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Lunchwalla Checks-In at Foursquare Not Gowalla

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For awhile I thought Lunchwalla which we featured not so long ago was related to Gowalla. So, It was quite surprising to know that the site which lets you organize everyday social events like breakfast, lunch, dinner, movies and more has integrated with Foursquare. So this means that aside from voting in on what to do, you can now check-in when you get to the events you helped organized.

If you’re a regular Foursquare user and have also used Lunchwalla before, this integration would complement each other now. Meaning, all the check-ins you make on the events you organized or helped organized through Lunchwalla will be counted to your quest for mayorship of the place where the event was held. This is in addition to the fact that your check-in appears on your Foursquare profile which you can also display as an update to your Facebook profile. It’s like hitting three social networking sites with one check-in.

Best of all, if you’ve got hooked into Lunchwalla since we’ve featured it on this blog, you must be earning Lunchwalla points right now.  Of course, you still remember that those Lunchwalla points can earn you some schwags from participating merchants, right?

And while we’re at it, the Foursquare – Lunchwalla integration also lets you import your Foursquare friends into your Lunchwalla contacts list. So, planning events and coordinating them with your friends is now easier.

Incidentally, Lunchwalla is holding a gig right now which might earn you free tickets to see Iron Man 2. So, if you haven’t checked Lunchwalla yet, this gig might entice you to start using Lunchwalla.

Opera Mini Gets More Downloads from iPhone Owners in March

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Opera’s latest State of the Mobile Web Report is showing some pretty interesting results for iPhone usage and global mobile handset trends. According to the report, the iPhone is now the third most used handset used by Opera Mini users worldwide. Even more interesting is the fact that the other top 20 mobile phones are either Nokia or Sony Ericsson phones.

The report also highlighted the fact that the iPhone is the number one device used by Opera Mini users in the United States. displacing the BlackBerry.  In addition, of the 10 countries using the Opera Mini, the United States and United Kingdom tops the countries where the iPhone is the most used device by Opera Mini users. This is pretty significant since Opera Mini for iPhone was only made available last month.

Going now to the global mobile statistics presented by Opera, in March 2010, Opera Mini had more than 55.2 million users, wherein 25.8 billion pages where viewed increasing page views by 17.4%. Opera Mini has also generated more than 396 million MB of data for oeprators worldwide. And the top countries for Opera Mini usage in 2010 include – Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, Nigeria, Vietnam, United Kingdom and the U.S.

Some pretty impressive stats for Opera Mini, right? Have you downloaded the latest version of Opera Mini on your mobile phone?  What is your phone’s mobile web browser if not Opera Mini?

Place Pages for Google Maps Now on Your Mobile Phone Too

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Sometime last year, Google introduced a feature in Google Maps called Place Pages which display relevant information about  places in Google Maps.  These Place Pages cover detailed information about businesses, points of interest, transit stations, neighborhoods, landmarks and cities all over the world. Now, those Place Pages are now optimized for mobile phones.

Place Pages for Mobile offer the same detailed information about different places you see on Google Maps, whenever available.  But this time, the display tab is optimized for mobile phone’s smaller screen estate.

The mobile service would be more useful if you’re out somewhere and you want to search for speficic information about a particular place – its exact location, customer ratings, opening hours as well as reviews from people who have gone to the said place. This will save you time and the trouble of checking out a place without knowing what you might encounter there.

Place Pages also gives you links to useful websites as well as a full screen dynamic map that you can pan and zoom, giving you a clearer picture of a place’s exact location.

Place Pages is currently optimized for Android phones and iPhones/iPod Touches in the U.S.

Who Says Foursquare Has No Business Potential?

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Don’t look now folks, but pretty soon,  your favorite restaurants and other business establishments might soon be offering various discounts, freebies and other promotional gigs in cooperation with Foursquare. Yes Foursquare, you it right?  This is because Foursquare has just launched a business strategy that encourages establishment owners to use its service to engage mobile customers with specials and give them the ability to track how their venues is performing over time – through venue analytics.

Foursquare Business provides simple self-service tools that would allow you, as a business manager, to cook up with various kinds of special gigs that would attract customers to your business establishments. Specifically Foursquare Business will let you created the following specials:

  • Mayor specials can be unlocked only by the Mayor of your venue (the user who has checked in the most in the last 60 days).
  • Count-based specials are unlocked when a user checks in a certain number of times.
  • Frequency-based specials are unlocked every so many check-ins.
  • Wildcard specials are always unlocked, but your staff has to verify some extra conditions before awarding the special.

What’s cool about this is that Foursquare has mobile apps in three major mobile platforms – Android, iPhone and BlackBerry. And Foursquare can use this mobile apps to send notices to potential customers nearby to possibly invite them to check out your Foursquare promotional gigs.

To use Foursquare’s business tools, all you need to do is claim your venue. Once you’ve done that you can have access to various Foursquare venue analytics tools that will let you view:

  • most recent visitors
  • most frequent visitors
  • the times of day people check in
  • total number of unique visitors
  • a histogram of check-ins per day

So, what are you waiting for? Get into Foursquare and claim your venue now before somebody else takes it.

Google Intros New Versions of Docs, Spreadsheets and Drawings

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Google is surely prepping up its online collaboration tools to become a formidable force in the cloud computing space.  Gradually being rolled out today are new versions of its Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Drawings online collaboration tools.

According to Google, the new versions of  these tools were completely rebuilt to give more flexibility, improved performance and better platform to allow them to develop more features quickly.

So new for Google Docs is a more responsive, real-time editing experience. The same features that Google Spreadsheets has right now which allows you to see character-by-character changes as you edit your documents. A new sidebar chat was also added to let you discuss documents with your colleagues as you work on documents. The new Google Docs architecture also brings forth improved document formatting with better import/export fidelity, revamped comment system, real margins and tab stops and improved image layout within documents.

Google has also enhanced its Spreadsheets tool with speed and performance boosts. It also now features formula for cell editing, auto-complete, drag and drop columns and simpler navigation between sheets.

Finally, Google is also rolling out a new standalone drawings editor that allows you to collaborate in real time on flow charts, designs, diagrams and other fun or business graphics. You can copy these stuff using the web clipboard to docs, spreadsheets and presentations or you can also share and publishe your drawings just like any Google docs files.

To try out these features, simply click on “New Version” at the top of any spreadsheet or go to “Document Settings” page and choose “New version of Google documents.”