The last few weeks the account posted teaser pictures of gear and rehearsals.  This week they cleverly used Twitter to provide clues to a somewhat secret warm-up show in London ahead of their first shows back this weekend at Isle of Wight and RockNess.  They first announced they were in London and then posted a play on their logo with the name Venison.  A photo of Camden Lock came next and fans put the pieces together and found a band called “Venison” on the schedule at Dingwalls located in Camden.

It didn’t take long for numerous music websites like NME and Brooklyn Vegan to spread the word.  This is a great example of using Twitter to generate instant buzz.  It’s an interactive and fun way to engage with fans everywhere and all it took was a couple pictures.  I hope they do a show or two like this in the U.S. this year.

I’m intrigued by it because it’s simple, visual, social and nicely complements other location/real-time services like Foursquare and Twitter.  Since many locations on Foursquare revolve around food and drink, Eat.ly adds a nice visual context to the great food you find.  Eat.ly nicely integrates with Foursquare and Twitter, so you can update your Eat.ly stream and check-in/tweet at the same time.

There is also a health component to Eat.ly where users can rank how healthy a meal looks.  I’m curious to see where they take this idea.  I think there is an opportunity to provide additional functionality around logging calories, daily food group servings and maybe other metrics from various dieting programs.  It could be a very helpful tool for people who closely track what they eat.

Eat.ly is well positioned to take advantage of a growing trend as well.  The New York Times just ran a piece about a growing number of people who keep photo food diaries.  Unfortunately I didn’t see Eat.ly mentioned in the article.

Eric Friedman, one of the people behind Eat.ly, posted about the project recently and discusses how it’s easier than ever to start a small web project.  He blogs regularly at Marketing.FM.

I thought the streaming issues might be caused by the wireless connection to the PC.  In a perfect world I would have it plugged in with a network cable, but the layout at home prevents this.  Furthermore, I’m able to stream content through a web browser from Netflix and Hulu with pretty good consistency on the same PC.

The UI at first glance looks nice and slick.  Everything is well designed to display on a TV and be viewed from across the room.  In my case I only have a mouse connected to the PC and find navigation to be difficult.  Mouse clicks don’t always register and clicking back to previous screens often doesn’t work.  I also find the worst scenario is when you start a streaming video, it begins to chop, you try to click back to stop the video, the click doesn’t register and you are essentially stuck and have to completely restart the PC.  In my case this hard reboot sent my PC into a cycle of endless blue screens and reboots.

In short, my second go around with the new beta version wasn’t any better than the first.  Disappointed, I left a little frustration out on Twitter and to my surprise I heard back from Boxee’s support account.  We had a short conversation and I sent the log file to them.  I really like how social media tools are helping customers and businesses connect like this and was impressed that Boxee was out there listening for customer feedback.

What Is Foursquare?

Foursquare describes itself as part friend finder, social city guide and nightlife game.  So what does that mean?

Friend Finder

• Users “check-in” to venues from a mobile device.  A venue can be any place people go like a restaurant, bar, museum, park, etc.
• You add friends to your Foursquare account and can then see each other’s check-ins.  Makes meeting up with people on the fly easy!
• Foursquare is integrated with Twitter and Facebook, so you can blast your check-ins out to a broader audience if you want.

Social City Guide

• Each venue on Foursquare has its own profile page that shows all kinds of details about it.
• Users can leave behind short tips at venues telling future users good things to order, try, do, etc.  It’s fun to check these when you visit a place for the first time.
• Venues can create promotions for Foursquare users.  Think freebies and discounts!

Nightlife Game

• Users that check-in at a venue the most often become the Mayor.  Creates an instant incentive for repeat visits.
• Check-ins also earn users points and unlock badges for certain actions.  As Foursquare evolves I think the points will become more meaningful beyond bragging rights.

How Do You Play?

Foursquare is meant to be played from your phone while you’re on the go.  There are Foursquare apps for the iPhone, Android devices, Palm devices and one is on the way for Blackberry too.  Users with phones that don’t have an app can use Foursquare’s mobile page instead (http://foursquare.com/mobile/).  Finally, if you are like me, and don’t have a smartphone, you can still check-in with standard text messages.  The apps provide a more robust user experience, but texting still gets the job done.

To use text messaging send a text to 50500 in this form:

@ Ace Bar ! Playing skeeball

The @ designates the venue name and the ! designates your shout, which is a short message you can include with your check-in.  Note that you need to text in the exact name of the venue for the check-in to register correctly.  You can search venues from Foursquare’s main page to get the exact name.  If the check-in is successful you should get a confirmation message back from Foursquare.

For Businesses

If you’re a local restaurant, bar, etc. you should definitely consider running a promotion on Foursquare.  It’s free to run an offer and can really entice users to stop by.  Find out more and sign-up for promotions here:  http://foursquare.com/businesses/.

For Developers

Foursquare recently opened up an API to developers for building applications to interact with Foursquare.  Developers are already creating some neat software like Mob Zombies.  See more information and examples here:  http://foursquare.com/developers/.

Similar to how Twitter grew in popularity last year and everyone was asking if you tweet, I think this year we’ll see the same thing happen with Foursquare.  If you have any questions about how it works leave a comment below, check Foursquare’s help page or leave a question at their Get Satisfaction site.  Go play!

First post.  Let’s see where this goes.  If you’re viewing this post then you made my poor Frankenstein server that hosts this site groan.  It’s cobbled together out of old spare parts, but it gets the job done for now and is proof that there is always some life left in old computer parts.

The point of building the server and this site is twofold.  First, I wanted to gain some tangible, hands-on experience with Linux and web hosting/administration by utilizing the LAMP software stack.  Secondly, I wanted to start blogging about technology and experimenting with all the great social media services popping up all over the place.  This site will serve as the playground for these activities.

On a complete side note, this is a great time of year to check out Young Frankenstein and the entire Mel Brooks catalogue.