4E SUNDAY 08-09-09 F BLACK CYAN MAGENTA YELLOW

4E twincities.com St. Paul Pioneer Press Sunday 8-9-2009

CONTINUED FROM 1E
points, for what? In that regard, it is absurd.”

> Foursquare But he adds: “You can’t underestimate how

Kaeti Hinck of St. Paul was the mayor of 20
local places at press time. These included
Highland Park haunts like a Lunds grocery, a
Starbucks, the Chatterbox Pub, Punch
Neapolitan Pizza and a Bruegger’s bagel joint.
“Guilty,” said Hinck when asked about her
massive use of the service. “I might have a bit
of a Foursquare problem.”
Sarah Burt of Minneapolis was the mayor of
the Midtown Global Market, among about 20
other places, and says, “I take my mayorships
very seriously.”
Burt is a regular at the Minneapolis shop-
ping and dining complex with its array of inde-
pendently owned businesses in what was once
a Sears store. She has harnessed Foursquare
as a means to sing the place’s praises and pro-
vide guidance to confused newcomers.
Foursquare users who arrive at the Midtown
Global Market and pull up Foursquare on their
phones will instantly benefit from Burt’s expe-
rience, via tips she has plugged into the ser-
vice’s database. Among them:
l Tasty tip: Visit Salty Tart & get a package of
their Take & Bake Chocolate Chip Cookies. Eat
one or two at a time, fresh & hot. Best gift you
could give yourself today.
l Story tip: Stop by Manny’s Tortas for a Mex-
ican sandwich & ask him how he got started in
’99.
l Girl tip: Go to Rituals & a.) meet Antonnana.
She’s the witchiest, coolest person you’ll ever
meet. b.) buy the Shea Body Butter. Amazing. If
u wouldn’t use it get it for ur mom.
l Tasty tip: Create a meal in your head, buy the
produce at the Produce Exchange & then ask
the cheese lady at Grassroots Gourmet to rec-
ommend the perfect cheese. She’s amazing.
Foursquare is most useful in an urban core
where tech-savvy foodies roam (the service is
active in 20 U.S. cities and Amsterdam) and typ-
ically works best in the evening. But it has been
known to be a lifesaver in unexpected places.
Eric Bass of Brooklyn Park was getting his
hair cut in Champlin on a weekday and felt his
tummy grumble. Pulling out his iPhone, he got
a lead on a fab barbecue joint nearby.
Foursquare even suggested which sauce to try
with his ribs.
OTHER SERVICES
Foursquare isn’t the only way to get foodie
wisdom on a handheld device. OpenTable,
Urbanspoon and Yelp, among others, give users
of iPhones and other mobile gadgets access to
dining and drinking intelligence while on the
move.
But Foursquare adds a social element that
others lack. Like the Twitter messaging serv-
ice, which is also popular on mobile devices,
Foursquare lets users tally lists of their friends.
They can then use the service for keeping in
Kaeti Hinck, a magazine editor from St. Paul, uses Foursquare, an application on her iPhone,
to let other users know where she is drinking, eating, shopping or hanging out.
touch with those buddies and exchanging
rapid-fire information about where to chow
down or throw back a tall cold one.
When users “check in” at their favorite food
joints, for instance, all their Foursquare friends
will know and can initiate interaction via texts,
e-mails or voice calls. This is similar to the loca-
tion-aware Loopt, Brightkite and Google Lati-
tude services, which also allow users to find out
where their buds are (minus the emphasis on
food and drink).
Foursquare users can also broadcast random
“shouts” to their friends who are then able to
respond via the service.
Foursquare is often seen as a cozier, more inti-
mate alternative to Twitter, as that service is
increasingly populated by mega-celebrities and
others.
“When I first joined Twitter a couple of years
ago, it was smaller and more focused” on a
small group of friends, said Hinck of St. Paul.
But now, with hundreds of Twitter users fol-
lowing her, “I don’t necessarily want everyone
knowing what I’m doing at all times.
Foursquare is more intimate” and better suited
for a narrower social purpose, Hinck said.
This intimacy is also one of Foursquare’s
potential downfalls.
The service — a successor to a location-aware
Dodgeball service that Google acquired in 2005,
only to abruptly shut down earlier this year —
has yet to blast off the way Twitter and Face-
book have. Those actively using Foursquare in
the metro area at any time appear to number in
the hundreds at best. (Foursquare does not dis-
close Twin Cities-based subscriber statistics.)
But the service’s popularity does seem to be on
much people enjoy playing a game, having a
contest, reading a list.”
DeRusha adds that “there’s no shortage of
writing on food matters” in the Twin Cities. “It
seems like everyone has a food or restaurant
site.” But he adores garnering insight about
food and drink from those he knows and trusts.
“I like logging on and seeing where all my
friends are,” he says. “To me, that is appealing.
I can see where they are eating and drinking,
and to me, that is helpful.”
Some see Foursquare as a business opportu-
nity. The Heavy Table (heavytable.com), a local
food-related site with lots of Twin Cities com-
petition, has seized on Foursquare as a way to
stand out.
“We’ve retooled several dozen of our (restau-
rant) reviews and put them up as Foursquare
tips,” said Heavy Table producer and co-
founder Aaron Landry.
Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley said
the service’s business opportunities are only
now becoming apparent. It has begun encour-
PIONEER PRESS: CHRIS POLYDOROFF aging merchants to reward active users, includ-
ing the establishment’s mayors, with discounts
or freebies, for instance.
“We’re just starting to pursue those opportu-
nities,” Crowley said. “Right now, it’s guerrilla-
style marketing, reaching out to venues
a gradual ascent. through friends of friends.”
GAME ON Julio Ojeda-Zapata can be reached at jojeda@
pioneerpress.com and 651-228-5467. Get more
For Foursquare’s devotees, the service pro- personal tech at twincities.com/techtestdrive and
vides a fresh fun factor. Its creators have built in yourtechweblog.com. Follow twitter.com/jojeda.
a variety of game-style features, which encour-
age its use among ardent adherents. They can
rack up points each time they check in at a local
establishment (which might also include gyms
and other unlikely locales). Concerted activi-
ty also unlocks an assortment of digital
badges, which have become points of FOURSQUARE
pride among Foursquare fanatics. What: A mobile-friendly online service
“Points and badges are an
that blends Twitter-style social networking with
incentive to get out to more
and more places,” says foodie intelligence and a bit of competitive gaming.
Erica Mauter, a Minneapo- Why: Find your friends. Find places to eat and drink.
lis urban-culture expert
Have fun!
at cinna.mn and
fresh.mn. “It’s like put- How: Foursquare is best used on an Apple iPhone or iPod
ting new patches on Touch with the service’s app installed (as the bulk of users
your backpack or
access it) but can also be harnessed via mobile browsers on
earning merit
badges.” other smartphones or on laptop or desktop computers.
Such pursuits are Where: playfoursquare.com
lost on nonusers, as
WCCO-TV person- Lingo: Rack up “points” and unlock “badges” by hitting places
ality and avid to eat and drink. Become “mayor” of an establishment if you
Foursquare user visit often enough. “Check in” to an eatery or watering hole via
Jason DeRusha can
Foursquare so all your friends know where you are. Look for
attest.
“My wife always user “tips” about where to eat and drink. Add those tips to
asks me what is the your “to-do list” for future reference. Blast out a “shout” to all
point of this, and she’s your Foursquare friends. Check a Foursquare“leaderboard”
right,” he said. “You’re to see which local users are the most active.
checking in, getting

Technology } Tech Test Drive

Posterous makes the blog). I can even autopost

my material to blogs on other
platforms, including Tumblr.
As a social-media power tool,
came to that (which is seeming
unlikely given its growth).
Posterous has room for
improvement. Its design is
me use different autopost
options for each of the blogs in
my account on the service —
the founders promise this

multimedia-style blogging Posterous has gained consid-

erable geek cred in recent
months. Such tech luminaries
as Leo Laporte and Andy
clean and appealing but not
very customizable, unlike
Tumblr, which has lots of
themes for changing the look
problem will be addressed in
the near future, as well.
Meanwhile, Posterous is get-
ting built into a growing num-

surprisingly easy Ihnatko have harnessed the

Blogging can be a pain, espe-
cially for those trying to show-
case their “rich media” (video,
audio and photos) on their
Web-based journals. There is
often so much futzing involved
that many post such content to
blogs rarely, and most never
bother.
So a service called Posterous
got my attention with a prom-
ise to make multimedia-style
blogging ridiculously easy.
Dang if it doesn’t deliver. The
secret? You simply publish to
the blog by e-mailing stuff to it.
Want to post a picture? Just
e-mail the image to an easy-to-
remember Posterous address
and it will appear in a blog post
in short order. Want to publish
multiple photos? Attach them
all to an e-mail and they get
organized on your blog into an
attractive, easy-to-navigate
album in no time.
Video? Bam! It is posted in a
playable window. Audio?
Wham! A cool, click-to-play
interface shows up in a blog
post. Multipage Word file or
PDF document? Hello, it
appears in an attractive, inter-
active window via the Scribd
service. Web links to YouTube
videos or Google maps get
turned into the appropriate,
interactive viewers in your
blog posts.
This is all so effortless it has
turned me into a blogging ani-
mal in recent weeks. For part
of that time, I was on vacation,
when my wife frowned on me
posting to my regular blog
instead of helping her con-
struct a retaining wall in front
of our house.
Little did she know I was
bloggin’ away, right there on
the work site. It was a breeze:
I’d snap a batch of photos or a
video with an Apple iPhone
3GS, then e-mail it off with a
headline (composed in the
mail subject field) and bits of
post-body text (written in the
Julio
Ojeda-
Zapata
mail body field). I was back to
helping my wife with the
heavy lifting within a minute
or two.
I have posted dozens of times
to a public Posterous blog at
jojeda.posterous.com, with
goodies like YouTube videos,
shots of dishes I’ve cooked, sci-
fi book reviews and more. A
second, private blog intended
for far-off relatives has pic-
tures and videos of my family,
among other not-for-the-public
stuff.
I’d often toyed
with the
idea of cre-
ating a per-
sonal blog for
publishing
random tidbits;
Posterous
pushed me to do
it.
This posting ease
alone will not make
Posterous insanely
great, a phrase bor-
rowed from Apple —
appropriate since one of
the co-founders is an
Apple alumnus. After all,
e-mail-based posting is
possible with other blog
platforms, but Posterous’
added magical element is its
“autoposting” features, mean-
ing it can be configured to for-
ward your stuff for viewing in
other places. Pictures can be
pushed to Flickr or Facebook,
for instance. Videos go to
YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr or
Facebook. You can alert Twit-
ter followers to your posts, as
well. Posterous supports more
than 20 services.
This makes Posterous more
appealing to me than, say,
Tumblr, another service
aimed at making blogging sim-
ple. Posterous has become my
central, super-convenient con-
duit for updating Facebook
friends, Flickr contacts, Twit-
ter followers and so on about
what’s happening in my life,
with minimal time and effort.
I can do this selectively, with
variations on the e-mail
address I use for posting. A
post@posterous.com address
will send stuff to my blog and
everywhere else while, say,
twitter+facebook@posterous.
com moves stuff only to
Twitter and Face-
book (as well
as to
service for their supplemen-
tary blogging — both were in
China recently and used the
service to easily post and auto-
post pictures, audio and video
via their iPhones.
At least one top blogger,
Steve Rubel of the Edelman
public-relations giant, has
migrated entirely to Posterous
and said he is blogging more
often as a result. While Poster-
ous is still a tiny firm — the
founders were operating it out
of their apartments until not
long ago — Rubel said he is
comfortable moving to it
because his posts can be
exported and trans-
ferred elsewhere
if it ever
of a tumblelog; customization
is coming, Posterous told me.
So is an iPhone app, which will
offer an alternate, clever
means for uploading. (Poster-
ous did not want me to say
more but sent me a test ver-
sion of this app, which I love
and will write about soon.)
I keep running into bother-
some site glitches, such as
inconsistencies in how wide
pictures appear within blog
posts.
Posterous also has annoying
limitations, such as not letting
ber of Web-authoring tools —
notably, the many Twitter
apps used on computers and
handheld devices for tweeting.
Users of such apps can desig-
nate Posterous as the place
pictures get uploaded whenev-
er a tweet includes an image
link, and that imagery appears
on the Web as a blog post. Try
it with Tweetie or Seesmic
Desktop on computers, or with
Twitterific, Twitterville and
Simply Tweet on iPhones.
So where does all of this
leave me as a blogger and
social-media addict? I toyed
with the idea of moving my
blogging (including the tech
kind I do for the Pioneer Press)
entirely onto Posterous but
discarded the notion because I
need a standard blog that can
be completely customizable
and tricked out with interac-
tive widgets and so on.
But I’m sticking with Poster-
ous for now as a means of per-
sonal “lifestreaming” via
quick, often-image-heavy
posts about my life outside of
the office and the tech realm.
Some is for public consump-
tion, and much is for Mom’s
eyes only.
Julio Ojeda-Zapata can be
reached at jojeda@
pioneerpress.com and
651-228-5467. Get more
personal tech at
twincities.com/
techtestdrive and
yourtechweblog.com.
Follow
twitter.com/jojeda.