Internet Things Archives - Page 11 of 13

Transitioning away from Google

December 29, 2024April 2, 2013 by Neil Turner

In light of Google’s decision to shut down Google Reader – and yes, I’m still bitter – it’s fair to say that I’ve been re-assessing how much I rely on Google’s services. If Reader can be shut down, then what about their other products?

An article by Ben Brooks called You Can’t Quit, I Dare You, throws down the gauntlet, although it is also inspired by ‘Your favourite Thursday sandwich’ by Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, and this article by Om Malik. Not long after announcing the closure of Reader, Google announced a new note storage service called ‘Google Keep’, and Om’s argument is that he won’t sign up because he doesn’t trust Google to, erm, ‘keep’ the product running long into the future.

I’m starting to agree, even if I dismissed boycotting Google on purely ethical grounds last year. Is it worth looking at alternatives to Google’s products now, just in case Google kills off products that I rely on?

Google Search

Search was Google’s first product, and is still their most used. In February 2013, its market share was just shy of 90% and I am sure that there are many out there that think that Google is the internet, or at least its only gateway.

Geeky types like me know that it isn’t though, and there are alternatives. Yahoo! Search is still pretty ropey by all accounts, even if I can collect Nectar points from using it. Bing is better, and I actually used it for the research for this blog post rather than Google Search. I could probably live with Bing if I decided to kick Google into touch. I can’t see Google ever giving up on search but Bing seems like a good alternative if needed.

Gmail

Gmail launched nine years ago yesterday, and at the time offering 1 gigabyte of storage was so revolutionary that many thought that its April 1st 2004 launch was actually an April Fools joke – at the time Hotmail offered a mere 2 megabytes, or 500 times less.

Now Gmail is not my primary email account, and never has been. I was already using an email address attached to my domain name and that situation remains the same today. That way I can keep my address even when changing hosts.

But I do use Gmail. After all, I need some way of emailing my host when my web site is down. Again, Microsoft would be my main go-to here for an alternative, in the form of Outlook.com which recently replaced Hotmail. As well as offering quite a nice, simple interface, as an early adopter of Outlook.com I was able to blag quite a nice new email address, and have the embarrassing hotmail.com email address I chose aged 16 forward to it. The only annoyance is that Outlook.com doesn’t support IMAP, and only works over Exchange on mobile devices. On my Mac, I have to use POP3 which is a bit rubbish.

Google Chrome

I mentioned that some people think that Google is the internet and I think this is part of the reason why Google Chrome has recently overtaken Mozilla Firefox as the world’s second most popular web browser. That, and it’s fast, extensible and also tends to be bundled with many other programs.

Like Gmail, Chrome is my backup browser on the desktop. I’m still a Firefox user first and foremost but occasionally my over-zealous blocking of adverts, tracking scripts and insistence on using HTTPS as far as possible breaks web sites, so Chrome is my fallback. But, that could easily be replaced with another browser; Safari, Opera, or even Internet Explorer in its more recent incarnations.

On my iPhone, again I use Chrome as my main browser instead of Safari, but could easily go back, or try a different third-party web browser.

Google Calendar

My personal calendars are synchronised via Google, so I would need to find an alternative here. This would probably be Apple’s iCloud, which supports the open CalDAV standard (Google are actually moving away from CalDAV to their own proprietary protocol) and already integrates with my Mac and iPhone. Getting to work with Mozilla Thunderbird, through the Lightning extension, shouldn’t take much more.

The only major loss would be Sunrise, a third-party iOS calendar app that I use which, at present, only supports Google Calendar and Facebook. Until it supports either iCloud or the calendars stored locally on my iPhone, I’d have to go back to using the built-in Calendar app.

Google Contacts

To keep my contacts in sync between home, work and my phone, I use Google Contacts, which also makes them available in Gmail. My Mac and my iPhone both support Google Contact sync out of the box, and there are a couple of extensions – Zindus and Google Contacts – for Thunderbird.

Like with my calendar, iCloud would be the obvious choice here, as it supports the open CardDAV standard. Alas, whilst my Mac and iPhone are catered for, Thunderbird doesn’t support CardDAV. The SoGo Connector extension should enable this, although I’ve had problems with it in the past.

Google Drive

I experimented with Google Drive, mainly to compare it to SkyDrive and Dropbox, but have since stopped using it and have uninstalled the desktop clients. Dropbox suits my needs far better.

Google+

I rarely use Google+, mainly because nothing interesting seems to happen there. The friends that matter to me are all on Facebook and Twitter, and I doubt the 152 people who have circled me will miss me if I delete my account. It’s not like I post there much.

Google Talk

I’d almost forgotten that Google Talk exists. This XMPP-based instant messaging network integrates with Google+ and Gmail to allow you to chat with friends. But I rarely use it. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are better ways of getting hold of me and for voice chat I prefer Skype.

Picasa

Last year I stopped using Picasa and switched to iPhoto – and compared the two. I maybe over-exaggerated Picasa’s potential death in that article as the desktop program has recently had some updates, although these have been primarily bug fixes. Picasa Web Albums is under-used compared to Flickr, which has a recently re-invigorated community.

Google Maps

I do like Google Maps, and I installed Google’s third party Maps app on my iPhone as soon as it came out. That said, I’ve generally found Apple’s Maps on iOS 6 to be okay. Its point of interest database leaves something to be desired (probably because not many people use Yelp in the UK) but its street coverage seems reasonably complete and the address lookup works okay. I also find its vector-based maps a bit faster and smoother than Google’s,

On the desktop Google Maps is currently my favourite choice, but there are also Bing Maps (the successor to Multimap) which includes support for the detailed Ordnance Survey maps, and OpenStreetMap.

Google Earth and Street View

There aren’t really many alternatives here. I don’t really use Google Earth on the desktop though. As for Street View, Google is one of the few companies with the resources to go out and photograph every street in the world. But it’s not something I’d use every day.

YouTube

Here’s where I’d really struggle. Of course I could delete my YouTube account and the two essentially worthless videos that are on my channel, but I wouldn’t be able to stop visiting. Barely a day goes by when I don’t watch at least one YouTube video. I doubt that will change.

Google Reader

I already mentioned that I’m looking into Feedly as my Google Reader alternative. As much as I’d hoped for a reprieve from Google, I doubt that Reader will be still going in July.

Google Authenticator

I use the Google Authenticator app on my iPhone quite a bit to enable two-factor authentication, not just on my Google account, but on Dropbox, app.net and also this blog. I’m not sure what alternatives exist, and this Quora question on the subject is awaiting an answer.

Google Adsense

I don’t pay Google any money for any of the services I’ve listed above. But the inverse is true here, and Google does pay me for the privilege of showing its advertising on my site. That being said, it’s not as much as I used to get so maybe it’s high time for a change, and a quick Bing search found a list of 10 alternatives. I shall have to look into these.

Google Webmaster Tools

If you have a web site, you need to sign up to Google Webmaster Tools. For as long as Google dominates the search engine market, you will need to make sure that it is indexing your site correctly. And its reports showing 404 errors is very useful for diagnosing site problems. Bing Webmaster Tools exists, but it’s not quite as good.

So can I give up Google?

I think that these are all of the Google services I use – and no, I hadn’t realised just how many there were. In all cases there is an alternative, and I may have to investigate some of them. Unfortunately, some are better than others and in a few cases what Google offers is clearly better than elsewhere.

Of course, by moving away from Google I’m mostly taking my data to Microsoft and Apple – from one big corporation to another, and each one isn’t averse to killing off products. Apple discontinued MobileMe last year, and although some features survive in iCloud, others, like iDisk and Keychain Sync were switched off without replacements. And iCloud is known for reliability problems, although the problems cited in that article are in the APIs that third-party developers use and not in its Calendar and Contact sync services. Microsoft also ‘sunsetted’ several of its Windows Live products recently – Windows Live Messenger being the most famous of these.

I am going to try giving up some Google services though (as did this ex-Microsoft blogger). I’ve removed the Google apps from my Mac and iPhone and switched my default search engine to Bing. I’ll share how I get over the next few weeks.

Google Reader alternatives: Comparing Newsblur & Feedly

December 29, 2024March 28, 2013 by Neil Turner

A couple of weeks have passed since Google dropped a bombshell and announced that Google Reader is to be retired. Since then, I’ve been partly hoping for Google to change its mind – which doesn’t seem to be on the cards – and looking into alternatives. The key features that I’ve been looking for in a Google Reader replacement have been:

A web-based interface
An iOS app
Synchronisation of read/unread items between all clients

The two alternatives that I’ve ended up paying the most attention to have been Newsblur and Feedly, and so I’m going to quickly review them both based on a couple of weeks’ usage.

Newsblur

In the immediate aftermath of Google’s announcement, Newsblur took a massive hammering – it was often unreachable or kept throwing errors. It’s settled down now so that it’s usable, so I’ve had a chance to use it properly.

Newsblur certainly has a lot of features, especially for misbehaving sites where the RSS feeds no longer work. And I’m sure it’ll be awesome for power users. But, for people like me… not so much. The interface is quite cluttered and I can’t see myself using many of the extra features. I’ve also tried the ‘preview’ of the next version, available to paying customers (I paid $12 for a year’s premium membership) but it’s not much better.

There is an iOS app which does the basics, but it doesn’t really work offline. This is a problem for me as I often read my feeds on trains, and don’t always have a mobile signal – damn those Victorian engineers and their tunnels.

So, on the whole, I’m not so keen on Newsblur.

Feedly

Feedly is somewhat better, in my opinion. It’s got quite a clean interface, although it defaults to a magazine-style view for each category initially. At first I really didn’t like the web interface, which actually works through a browser extension in Firefox, Chrome and Safari (sorry Internet Explorer and Opera users). You can customise the colours and the way articles are displayed, though.

Today, however, Feedly updated the extensions and it’s now a much more pleasant experience. It still uses Google Reader as a back-end, for now, which means that all of your subscriptions and unread items are synchronised. When Google Reader is switched off, Feedly will switch to its own system, but in the meantime this means the transition is quite easy.

The iOS app is reasonable. It’s attractive, although I imagine it’ll be better on an iPad than my iPhone. Items do seem to be cached for offline reading which is nice, but I did find it a bit slow compared to Reeder, which is what I currently use for Google Reader.

The Old Reader

As a bonus I’ll mention The Old Reader, which is another popular Google Reader alternative, however there’s no mobile apps at present which rules it out.

The demise of Google Reader

December 23, 2024March 14, 2013 by Neil Turner

A screenshot of Google Reader with a shutdown message.

Just before I went to bed last night Google announced it was shutting down Google Reader. To me, this news is devastating – I use Google Reader every day to keep up with feeds from blogs and other web sites, and have done almost since 2006, back when it was still a Google Labs product. Others are equally shocked too.

Whilst I’m still saddened by the news, it’s not to be unexpected I suppose. Little has happened to Google Reader over the past few years; the last major redesign was in October 2011 which controversially removed some features in favour of Google+ sharing. Before then, it had been some time since the product had received any attention. Clearly it’s not been a priority for Google for a number of years.

The closure of Google Reader is part of yet another round of ‘spring cleaning’, where Google shuts down under-used services and features. It’s had a few of these now, but this is the first time it’s really affected me (well, apart from ending Exchange support for Gmail, but at least there were alternatives).

Predictably there are already a number of articles about alternatives, from Lifehacker, Mashable and CNet. Both recommend Feedly so I’ll check that out, especially as it appears to have an easy migration path. I’m primarily looking for a web-based reader which will sync with an iOS app, like Google Reader does now. Interestingly CNet also recommends Google Currents, which I’ve heard some good things about. However, Google Currents is not a very well known service and Google’s announcement that Google Reader was shutting down didn’t mention it, so I’m not sure how long that will be around for either.

TechCrunch reckons that FeedBurner will be the next service that Google kills off, as that too has languished for a long time. And iGoogle, which is Google’s customised start page site, will close soon as well having previously been announced for the chop.

The outcry from this announcement has been pretty big and so it’s possible that Google will re-consider – a petition has already amassed 40,000 signatures in less than a day. However, I doubt it will – Google Reader hasn’t been a priority for some years now. There’s three and a half months to go before the doors finally shut so I’ll use the time to look at the alternatives. Google Reader has, thankfully, always had an export feature and this now works as part of Google Takeout . This allows you to carry over your subscriptions to somewhere else in OPML format, plus all of your shares and notes from before the October 2011 redesign.

Boycotting Google

July 9, 2024December 18, 2012 by Neil Turner

Last week, Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt said he was ‘very proud’ that Google was able to avoid paying taxes in overseas markets like the UK. This is at a time when multi-national companies like Google are under fire in the UK for not paying their fare share of taxes, and when public services are being cut because there’s not enough money left from government funds – funds which are raised through taxes. Ergo, if these companies did pay fair taxes, we wouldn’t be so screwed.

Starbucks recently volunteered to pay more tax in the UK after a consumer backlash saw sales at main rival Costa increase by 7%. Similarly, a number of people are avoiding purchasing from Amazon this Christmas because it only paid £1.8 million in corporation tax, despite sales of £3.35 billion.

Frankly, Schmidt’s comments are insulting. The only people who will be pleased by his statement will be Google shareholders and investors; to everyone else, especially in the UK, it’s demeaning. And, unsurprisingly, people are looking to boycott Google as well.

This means things like:

Using Mozilla Firefox instead of Google Chrome
Switching to Yahoo! Mail or Outlook.com instead of Gmail
Uploading videos to Vimeo and photos to Flickr, instead of YouTube and Picasa Web Albums
Searching using Bing
Sharing on Facebook or Twitter instead of Google+
Using an ad-blocker to hide Google’s advertising
Storing files in Dropbox or SkyDrive, rather than Google Drive
Using maps from Apple or Microsoft

Personally, I’m not going down the route of a boycott, even though I think Schmidt’s attitude is unacceptable. And, in any case, Apple are also guilty of tax avoidance in the UK, as is Facebook, and I’m sure Microsoft probably is as well. Unfortunately Google products are so ingrained in how I use the internet that I’d find it difficult to not use them.

And I think the best way of tackling the problem is to close the loopholes that these companies exploit. Avoiding tax increases profits; for some companies, this would be a no-brainer and has, until recently, not really attracted attention. Of course, times have changed and now these companies have the negative image that tax avoidance brings to counter; Starbucks have found that this was to their detriment and I hope that Google will follow.

Disclaimer: This site carries advertising via Google and Amazon.

Unexpected plain text password in the bagging area

December 31, 2024August 1, 2012 by Neil Turner

If you have a few spare minutes, have a read of this blog post by Troy Hunt regarding Tesco’s poor password security. Tesco, for the uninitiated, is the UK’s largest supermarket who also sells groceries online, and is presumably used by hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of British people.

Good password practice should mean that passwords are hashed, using a one-way algorithm, and ideally salted as well. Tesco claims its passwords are stored in an encrypted format, but presumably this is a symmetrical encryption method because if you forget your password, Tesco will email it to you, in plain text. Remember, email isn’t encrypted so anyone who is snooping your emails will be able to retrieve your password, and log in to your Tesco account.

What makes this worse is that Tesco doesn’t allow for particularly strong passwords, either. They have to be a maximum of 10 characters, and can only contain letters or numbers. Even worse is that passwords aren’t case sensitive, and top it off, the tesco.com web site uses very old versions of Microsoft’s IIS and ASP.Net, which are potentially more vulnerable to security attacks.

If you have a Tesco account, I’d therefore strongly suggest that you ensure the password you use is unique (this is good advice for any web site but especially applies here) and that you don’t store your credit card details with Tesco. If you don’t use Tesco anymore, then you could contact them to ask them to delete your account, citing fears about their security.

Of course, Tesco are far from being the only offenders here, and Plain Text Offenders collects various emails from web sites who will also send you your password in plain text.

Thunderbird on life support

December 23, 2024July 8, 2012 by Neil Turner

Screenshot of Mozilla Thunderbird 13 on OS X

It is with a little sadness that Mozilla Thunderbird will no longer receive resources from the Mozilla Foundation. The decision has been made to focus on other products (mainly Firefox), and that there’s not much room for further innovation in desktop email clients – especially as many people now use webmail services exclusively.

I’ve been a long-time user of Thunderbird – right back to version 0.1 alpha (then called Minotaur) which I reviewed back in April 2003. It’s come on a long way since then, and is still my favourite email client on Windows – especially with the Lightning extension adding a calendar feature. A myriad of other extensions has also allowed me to customise it how I want.

That being said, in some ways it’s no longer meeting my needs. I use at work – officially we’re supposed to use Outlook but there are many people using Thunderbird instead, as its IMAP support is much better. This is fine for our email server which is Unix based, but if we ever move to a Microsoft solution then the lack of support for Exchange, even after all of these years, makes Thunderbird fall short.

I also no longer use Thunderbird at home; earlier this year, I moved to Sparrow which offers a much simpler and lighter experience. Thunderbird is great for an all-singing, all-dancing email client and great for the large volumes of mail that I get spanning different folders, but at home, I just want something basic that can stay in the background. It may have far fewer features but Sparrow suits my needs better. Thunderbird is still installed for the few times when I work from home, but I may now look into Apple’s own email client instead.

As I understand it, the next release of Thunderbird will be an ‘extended support release’, at which point it will receive fixes for major bugs and security issues, but no new features – at least, not from Mozilla themselves. It’ll still be hosted by Mozilla and, being open source, should ‘the community’ want to contribute patches to it then they will be welcome to. Postbox remains as a commercial fork of Thunderbird, although its £30 price tag is high.

It’s a shame to see Thunderbird fade into further obscurity but an understandable one. Many users just don’t need a desktop email client anymore, because they pick up their email on a mobile device or webmail. Outlook and Lotus Notes rule the corporate roost. That doesn’t leave much of a market for Thunderbird to serve.

SkyDrive vs Dropbox vs Google Drive

December 23, 2024April 24, 2012 by Neil Turner

Back in December I did a quick comparative review of Microsoft’s SkyDrive and Dropbox, and basically declared Dropbox the winner. Things have changed since then – Skydrive, now known as OneDrive, has become much simpler, and Google Drive has launched (literally a few hours ago). So, it’s about time to revisit the subject of which is the best.

Storage space

If we’re talking free, then OneDrive is the clear winner here. At the moment, you can get 25 GB of space for free, although this is for a limited time only; if you don’t sign up before the offer ends, you’ll have 7 GB. But this still compares favourably with Google Drive, which offers 5 GB, and Dropbox, which offers only 2 GB (although it’s easy to get more, up to a maximum of 18 GB).

If you’re willing to pay, then Google’s cheapest package is 25 GB for $2.49 per month ($29.88 per year), Dropbox’s cheapest is 50 GB for $9.99 per month or $99 per year (but you still get extra space with referrals so you may get up to 82 GB), and Microsoft’s cheapest is £6 per year for an extra 20 GB on top of your free 25 GB, for a total of 45 GB. On this basis, OneDrive also wins for being the cheapest.

So, if it’s lots of space you’re after, go for OneDrive.

A screenshot of the announcement page for Google Drive

Desktop compatibility

If you want to be able to use your files on a computer, you’ll need to install a desktop client. If you use Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Mac OS X Lion, then all three services will cater for you. If not, then your choices are a little more restrictive.

If you use Linux, then Dropbox is your only option, as OneDrive and Google Drive doesn’t yet have an official client. Dropbox and Google Drive support Windows XP, but OneDrive doesn’t – although it is possibly to mount your OneDrive in XP using the command line, if you’re happy to do that sort of thing. OneDrive will also only work on Mac OS X Lion – earlier releases aren’t supported. Google Drive definitely works on Lion but I’m not sure about older OS releases.

Dropbox also seems to offer more features – files can be synchronised between computers over a LAN if they’re on the same network, thus making uploads faster between machines, and you can also enable ‘selective sync’ if you don’t want all of your Dropbox folders to be synced to certain computers. There’s also some extra options when you right-click a file, allowing you to copy a public link to that file in your Dropbox to share – OneDrive and Google Drive only offer this on their online versions.

On my Mac, Dropbox used the least RAM of all three – around half that of Google Drive. All three apps are 32-bit only, however, and do not take advantage of the performance improvements available to 64-bit apps on the Mac.

Dropbox is also very bandwidth efficient, especially when compared to Google Drive; if you modify a file in your Dropbox, only the parts of the file that have been changed will be uploaded, not the whole file as with Google Drive. Finally, Dropbox and Google Drive put indicators on each icon to show its status – whether the file has been synced or is being synced, and, on a Mac at least, OneDrive doesn’t do this.

Dropbox wins this round, for greater compatibility and more features.

Mobile compatibility

None of the three services officially support all four major smartphone platforms – iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. Google Drive is, at time of writing, Android only, although an iOS app is in the works and should be available shortly. Dropbox has official apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry, and there is an unofficial Windows Phone app called Boxfiles (which I believe costs a small amount of money to buy). OneDrive has official apps for iOS and Windows Phone, but no Android or BlackBerry client; although Browser for SkyDrive is a third-party Android app. So, chalk another win for Dropbox as it’s the only one that can be used on all four smartphone platforms, albeit unofficially on Windows Phone.

Web access

All three services are designed to help you move files between multiple computers, but what if you need to access your files on a computer where you haven’t installed the desktop client? Well, thankfully you can also access your files in any web browser on all three services.

Dropbox’s web access is basic, allowing you to do basic file and folder operations, view photos and movies and recover previous versions of files, but you can’t edit any documents stored on it. OneDrive and Google Drive both integrate file editors – Office Live and Google Docs respectively – so you can actually view and edit documents online. Unfortunately, files created in Google Docs on Google Drive can only be edited in Google Docs unless they’re exported as Microsoft Office or OpenDocument files, so even on the desktop, opening a Google Docs file will open your web browser.

All services allow you to search your storage, but Dropbox’s search is quite basic. OneDrive uses Bing, which should be more powerful, but Google Drive excels by including OCR support in its search, letting you search text inside image files, and image recognition, so it would recognise photos of the Eiffel Tower (for example) and allow you to search for these accordingly.

Security and Sharing

Google Drive is arguably more secure than Dropbox or OneDrive because it allows 2-factor authentication along with the rest of your Google account, so even if someone has your password, it’s almost impossible for that person to get access to your account. Note that all three now offer this (March 2014)

All three let you share files with others, and while Dropbox is the only one that lets you do this on the desktop as well as online, OneDrive will also share files with your friends on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace (although you can’t control which friends can access it). Google Drive similarly offers Google+ integration.

Google Drive and OneDrive also provide collaboration tools with other users; whereas Dropbox simply lets you share a file with another user, Google Drive and OneDrive will let others edit the file, track their changes and allow you to chat whilst doing it.

Third-party access

Dropbox has an open API which means that you can allow third-parties to access your files, such as ifttt, and also means that unofficial clients can give you access to your Dropbox. Google Drive also has an open API, but having only just launched means that there are only a few sites, like HelloFax, which can use it as yet. But, this does mean that unofficial clients for platforms like BlackBerry and Windows Phone are possible in the future. Similarly, OneDrive has an API which has resulted in the aforementioned unofficial Android client, as well as a plugin for Outlook, but there isn’t yet the breadth of apps which take advantage of the Dropbox API.

In summary

If you’re after a lot of space, go for OneDrive, as it gives you more free space than the others and extra space is pretty cheap. If you need to collaborate on documents, or regularly work on the web rather than on a computer where you can save files, then Google Drive and OneDrive are both worth considering. But if you want the greatest compatibility, and, in my opinion, something simple that just works, go for Dropbox.

Of course, all of these services are constantly evolving – and Google Drive only launched today – so this advice may well change in future. In the meantime, I’m personally sticking with Dropbox – and here’s my referral link for good measure.

(credit to Lifehacker for some of the information in this article)

Note that this article was updated on the 27th April to mention the SkyDrive API and the availability of an unofficial SkyDrive app for Android.

The Demise of Gowalla

December 23, 2024December 8, 2011 by Neil Turner

On Monday, Gowalla announced that the two co-founders of Gowalla and several of its staff were moving to Facebook shortly and that the service would be closing sometime in January. Having formally launched at SxSW 2009, the site will therefore be gone before its third birthday.

This hasn’t come as much of a surprise for those following Gowalla over recent months. Foursquare has been the big elephant in the room, attracting more attention and having a much larger user base. For a while, Gowalla had a niche – the design of the web site and app was much better, and there were features like Trips (where you could create a list of venues, or ‘spots’ to visit) and virtual items that you could collect. But earlier this year version 4.0 of the app was announced, which removed several features, including items, and tried to focus on travel guides.

This was not well-received. For a while I’d been trying to use both Foursquare and Gowalla, as they both offered something different, but the 4.0 update put me off. Gowalla wanted to focus more on ‘stories’ – not just individual checkins taken in isolation, but say catching a plane, staying in a hotel, visiting attractions and then coming home as one story – or at least this appeared to be the intention. Sadly this wasn’t the reality – ‘stories’ were just individual checkins.

There have also been problems with the API, as mentioned in this blog post by Ben Dodson, which saw several third-party services turn away from Gowalla recently – especially since the 4.0 update. All the while, Foursquare was adding new features to their site, without removing anything or alienating its core user base.

So what now? Gowalla is presently still around and you can still download the app from the iOS App Store, but presumably new user signups will end soon. An export feature has been promised to allow you to retrieve your data but it isn’t live at the time of writing. Even though several of the developers are going to Facebook (the others have been sacked, apparently), it’s a ‘talent acquisition’ which means that Facebook is essentially buying out the staff and not the product, so any data you have on Gowalla will not be transferred to Facebook. This isn’t the first time Facebook has done this – box.io was one of the most recent services to be ‘aqhired’ by Facebook where the developers moved to FB and the service shut down. Still, if you think Facebook is an evil privacy-stealing flying purple people eater, then once you’ve exported your data you can delete your account.

While it’s sad to see Gowalla go, this is potentially good for Facebook, and its new profiles that are aiming to document your life as a story (as far as I can tell). Gowalla’s talent could well be very important in making this a good feature.

As for Foursquare? On the one hand, with Gowalla out of the picture, it has less competition, and could gain favour with ex-Gowalla users if it allows them to import their data and gain badges retrospectively. However, this new deal with Facebook could see Facebook Places resurgent, and while Foursquare has over 10 million users, Facebook has hundreds of millions. Quite what Facebook plans with respect to its location based features remains to be seen but this acquisition shows that it’s more serious about it than some of us thought.

Foursquare Thursday – Are its competitors withering?

December 23, 2024September 8, 2011 by Neil Turner

A couple of weeks ago I focussed on the huge number of new features that Foursquare had rolled out in a four week period. Things have quietened down a bit since then – although there has been an updated Android client to include events and better photo support to match the iPhone, as well as the ability for staff to reverse venue merges, SU2s can edit venue descriptions and a new URL format for venues on the web site. But the service is still very much alive and innovating.

Alas the same cannot be said for its competitors – Gowalla, Facebook Places and Google Latitude.

A couple of weeks ago Gowalla announced the removal of some features from the platform in the next version. Items, like those shown above, will be removed completely; Notes will be removed pending a new implementation to come later, and Pins (like Foursquare’s badges) will see the ‘fat trimmed’ from them. There will be other new features introduced but the announcement doesn’t expand on what these are.

Now while I prefer Foursquare, I do use Gowalla and have cr.osspo.st configured to push my check-ins there as well, and it’s a particular shame to see Items removed. Gowalla stated that fewer than 0.5% of its users actually used items, and there seemed to be a lot of confusion about their purpose. If Gowalla made more effort to explain the role of items, how to get them and why you should drop them at spots then maybe more people would use it – it’s one of the features that makes Gowalla unique.

Foursquare had a similar problem with check-in points before Foursquare 3.0 was released – they didn’t seem to serve much of a purpose and were open to abuse. But rather than remove the feature completely, Foursquare overhauled and improved the points system and re-introduced the leaderboard to encourage competition between friends, and now it works well.

Without Items, the differences between Gowalla and Foursquare are almost minimal. Foursquare’s new Lists feature is very similar to Gowalla’s Trips, and Foursquare’s design improvements mean it’s not far behind Gowalla in terms of appearance. There’s now very little that’s unique about Gowalla and it’s a shame.

I also mentioned that Facebook Places. A recent Business Insider article suggests that Facebook is scaling back its Places feature, and so rather than you checking in you would simply add a location to your status updates and have a choice of venues to do so. Facebook updated its iOS app this week and whilst the standalone checkin feature is there, you can also attach a location to a status update. Facebook also recently discontinued its Deals feature in the UK (not sure about the US) which competed against Foursquare’s Specials, where businesses could offer special deals to those who checked in.

And finally Google Latitude. Earlier in the year an update allowed users to check into anywhere that existed on Google Places, rather than just updating their location co-ordinates, but there hasn’t been any changes since. With the advent of Google+, it may be that Google decides to focus on the location-based elements of that instead, similar to what Facebook is doing.

Foursquare Thursday – August madness

December 23, 2024August 25, 2011 by Neil Turner

It’s been a while since I last posted about Foursquare, and a lot has happened. Foursquare has been busy rolling out new features, so I’m going to summarise what’s new. Most of these have cropped up in the past month.

Lists

You can now make lists of venues, such as your favourite museums, pub crawl routes, best places to go for a good burger, that kind of thing. Foursquare starts you off with three lists – venues you’ve added to your to-do list, tips you’ve ‘done’ and tips you’ve added yourself – but you can add more. It’ll even suggest some based on your checkin habits – it’s suggested food places in Leeds and Bradford for me.

Lists are public and show on your profile. You can also check out lists from Foursquare’s various partner brands like MTV (music video locations) and Time Out (the best burgers in New York).

Check-in to events

Foursquare now pulls data from external sources so that you can not only check into a venue, but check into an event at that venue. In the screenshot on the right is my local cinema, and Foursquare knows which two films are being shown there today. When you select ‘Check In Here’, it’ll ask you which film you want to check into – or whether you just want to check in to venue itself. Events listings appear in the iPhone app and on the web site, but haven’t yet been rolled out to the other mobile clients on Android, Blackberry and so on.

New mobile clients

Speaking of which… the iPhone client got a bit of an update recently. It’s now more blue with several screens re-designed, and it now looks a lot more professional than it did before. Another major change is that photos attached to checkins now show in the timeline on the friends page.

Android also received some attention to make it feel more like a native Android app and not a quickly-ported iPhone app, but it lags behind the iPhone app in terms of features. Similarly the Blackberry app now integrates with Blackberry Messenger and has been finally updated to version 3.0, with the Explore feature.

More brand pages

Foursquare has launched new brand pages, so it’s now much easier to create a brand presence on Foursquare. Pages are free to set up, but I gather there are still costs involved if you want a custom badge for your brand.

More badges

Speaking of badges… as usual, Foursquare has added more badges including a new ‘core’ badge – Baker’s Dozen, for 13 checkins at bakeries. You may want to head to Gregg’s for a sausage roll or 12! New partner badges have been introduced from ESPN, MTV and Pepsi, plus the badge for the upcoming film 30 Minutes or Less is now available globally and not just in the US.

Notifications

Back in July Foursquare introduced a notification ‘tray’ on its Android client and web site, which came to the iPhone a few weeks later (rare example of Foursquare offering something to Android users first!). There’s now an icon to the right of the Foursquare logo, which when clicked will inform you of new friend requests, when you’ve been ousted as a mayor, when a friend does one of your tips or comments on your checkins or when a venue you’ve previously checked into starts offering a special deal. It’s a bit like Facebook notifications. You can also control whether these do a push notification in the mobile apps.

Presidential Foursquaring

Barack Obama is touring the country, so you can now follow The White House on Foursquare. Of course, this probably has nothing to do with him running for re-election next year…

New categories

Foursquare has added a handful of new categories – Tennis stadiums, Military Bases, Car Rental counters for airports, apartments and neighbourhoods. A few existing categories, mainly related to food, now have new icons as well.

US Merge-a-thon

Foursquare used their computers to identify a whole host of potential duplicate venues, which were queued up for SU2s and SU3s to process – over 100,000 of them. As it happens, quite a few were not duplicates but hopefully it will result in a net improvement in the quality of Foursquare’s listings. All of the venues were in the US this time.

So, as you can see, a lot has happened on Foursquare over the past few weeks. Foursquare is still owned and run by its founders and hasn’t been absorbed as a subsidiary of a larger company, so it’s agile enough to be able to make major changes like this very quickly. And hopefully there will be more to come!