foursquare

On this week's Digital City, we discover some new fallout from the no-Flash-on-the-iPad issue, then spend some quality time with the long-delayed superthin Adamo XPS laptop.

We do a quick survey to find out where we've earned foursquare mayorships (here's a hint: they're all bars), and then check the official office March Madness standings in our office pool. Let's just say that coin-flipping to pick his teams may not have been Scott's finest moment.

Finally, we've got some more video games to give away. This week, it's racing game MotoGP 09/10 … Read more

We already knew that in the heated battle among location-based social-networking start-ups, Foursquare already had Ashton Kutcher on its team. Turns out it also has "Jersey Shore" star "DJ Pauly D," one of a handful of MTV and VH1 celebrities who are featured in a new marketing campaign that MTV Networks has inked with the pumped-up Foursquare.

(Serious question: Has this start-up jumped the shark already?)

The partnership tests a new kind of Foursquare account known as "Celebrity Mode," in which a prominent Foursquare user (ahem, Ashton) can choose to share "check-ins" … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Has Twitter finally met its match? At the South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival here this week, some would say the answer is yes.

With SXSWi in its final hours, a rumored 15,000 geeks have spent the last five days engaged in a never-ending series of panels, discussions, parties, and late-night prowling around.

Given that this group of people is on the digital cutting edge, SXSWi has for years been seen as the proving ground for social media applications. Make it here and you've got a shot at mainstream success. Fail to impress those at "South-by&… Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Disco lights. Bubble machines. Big-name DJs. Ashton Kutcher.

Those are just a smattering of the things you would have seen on Monday night in downtown Austin, Texas, where two of the most talked-about parties of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) were happening simultaneously. These would be, of course, the respective parties thrown by Foursquare and Gowalla, two start-ups offering very similar "geolocation" services. And at SXSWi, where everyone wants to know where everyone else is in instant real-time, this kind of social-networking app is going to be big.

Most people expected that SXSWi would see … Read more

Veronica Belmont and Ben Huh join us on stage to talk about the brewing war between Apple and Google, pay walls on the web... and we also wage tiny cute little wars on each other as well.

Gowalla Tops Foursquare at SXSW Web Awards (But Benson Smokes 'em All) http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/03/sxsw-web-awards/

Google admits Buzz mistakes, tries again at SXSW http://venturebeat.com/2010/03/14/google-admits-buzz-mistakes-tries-again-at-sxsw/

Web guru Tim Bray takes Google Android job http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000423-264.html… Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--It would be very clear to an uninitiated bystander at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) this week that the annual nerdstravaganza is full of people talking about a zillion location-based social-networking applications.

There are the various campaigns and tie-ins for rival check-in services Foursquare and Gowalla, the local-deals promo from iPhone app Whrrl, and the litany of "where is everyone?" mash-ups perhaps best personified by Vicarious.ly, an uber-aggregator of Foursquare and Gowalla check-ins from Austin as well as just about every other sort of social-media updates coming out of SXSWi. Developed by SimpleGeo, another … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--With thousands of people descending here for this week's South by Southwest festival--most of whom are planning on nightly party-hopping--it can be vital to RSVP to the endless string of sponsored shindigs.

The party invites come in batches, and it can be a serious mental task to keep up with the ones that require reservations. And that's to say nothing of the dozens of spur-of-the-moment booze-and-conversation fests that pop up on Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, and other social networks. Yet many attendees are so busy with their wall-to-wall panel schedules, business meetings, lobbyconning, and other engagements, that making … Read more

With the days leading up to this year's South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi) turning into hours, all eyes are on two scrappy rival start-ups, Foursquare and Gowalla, which both want to use the Austin, Texas digital-culture bash as a strategic playing field. They're the two most talked about start-ups in location-based social networking--using GPS on a mobile device to "check in" to places around you and announce it to your friends--and neither company wants to lose out to the other.

But in the real geolocation wars, these start-ups may be little more than toy soldiers. … Read more

"We're going to be giving away, literally, hundreds of tacos," Josh Williams, founder of mobile networking start-up Gowalla, said to CNET in an interview last week about his company's plans for the annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi), which runs March 12-16 in Austin, Texas.

"We're bringing, like, playground-style balls and chalk," said Dennis Crowley, the co-founder of Gowalla rival Foursquare. "You'll be able to win prizes at ad-hoc foursquare games that you see around the convention center."

Eighteen months ago, neither Gowalla nor Foursquare existed. But their similar &… Read more