• Posted on July 06, 2010
foursquare

Check In To Foursquare

If you’ve never visited FourSquare, I urge you to join and install it on your mobile phone today.  Foursquare is a location-based social netowrking site, that also let’s you post to twitter and Facebook from within the application on your mobile phone.

It’s a very simple process: arrive to a venue, open the FourSquare app on your phone, and check in.  The more places and more often you check in, the more badges you earn.  You can earn a variety of badges for a variety of different things.  You can also leave tips for others that check in at that venue in the future, shout out to your friends to check out that venue, and compare your weekly “score”, acquired by checking in more and more often, against your friends.  Also, check in often enough and more often than any other person at a venue and you become that place’s “mayor”.

As more and more business start to become foursquare savvy some are even beginning to offer discounts to those that show they’ve checked in at that venue.  I can see this program becoming very useful for on-location and guerrilla marketing tactics (i.e. check in here and come in for 10% off your coffee, check in at this concert and see your name posted on our website, etc.).  It has the potential to be a very cheap and effective marketing tool, different from the realm that Twitter already dominates.  As I’m a politics buff, I even read an interesting article on how Foursquare could prove useful on campaigns here, which seems like a double-edged sword in some situations.

As more and more people hear about this, it’s going to take off, with 1.3 million users in the US in a little over a year.  FourSquare is relatively new to the world of social media and has the ability to be the “next big thing” of social media if enough people catch on…which is why you should join today.  Soon, you and your friends will be battling for mayor of your local watering hole and seeing who can check in first every single place you go.

  • Posted on June 22, 2010
snake

Baby Flamingo v Snake

Deciding to go on a daytrip to the D.C. Zoo this weekend was the best decision ever. Here’s the story of why:

As we exit the bird house at the Smithsonian National Zoo in DC, my girlfriend and I decided to visit the flamingo enclosure to see the stilted, pink wonders of ornithology.  As we made our way in and out of the outside flight exhibit, where we saw two peacocks sparring, we didn’t think the day could get any better.  Little did we know what we were about to encounter.

We’d continue our journey around the pathway until coming across the flamingo exhibit, boasting about 40 flamingos, a few eggs and baby flamingos as well, and a full flock of ducks.   While we were watching them, one flamingo that was guarding it’s young on a nest decides to turn into Pele and punt the baby bird about 5 feet down the hill.  Wondering what spooked the bird or if was just overcome by World Cup fever, we went to investigate.

As I was snapping pictures of the ousted chick, I heard gasps and “OMG”s overcome the crowd of concerned mothers who had brought their kids here for a gore-lacking Father’s Day at the zoo.  As I looked up from the viewfinder, I see a Black Ratsnake that was at least  6 feet long slowly approaching the helpless infant flamingo.  For a moment, it seemed as if it would slither away towards the flock of flamingos who were dumbfoundedly staring the creature down.  Alas, it didn’t.  It turned right around, struck a kill bite right to the jugular of the baby bird, death rolled it, and gulped it down headfirst.  Within two minutes, the bird didn’t exist anymore outside the bounds of the snake’s digestive system.

Part of the hilarity of the story was that the mothers were far more freaked out about this than were the kids who were watching this unfold and especially more freaked out than one boy who uttered my exact thought….”AWESOME!”  Conveniently located right behind this exhibit was a sign that said, “For Animal Emergencies, please call…”  I didn’t know if that number was for a people emergency involving animals or rather an emergency involving all animals, but nonetheless a mother called and a zoologist showed up right away, presumably to remove the snake and release it back into the wild.

So, if you’re ever wondering who would win between a baby flamingo and a black snake….snake wins.