Foursquare as most of you might already know is a geo location-based social networking website where users ‘check-in’ at venues using text messaging, mobile web or mobile apps and has been tagged as the next best thing on Social Media after Twitter and I have no doubts that it probably is. I signed up with Foursquare a little over 3 months back and as on date, I’m a Mayor of 15 places, checked in 319 times and proud owner of 11 Badges with over 160 friends.

A lot of people may ask, if that’s the case, why would I quit Foursquare and then decide to write about it? Here’s why.

Many double/wrong entries:

The above screenshot is a search for the biggest railway station in Chennai – called Central Railway Station or Chennai Central Railway Station. As you can see, there are 3 different options.

Another example of multiple entries is Subway, the health-eating joint in Nungambakkam, Chennai

Again 3 search options (the 4th search result is a different location) – however, the first result has the road name wrong, the second has the pin code wrong and the third has the road name wrong again.

Foursquare team does not respond to user requests:

Anyone who was serious about using Foursquare and familiar with this location would want to set this right. So that’s what I set out to do. Since I did not know about the super user concept, I did a bit of searching on their website and found their email id and contacted them. Here is the screenshot of my email to them. Click on the screenshot for a bigger image.

Its a month since my email and I haven’t got a response yet. I guess I can safely assume that they don’t care about feedback, customer support/care. I’ve tried contacting Foursquare on Twitter many times in the past 3+ months but they don’t respond there as well.

Too many wannabe users:

Foursquare is definitely not the first internet app who haven’t responded to me so I decided to give them the benefit of doubt and continued using/checking into Foursquare. I realised in due course that I was repeatedly being ousted as Mayor from a couple of locations and these were places where I used to check-in multiple times a day. While that got me suspicious, I did not take much heed. However, something that happened 3 days back was the last straw. On Sunday (May 16th), I was ousted as the Mayor of ICICI Bank. It is common knowledge that ICICI Bank, India’s biggest private bank is closed on Sundays and no one in his right senses would go to a private bank on a Sunday. That being the case, how is it then possible that I was ousted on a Sunday?

I realised then that there are many wannabe users on Foursquare who in their quest to become Mayors, check in at places even if they don’t really go there. I assume again that many would have noticed such wannabe users in all cities/locations.

I know Foursquare is an awesome app but the Foursquare team should realise that the app is as strong as its weakest link – its users. Foursquare should bring about better monitoring/moderating systems to ensure that the system is clean. Replying to genuine emails and using the genuine crowd to weed away the bad ones could be a start. Also, when you are present on Twitter/provide your email id on your website, users/public WILL expect you to respond to their queries. Not responding is a big no no.

For now, I’ve quit Foursquare – I still haven’t deleted my account yet, I’m not sure if that’s possible so you can call it a long long sabbatical. I’d love to get back on Foursquare if and only if they sort themselves out.

Till then, Goodbye Foursquare!

Hi!, If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Previously, we wrote about Bulkr, a program that lets you download Flickr photos is bulk.

Now here’s another one – Downloadr.

Downloadr Downloads Flickr Photos in Bulk – Can Back Up All Your Photos and Favourites

Downloadr is full featured download manager for Flickr photographs. It finds and downloads the largest size of the photo that is available.
Downloadr does not require you to log into your Flickr account to browse and download photos. However, if you want to use some of the more advanced features, like a backup of all your photos, then you’ll have to sign in.

Downloadr isn’t a fancy looking application – but it’s extremely functional. Browsing photos is extremely simple and efficient, and you can even read the EXIF tags on the photos:

.

Downloadr Features

Downloadr has a whole lot of features (as listed on the website)

• Searches photos by
  • Fulltext
  • User
  • Tags
  • Place
  • Set
  • Date
  • Interestingness
  • Group
  • Favorites
• Automatically downloads largest avaiable size
• Authenticates with flickr to download private photos
• Can create a backup of all your photos with just a few clicks
• Writes EXIF and IPTC data so titles, tags and location are preserved
• Fully integrates support for linkr
• Updates automatically
• Is free!

Download Downloadr

Downloadr is free of cost and runs on Windows. You can grab a copy of it from here.

(Note that Downloadr requires the .NET framework to be installed on your computer)

Never thought anything could beat Google as the most visited site in the US, didn’t youi? Even for a short while…
But now Facebook has surpassed Google – as the US of A’s most visited website this week.

Previously, Facebook would get more visits than Google on holidays – it happened on Christmas day ’09 and on New Years’ day. It also overtook Google on the weekend of March 6th and 7th.

However, this week, Facebook saw massive growth from the same time last year – with a whopping 185% increase in the number of visits, compared to Google’s paltry increase of 9% over last year.

Heather Dougherty of Hitwise Intelligence tell us this with a chart:

Facebook’s exponential growth over the past year is very evident, and if Google wants to keep up with their “Most visited site in the US” label, they’re going to have to do something about it.

Google’s newly released Buzz social networking services integrates right into your mailbox and other Google services. It’s not something that’s going to overthrow Facebook yet, but looks promising.

However, if you’re like me, you don’t want unnecessary clutter in your inbox. An inbox is an inbox and shoudl be used for sending a receiving email. Why should Google shove a social networking service down my throat?

And then there’s the privacy concern.

How to Delete your Google Buzz Presence

If you’re content with just removing Buzz from your mailbox, you can just check the “Do not show Google Buzz in Gmail” on the settings page. This hides Buzz from your mailbox, though you can still use it from your phone.

However, if you want to completely delete your Buzz profile and posts, here’s what you do.

• Click the “Settings” link on the right top corner of GMail
• Navigate to the “Buzz” tab
• Click the button that says “Disable Google Buzz” in red.

  

• You will be shown a confirmation page:

  

• To delete, just click “Yes, delete my profile and posts”

And your Buzz account is gone.

Note This action will also delete your Google public profile. Thus, if you rely on your Google Profile for things like search engine listings, it’s not wise to do this.

Why did you delete your Buzz account? Let us know in the comments.

For all you Twitterers out there – by default, Twitter only allows you to send a direct message to one person at a time. But what if you want to send the same DM to multiple users?

Send multiple DMs on Twitter with TweetGuru

TweetGuru has a free twitter service that allows you to send direct messages to multiple people at the same time.
Use it if you want to say something to a group of people, or want to thank multiple users.

Using this service is simple. Just go to the TweetGuru site, and click “Sign in with Twitter”.
All you have to do then is to allow TweetGuru access to your Twitter account, and you can start sending multiple DMs.

To send a direct message to multiple users, fill the “IDs” field with a list of users, separated by commas. The maximum number of recipients you can set now is limited to 12.

Fill the “Tweet Message” field with the contents of the message you want to send to the list of people above.
Once you’re done, just hit the “Send Multi DM” button and your direct message is sent to all the persons on the list.
[via Techie Buzz]

Very often, we sit down at our browser intending to get some work done – writing an important email, blogging an article, looking up some information. What actually happens, however, is exactly what is described here:

You sit down at the computer, and you swear you’ll be productive. Next thing you know, it’s twelve hours later. You’ve checked your email, updated your Facebook status, browsed the trending topics on Twitter, read your RSS feeds, looked up your favorite band on Wikipedia, vanity googled yourself, cyber-stalked your ex, looked at all your high-school crushes’ Facebook photos, and lost a week’s pay playing online poker. What you haven’t done is WORK.

So how do you overcome this?

Chrome Extension StayFocusd Limits Access to Time Wasting sites

StayFocusd is an extension for Google Chrome that helps you stay focused on the work at hand. How does it do that?
It simply takes a list of sites that you have determined to be time-wasters, and does not permit more access to them than a pre-determined time.

For example, you can configure the extension such that your access to Facebook and Twitter is limited to no more than half an hour a day. So if you try to access these sites for more than this time period, the extension will block you so that you can get back to the work you’re supposed to be doing.

The extension is extremely customisable, allowing you to block only specific sites, domains, or subdomains.

“That means,” writes the extension developer, “you can block delicious.com, while still allowing access to delicious.com/save so you can add new bookmarks. Or you can block Google.com/Reader while still having access to the rest of Google’s sites. Or you can block the entire Digg.com domain, and recapture 4-6 hours of wasted time per day.”

Download the extension for Google Chrome here.

Browsing through photos on Facebook is extremely irritating. The interface is bad, and very slow. Unfortunately, Facebook is the place where all your friends post their photos.

Well, if you’re using a Mac, there’s a program just for you, called PhotoBook.

Photobook – a Facebook Photo Browsing app for your Mac

Photobook is a desktop application for OSX that allows you to browse Facebook photos without Facebook’s ugly interface.

[image courtesy Download Squad

The app’s site lists the following features:

• View photos of friends or albums on a single page.
• Quickly view photos with tags and other information all in the same window.
• Watch slideshows with amazing transitions.
• Import photos or entire albums into iPhoto with one click.
• Filter through photos or albums instantly with as-you-type search.

Photobook is a free download from Caffeinated Cocoa, and runs on OSX Tiger and above.
It’s an open source application, so you can download the source code from it’s Google Code page.