Google’s IRL “Places” tech – a radio-tagged sticker that you can scan with a compatible phone for venue deals and info – is spreading. And that’s a great thing! The big push is hitting Austin, Portland, Las Vegas, Madison, and Charlotte, North Carolina.
With the great NFC race looming, Google is axing support for QR Codes in their Places service. QR codes made a noble play for the hearts and minds of nerds, but honestly, I hope this is the first step towards their complete and utter annihilation.
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Google just launched Hotpot, a new service baked into Google Places that lets you rate restaurants, see which ones your friends are liking, and get recommendations of new places to check out. Let’s take a look.
Starting this morning, Facebook have begun rolling out their Places services across Australia, following the US, UK, Canadian and Japanese launches.
Now it’s not just Yanks and the Japanese who can update their location on Facebook. From today, the UK can access the opt-out service too. This is yet another reason for those fighty Brits to get up-in-arms about their online privacy.
iOS: If you want to know how long you’ll be waiting for your next table or how long it’ll take to gain access to a club, just search for your destination on WaitList and find out.
Will most people ever really aspire to be mayor? The buzz surrounding location services is massively disproportionate to their actual use, says the New York Times – only 1 per cent of Americans use them weekly. But will it remain a yuppie novelty?
As expected, the latest Facebook iPhone app has been released, bringing with it the Places check-in functionality that was demo-ed yesterday. Version 3.2 of the app provides on-the-go tracking methods for friends, and new additions to photo upload.
