disclosing some additional information if you want to correlate your experience.

1. Twitter or Facebook are not linked to my Foursquare account.
2. I don't have a photo on my Foursquare profile.
3. I only offered a tip for the location after I was passed over for Mayor the first time.
4. I don't think the venue has ever been closed on Foursquare, otherwise my check-ins would not be as high.
5. I think the app may have run into some problems, when you see the check-ins with a big blank page.

Pictures of my other checkins

So I didn't capture every picture of each checkin, but I was able to get most. I was in total shock this morning when there was a new mayor, but not me (picture at top of post).

A Small Guide to Mapicurious

As we travel around at Mapicurious, we need efficient ways to create maps on the site - and quickly share points of interest.

Here is our guide to how we do it:

1. We have Twitter and Foursquare accounts. We can tweet and checkin from places around the city during our data collection. These geotagged apps simplify collection of known places like restaurants and bars.

2. We use our Around Mapicurious app for iPhone (available on Android as well). This lets us know what we have already mapped. No reason to add duplicate points.

3. What's in our bag today? iPhone 3GS and Garmin Colorado 400t. We take advantage of the lower resolution camera on the iPhone, versus carrying the N95 8GB. For quick mapping, these tools are the best.

4. We use the Foursquare and Twitter mapping methods to get a map, and use our other tools (Garmin and iPhone) to enhance the location data. It can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes to create a complete map.

5. Once in Mapicurious, we can easily expose our map data to:

a. The Mapicurious.com site.
b. Google Earth for detailed analysis.
c. Our Garmin nuvi for road trips.
d. GeoRSS to add into a few random GPSes we have laying around the place. (Sometimes we get bored too.)
e. Layar AR browsing app on the iPhone.
f. OpenStreetMap because we see value participating in the larger geo community.

And now you know.

Maps

Mapicurious now on Layar

Need to find Mapicurious points of interest in an augmented reality world?

Mapicurious just published a layer on the Layar platform. Add it to your phone by searching for Mapicuriosities, and have fun.

Thanks,

Maps

How we address location privacy in our Around service

Concerned about your privacy using our location aware browser application for Apple iPhone 3GS and Android phones?

Don't be. We place a big green notice about your location privacy clearly on our application's main user interaction page.

We think other services should do this as clear as we do.

What do you think?

Thanks,

Maps

Announcing GeoJSON Support for all maps

From a technical perspective, Mapicurious offers the ability to enter location data, present the locations on a branded map - and retrieve those locations with web services reading KML, GPX, and GeoRSS.

And now you can pull information in a GeoJSON from Mapicurious.

You can access the GeoJSON feed for each map by styling a request like:

http://www.mapicurious.com/maps/844/locations.json

Enjoy,

Maps