As location-based services have begun to gain traction, one service in particular has stood out as the favorite - Foursquare. The service is simple - when you’re out and about, you ‘check-in’ at various locations, alerting the service and your friends of your whereabouts. The fun comes as you get points for various check-ins and unlock different ‘badges’, all of which are virtual. It’s pretty useless, but quite fun and addicting.
Unfortunately, since its launch, Symbian users have been suffering with the ultra-lame mobile site to try to check-in. The mobile site doesn’t detect your location, so you have to manually enter your venues, which is enough for most people to not even bother. Foursquare has released official apps for iPhone, Android, and even BlackBerries that use those devices’ built-in GPS receivers to offer up a list of nearby venues, making the entire process much more user-friendly.
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Today, one of our other favorite companies - Waze, announces that Symbian users can now check-in on Foursquare through the Waze social navigation application! The feature is available in both the touchscreen and non-touchscreen versions of Waze, so as not to leave anyone out. So, how do you get it setup?
First, you’ll need to download Waze and setup an account. Don’t worry, it’s free, and if you’re not already familiar with Waze, you can check out our full review of Waze for Symbian - we love it, and I’m sure you will, too.
Now that you’ve got Waze all setup and rocking and rolling, simply click on ‘Report‘, and scroll all the way down. At the bottom of the report options, you’ll see that lovely Foursquare option - click it to login to your Foursquare account, then click OK (touch users simply press the back button at the top of your screen).
Now you have the complete package. You can use Waze to get wherever it is that you’re going, and when you get there, simply click ‘Report’, scroll to ‘Foursquare’, choose the venue, and select it - your check-in will be passed along to Foursquare and you’ll even be shown your points accumulation for that check-in and any badges you might have unlocked!
This is an awesome example of two cool companies - Waze and Foursquare - working together to make going places so much more fun. Don’t forget to explore Waze a bit, too - it’s a really cool app that only gets better the more you use it. The Waze team has more awesome features planned for the Symbian version of their application, and you can rest assured we’ll be the first to let you know about it.
