If you haven’t heard of FourSquare it’s that social network that everyone who uses Twitter talks about – so in my case zero of my friends.

It involves you ‘checking in’ to places to notify friends of your whereabouts. When you check-in Foursquare will telling your network where they can find you and recommend places to go and things to do nearby. If you spend a lot of time in one place, for example the pub, you’ll become ‘the mayor’ until someone else steals it. Some businesses offer freebies and discounts to mayors like free food and drink. So there is some gaming aspect to it as well.

You can check in a number of different ways, mobile website, iPhone or Android App or SMS (texting in something like @ Ace Bar – enjoying happy hour).

The concept below by Dan W takes it a step further by seamlessly updating FourSquare automatically by swiping his Oyster Card. What’s interesting is how the automation of many of our social status updates will be performed with NFC gestures. When this technology moves onto phones there will be thousands of ways to interact with everyday objects and scenerios and automatically add them to your ‘life stream’.

Plus in weather like this you won’t even have to take your gloves off to update your Facebook or Twitter page outdoors, great.

FourTap – Checking in to Foursquare using an Oystercard from Dan W on Vimeo.

1. Foursquare Reality Check
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