Here starts a story about the geo-location tool Foursquare.  I was a casual Foursquare user for months and found it fun; the special offers at businesses wasn’t a bad deal either.  It made it worth my while to use the tool though I didn’t have any personal friends of mine using the mobile tool.  I finally recruited a few friends to jump on board and the fun began.  Racing for points, vying for mayorship of our most renowned academic buildings.  Finally my two friends, Mikey and Josh, both used it extensively to track their movements just a few days ago, boy was I in for a surprise.

I checked into Harvey Hall for my 9 a.m. statistical anaylsis course, after 5 minutes of sitting down I get an alert notifying me Mikey just checked into Harvey Hall as well.  “Oh, cool” I thought to myself, maybe I’ll run into him.  I thought nothing of it and left at 10 p.m. to get some lunch at our student center on-campus. 

I checked into the student center at 10:08 a.m. to sit down for lunch, shortly thereafter Mikey checked in as well.  My eyes peeled the room looking for Mikey.  However, the student center is a big place so not seeing him eating wasn’t a surprise.  I ate my quesadilla and kept an eye out for Mikey on my way out around 11 a.m.

I returned to my dorm and awaited for my 2:30 p.m. sociological principles course in Harvey Hall.  I made my way up the hill to Harvey Hall, I checked in for the second time today and almost instantanelousy, Mikey checked in as well.  “Whoa, this is getting creepy!  Is Mikey stalking me?”  I chuckled and went to my class, again I didn’t see Mikey in the building as it is very large with my points of exit and entry. 

I wen’t to Price Commons, the main eatery/cafeteria for on-campus students as I do every day at 4:15 p.m.  Heading to the “Commons” is a habit I do every weekday and I have never seen Mikey there before, until this day. I sat down with friends to eat my supper and in walks Mikey no less than 2 minutes later.  “Okay, now I’m really getting freaked out” I said.  How could this be happening?  Is a friend playing a joke or is this a effect of using Foursqaure with my social network of friends.  Don’t jump the gun, the freakiest situation hasn’t happened yet!

Later in the evening my significant other and I decided to have a very late dinner at the local Applebee’s (shameless plug here) for half-off appetizers.  The local Applebee’s closes at 11 p.m. and we arrived at 10:30 p.m on a Tuesday night.  There were no cars in the parking lot except for the four cars of those who were working.  “Awesome, we will get our food really fast!”  We were about to be seated when I look on the window and who do I see?  Josh and Mikey among other friends are walking in 2 minutes behind us, my phones buzzes as they both check-in at Applebee’s with me.  My mind was bugging out over how this could be happening.   Tuesday night, late, miles from our campus and here they are, again! Ahhhhhhhhh!

So what should I make of all this?  Mikey and Josh were not following me on purpose, who has time for that?  They weren’t checking in from alternate locations just to freak me out as I verified them being at most of the places they said they were.  I think this lends to just how small our ‘world’ is.  We have all heard that phrase, “Small world we live in.”  I believe it to be true.  Most of us go through our day in our own little worlds and don’t realize how close we are to other in our own networks.  Foursquare amplifies these connections and it’s very interesting to see just how close you are to your network at all times of the day.  You may be right around the corner from your best friend or acquaintance and not even know it.

Tools like Foursqaure show just how close we all are.  Is my situation skewed a little? Yes, most of these happenings took place on a 4-year univeristy campus.  Could you stalk an avid Foursqaure user?  Absolutley.  However my generation feels much more comfortable with transperancy than previous generations.  Will I stop using it due to this odd day? Absolutley not. 

Foursquare is a great tool that gets its users out to explore their local communities in fun way.  Check out Foursqaure and learn more here.

For those who don’t know me personally, I’m an avid gamer on the PlayStation platform.  Microsoft fan boys need not haze!  When I purchased my PS3 long ago I knew I needed a headset.  Any real gamer must have a headset to communicate with fellow gamers.  I made due with a Mad Catz bluetooth headset for much of that time, and it was an okay peripheral.  The only problem I had was the audio in the ear piece was a little low.  I sure didn’t realize what I had been missing until I bought the official Sony PS3 headset.

Sony did not have a third-party company build a headset and slap their name on it, they built this headset in-house to their specs to match up with the PS3 perfectly.  This headset has two microphones, one on the end for your voice, and one facing outward to take in ambient noise and cancel it out leaving you with clean crisp audio.  Hands down, no contest, no one in the ball park, this headset has the best audio quality on the PS3 platform. 

The button layout on the headset are large and easy to use, even for my large hands.  It fits comfortably on my ear and causes no pain like other headsets I have used.  It comes with the dock you see in the picture above.  What is super cool about that is it will work as a mic even when it’s charging.  When docked, the microphone earpiece acts like a desktop microphone. 

Battery life is about 6-7 hours which is more than most gamers can last in one sitting.  Pairing it with your PS3 via the included USB cable gives you additional features as well.  It will show an on-screen battery indicator and a mute/un-mute icon and offer you a “HQ” audio mode. 

In conclusion, this headset is the top of the line in terms of PS3 headsets.  If your looking for a quality bluetooth ear piece for your system look no further and just drop the money once and be done.  Sony PlayStation hit a homerun with this one!

Price – $49.99

A research report from eMarketer proves 2009 to be the year that Baby Boomers jumped on the social media train.  2009 saw an explosion of growth with the older folks and consistent and steady growth for us young guns.   Check out the graphs below.

You can read a bit more on this newly release report  at Mahable.

Remember Tom Cruise in the film “Minority Report”?  Well we are almost there.  The only thing missing from the new Apple iPad is a HUD to interact with.

Read more about Steve Jobs’s new toy over at TechCrunch.

A recent article on Mashable reported that Google’s Chrome web browser has overtaken the 3rd spot in browser popularity.  This pushes Apple’s Safari back to 4th place.  Take a look at this graphic depicting market share between Safari and Chrome:

[image courtesy TheAppleBlog]

Some say it was a matter of time and I agree with them.  Google’s products are often raved over.  Most Google products are compatible with both PC’s and Macs.   This is because they are web-based apps like Google Docs, Google Voice etc.

Apple’s Safari browser is strongly associated with Apple and the Mac, for good reason.  That’s their browser, much like Microsoft’s Explorer.

Explorer has been tarnished with laggy performance and security holes all of which has been well publicized.  The public has lost trust in the pre-loaded browser, not to mention it has been stalled in innovation and keeping up with web standards.  What are PC users suppose to do?  Download the ‘arch-rival’ browser to the nemesis known as Apple?  Of course not!  It probably doesn’t even cross their mind as an option.  That leaves the highly popular Mozilla Firefox as the ‘fallback’ browser.  Firefox has become a huge success since its release in 2004.

There are two things users care about from their browser: speed and security.  This is something Firefox delivers on both fronts, but now they have new competition on their heels with Google Chrome.  Chrome is simple to use, the fastest browser confirmed in independent tests and also the most secure.  What could be causing this rapid gain in market share for the new browser?

Netbooks, plain and simple.  Anyone with half a brain will not use IE on their new netbook.  So they then consider Mozilla Firefox.  There is a problem; Firefox is very harsh on resources and doesn’t run the best on netbooks.  Where does that leave you?  Google Chrome!  It’s lightweight on resources and ultra-fast and secure.  The netbook explosion has definitely helped Chrome become a major player in the browser market.  With no end in sight to the netbook craze, Chrome will continue its upward swing in market share.

The social web is an evolving ball of our society’s thoughts and behaviors.  The awesome part of it, all that data can be cataloged and reviewed.  Below are the top social trends from 2009 on Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook

Twitter

Ever wonder how the Internet sees you?  What information would an Internet crawl bot would catalog about you?  Now you can find out!

The project is called Persona’s, and it’s  from MIT’s Media Lab.

Enter your name, and Personas scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person – to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data. The computational process is visualized with each stage of the analysis, finally resulting in the presentation of a seemingly authoritative personal profile.

The Persona’s project will crawl the Internet for articles and content that includes your name.  If you have a very common name, your results may be skewed for obvious reasons.  The project is far from perfect but it’s a neat little tool.  Watching the bot crawl content may be more fun than the results itself.  Give it a try!

Google is acquiring companies like I acquire candy on Halloween.  This raises some big questions like; is Google getting too big for itself?  They seem to be on a path to become another Microsoft or Apple, yea that big!  Let’s take a look at their latest reason to salivate, Yelp!

Yelp! is a community of restaurant/food fanatics who upload user reviews of eateries and restaurants.  From Bob’s Steaks just down the road to the most classy restaurants in New York City.

• Larry Dignan at ZDNet. Dignan predicts a dark scenario if the deal goes through: “See where this is going? Google is your friendly neighborhood local business gatekeeper. Google is already the gatekeeper for the big guys. The Google is a local content Borg. Resistance is futile. So is innovation. Any threat these days gets acquired.”

Larry brings up a valid point.  Google is becoming such a dominant force could it stifle innovation in the areas they are involved in?  Any start-up with any promise that could run with the big boys gets sucked up and purchased by Google.  Does this sound familiar?  Microsoft anyone?

David Coursey of PC World even published an article inserting the idea of Apple and Microsoft teaming up to take on Google.  I’m not the only one seeing the GOOG as a threat, am I?

I will be the first to admit I love Google.  They are one of the biggest and best tech companies in the world bar none. Their innovation, products, business ideals are all fantastic.  I use many Google products including, search, e-mail, maps, docs, wave, voice etc.  You name it, I probably use it.

Do we blame Google for their dominance and great business sense to this point?  Or do we blame everyone else who can’t step up and compete with Google?  I’m not sure which way the tide would go on that question.

2009 is coming to a close and the web went through radical transformation and progression as it always does.  Lots of buzz words we’re thrown around like cloud computing, real-time, geo-locate and streaming video. These changes have been occurring under our noses for the past 12 months and their evolution will continue.  Let’s first examine the issue of real-time.

Twitter and Facebook dueled for social supremacy in 2009 with Facebook the obvious front-runner.  Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO, stole some special sauce from Twitter by adding some more real-time interactivity with content and user status updates.  Users at first bucked at this change but is now becoming socially accepted among users.

Twitter had changes of its own by re-working their re-tweet system and adding server stability to their infrastructure.  Twitter often crippled as breaking news occurred around the world.

Twitter wasn’t the only big real-time dog hitting the interwebs hard in 2009.  Services like Brightkite, Foursquare and Latitude really took off as users need for ‘real-time geo awareness’ increased.  The ability to track your friends every movement and make stalking easier than ever before really is becoming more accepted in our society.  Perhaps the largest use of geo-location services is finding restaurants using services like Yelp.

Augmented realities are really taking off and will continue to do so in 2010.  Many iPhone applications are taking advantage of extremely accurate cell-phone GPS and built-in accelerometer technology, your phone not only knows where you are, but where your looking.  As you move down the street reviews and content pops up about restaurant reviews, in-store sales, lunch specials etc.

If there is one sure bet in 2010 it has to be mobile phone technology.  Mobile platforms are the future of personal computing and mobile technology will continue to advance into 2010 and well beyond.

Everyone is worried about the H1N1 flu this season.  This already in addition to the regular flu strain that kills thousands every year.  Google developed this trending product to track the spread of flu worldwide.

We have found a close relationship between how many people search for flu-related topics and how many people actually have flu symptoms. Of course, not every person who searches for “flu” is actually sick, but a pattern emerges when all the flu-related search queries are added together. We compared our query counts with traditional flu surveillance systems and found that many search queries tend to be popular exactly when flu season is happening. By counting how often we see these search queries, we can estimate how much flu is circulating in different countries and regions around the world. — Google Flu Trends

How accurate is it?  Good question.  I’ll let this graphic speak for itself.

This should be an interesting year to track the flu.  It is worth a bookmark in your browser.

Check out Google Flu Trends