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Winnipeg Free Press - February 11/10
AFTER waiting a couple of months longer than most major Canadian cities, Winnipeg has finally seen the much-anticipated launch of fledgling location-based friend finder/city guide/mobile game Foursquare.
While the first version of Foursquare was strategically rolled out in select cities, the mobile phone-based social-networking site can now be used anywhere you can get a cell signal.
Considering the use of Foursquare has skyrocketed in the past two months (user numbers have tripled) and the fact that your friends list from Facebook and people you follow on Twitter are easily cross-referenced for Foursquare accounts, you are probably going to start to get a bunch of invites to join.
“We had a lot of trouble explaining Dodgeball to people until Friendster came along. Then it was as simple as ‘like Friendster for your cellphone.’ With Foursquare, as much as I hate the comparison, it’s easy to explain it as ‘like Twitter for your social life,’” explains founder Dennis Crowley.
More than a social-networking community that lets you know what your friends are up to and the spots they’re visiting, it’s a crowdsourced city guide that encourages you to explore your town and visit places you haven’t been. It’s also is a mobile game that rewards you for getting involved by adding new locations, checking in at different spots and discovering your city. A big part of Crowley’s vision is that everyday activities — from your commute to work to buying groceries — unlocks “contextually relevant information,” tips, tricks and thoughts sourced directly from people you know. Crowley hopes that Foursquare will “make people more aware of the cities they live in and motivate you to do things you wouldn’t normally do.”
Oldmedianewtricks.com’s Daniel Honigman’s has put together an etiquette guide to help you navigate the ins and outs of location-based services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt. From helpful hints about crowdsourcing to more obvious tips — such as not getting obsessed with keeping up with other Squares (4S users) — this guide is a good place to start after you have set up your account to get the most of your Foursquare experience.
Don’t let the fact that you don’t yet have a GPS-enabled cellphone keep you from signing up. You can still check in at locations around the city using your phone’s web browser and entering the address of where you are into Foursquare’s mobile site.
DESPITE a poor showing on Iron Chef recently, Michael Smith is still one of Canada’s best-known celebrity chefs. From his free-wheeling Chef at Home series to his Anthony Bourdain-inspired Chef Abroad, Smith is a constant on Food Network Canada.
Inspired by the blog/book/film Julie & Julia, Genevieve Epp decided to cook her way through Smith’s The Best of Chef at Home and document the ups and downs online. During the early part of the challenge, Epp has already tackled a brined turkey, molten chocolate cakes and other culinary delights. She recently met up with Smith in Toronto to make the only recipe that appears in all four of his cook books, a potato bacon cheddar tart.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 11, 2010 E3
