iOS Update 6.1.2? How Do I Install It?

While an iOS Update feels like Christmas morning to Tech Heads everywhere, for some people it can be intimidating. If you are new to iOS software updates, iPhones, iPads, or iPod Touches, don’t feel alone. Every single day thousands of people put down their old flip phones or Blackberries and move into the world of All Things Apple. Follow these simple steps to update your iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) to the latest and greatest software.

First select the Settings icon on the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch (or iDevice) Home Screen.

Select General>Software Update

Select Download and Install

Agree to the Terms and Conditions

Make sure your iDevice is plugged in to a power supply to keep the battery from depleting in the middle of the update.

You should see this kinda cool gear graphic while it is downloading the new software.

Before your iDevice installs the new software, it will verify one last time.

After your iDevice powers itself off once, you should be running the newest iOS software available. Congratulations! You did it!

Tech Predictions for 2013 from A Seventh Grade Teacher’s Perspective

Stock analysts regularly rake in six figures for predicting trends in technology, but in 11 years of teaching, I have discovered that if you want to know what is going to be big in the future you just need to ask a 7th grader. I remember the shock I felt back in 2003 when I first started hearing students talk about iPods. I was astounded that parents were spending $200 – $300 for these little digital music devices. And I was even more shocked when the iPod quickly became as ubiquitous as the wrist watch among my students. Every kid in my school either had or wanted to have an iPod to listen to on the ride to and from school on the bus. Oh! If only I had optioned out of my 401K and put it all in Apple stock at that time. But let’s focus more on the future.

Apple vs. Google –

Don’t be fooled by prognosticators predicting the demise of Apple. The iPhone is BY FAR the most wished for and cherished device for 7th graders. Even though they were only 12 years old last September, my students looked forward to the introduction of the iPhone 5 as much as I used to look forward to Christmas morning. They had read the blogs so much that they were experts on Apple’s newest flagship device. Pity the poor kid with an Android device that spends most of the time defending his or her device. Even though their parents may have told them that an Android phone is better than an iPhone, all of the kid’s friends translate that into “cheaper,” and think “Oh! His parents can’t afford to buy him an iPhone.” And an iPhone is so important to them that they don’t just argue the importance of owning an iPhone in my class, they also argue the importance of owning the latest iPhone – “Awwwww, Mr. Whatley! All I have is this crummy iPhone 3GS!” And the ones whose parents aren’t ready to bite off the financial responsibility of a “required” data plan either own or want to own an iPod Touch or iPad. Some do have Kindles or Kindle Fires, but I don’t see any Nexus tablets in the hands of my students. I know a few Fandroids out there will chime in with comments referring to “Lemmings, Jelly Bean, and 5″ displays,” but those things just aren’t important to 7th graders. So based on impressions I get from the 12 year olds in Room 209, Tim Cook can expect many more multi-million dollar bonuses in the coming years.

Cases –

This one is just about as important to 12 year olds as the iPhone vs Android vs dumb phone argument. Kids in my class firmly believe there is only one smart phone case worth owning. Almost as important as which phone you carry in your pocket is which case you use to protect that prized device. The overwhelming winner in this category is the Otterbox Defender series in bright colors of pink, orange, and green for girls, and basic black for boys with an occasional lean towards a college football or Realtree camouflage design. Obviously, this choice is much more important to the girls than the boys.

Social Networking –

This category is always surprising to me. In 2008, when I was asked to sit on a committee to learn more about Social Networking use among our students, Myspace was king in the category. By the end of that year though, Facebook was outgrowing it by such huge amounts that co-creator Tom Anderson sold it to NewsCorp for $580 Million. Today Facebook has over a BILLION users with over 600 Million using the site on mobile devices. I don’t think Mark Zuckerberg is worried about paying any bills in the future, but I do hear and see some trends in this channel. Originally only an iOS exclusive app, Instagram now has become VERY POPULAR with 12 year olds. They would rather snap a picture of themselves and their friends than type up a creative, humorous or thought-provoking status update. I’m sure now that Facebook saw this coming when it purchased Instagram for $1 Billion last year. They can follow their friends’ and their favorite celebrities’ Instagram posts as well. I don’t see Facebook going the way of Myspace anytime soon simply because adults like me have adopted it as their main form of communication, but I do see Instagram growing and changing from its image-only model to a more verbally driven communication tool in the future. Twitter surprisingly doesn’t carry nearly as much weight with 7th graders. They really don’t see the point. To me, Twitter has replaced my evening newspaper; I follow sports personalities, bloggers, and news journalists to get the latest developments in sports, technology, and politics, and regularly follow links posted in tweets to get my news updates, but kids just don’t care about those things yet. It shouldn’t really surprise me as they are a much more visual generation than any I have taught so far.

So celebrate the coming of 2013 in confidence. The country might fall over the fiscal cliff, global warming might suprise us with another super storms, and Americans might seek a change to the 2nd Amendment, but at least you will know what to expect in the Tech world. And remember you read it here first straight from the mouths of babes (or 7th graders).

Brewster: It Just Keeps Growing on You

Brewster Everybody

Two months ago I read a blog somewhere written about a contacts management app with a strange name. It seems like I read that Brewster was the app creator’s high school, but I wouldn’t swear to that. I will swear to one thing – Brewster will definitely change the way you look at your contacts and relationships.

Currently only available for iOS, there is a slightly tedious installation process required. You have to decide which of your contact lists you want to include. It can be as simple as your iPhone’s native contact list, or you can incorporate your facebook, twitter, Linkedin, gmail, and Foursquare accounts. When you combine all of these different contacts, you tend to get duplicates. There is the ability to merge the multiple contacts, but it is rather tedious especially if you’ve added all of your twitter and facebook friends and followers.

The Brewster app is visually impressive utilizing the different profile images from your contacts. After selecting a few “favorites” that move to the top of the screen, it becomes easy to reach the people you contact the most.

Brewster Favorites

The app also offers an Updates ticker that informs you of your contacts’ birthdays, when your contacts are making connections, or even when contacts seem to be losing touch.

Brewster Updates

The Brewster algorithm creates intelligent lists to organize your contacts. This is probably the most helpful of all the features because with over a 1,000 contacts gathered from my different social networks, it can be a nightmare sometimes to track down someone’s contact information. The smart lists created include Everybody, Trending, Losing Touch, Frequently Contacted, Most Mutual Connections, and Friends. The app also gives you the ability to create your own lists like Drinking Buddies or Cycling Pals.

Brewster Lists

There are those that are rightfully very concerned about privacy. Anytime you let an outside entity gain access to your contact information you have to be careful, but I haven’t had any problems is the two months I’ve been using Brewster. I find myself looking forward to checking the Updates ticker to see who’s having a birthday soon, or if I’m losing touch with anyone on my contact list, but I really like to see the way it sorts my friends by contact frequency more than anything else. Business Insider even included Brewster as one of The Top 25 Most Disruptive Apps of 2012 for giving users the ability to “more easily manage contacts in a beautifully designed app”. So far I am in complete agreement.

Maps in iOS 6?? Come On MAN!

My blog entry Wednesday night was pretty glowing of iOS 6 and its new features. But after some kickback from the apple users around the world, I looked closer at Apple’s new Maps app. Man! Was I disappointed! The maps looks cheesy. The lettering for the roads look like something a kid would have done. The pictures are not detailed at all, and don’t even try to scroll around in a picture like you could in Google Maps. I know the Maps app is pretty useless for navigation purposes except as a last resort, and even the old Google Maps app was nothing compared to a dedicated GPS device like Garmin or TomTom, but Apple is supposed to be a cutting edge company, an innovator. Sorry Tim, but the new Apple Maps app falls way below everyone’s expectations.

Draw Something Erasing Itself from Consideration

Like millions of smartphone users I was intrigued by Draw Something. The pictionary style mobile game app was fun for several reasons: you could display your artistic skills depending on the amount of time and effort you could afford, you could increase your color pallet by simply drawing more difficult choices to build your points total quicker, and the game was simple and easy to use.

Zynga evidently liked the app too. They recently ponied up $200M reasons to buy the game from OMGPOP. The Words With Friends and Online Poker owners wanted to continue their Midas touch by bring Draw Something into the fold. Unfortunately for Zynga, consumers started recognizing some common trends in the Draw Something word banks. Once you’ve figured out the small number of words the game becomes simply boring. In less than a month, the user base has dropped from 15M to 10M mobile gamers. Now they’ve still got 10M regular users, but losing 30% of your user base in 30 days is something to be concerned with especially after you just bought the game a month ago.

Can Zynga save it? I don’t know, but they might want to start by adding a few word choices. I myself hardly ever play it anymore, and the friends that I usually play against have just about quit using it too. It was fun at first, but quickly grew tiring. I’ll bet OMGPOP is smiling like the cat that ate the canary.

iPhone – Is It Destined to Suffer The Fate of The Motorola RAZR V3?

Yeah I was one of those guys. I watched the videos from Steve Jobs’s keynote address in January of 2007. I had waited two years for the announcement of an Apple iPhone that combined a cell phone and an iPod. I had tried the Motorola ROKR with its iPod capabilities, its 100 song maximum, and its terribly slow sync speeds. No wonder Steve Jobs grew tired of Motorola in just a short time and decided to move his company into a completely new channel.

Yeah I was one of those guys. I viewed all the videos, read all the blogs, became a regular on the budding everthingiphone.com message boards. We were teased for five months while we all waited for June 29, 2007 to finally arrive. I remember checking the available open wifi networks around the local Cingular stores to see which one had the best signal for what I knew would be a long hot day of waiting.

Yeah I was one of those guys. Out there with my son at 5:30 A.M. to be first in line at the Cingular store just to make sure I would be guaranteed of getting what was being called the “Jesus phone” in some of the papers. The local TV news wanted an interview of the first guy in line. The local newspaper and even the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (100 miles north) mentioned me in an article that hit the national wires. I agreed to the interviews as geeky as they seemed. “Why is this phone worth $600?”, they would ask. “How can you rationalize that on a teacher’s salary?” asked the AJC. I really couldn’t. In those pre-subsidy days Steve Jobs and Apple made you pay for the phone first and wouldn’t allow Cingular to even require a contract agreement. That would quickly change.

Yeah I was one of those guys. When the price dropped to $399 and $499 two months later I was a little disappointed, but when El Jobso doled out $100 gift certificates to Apple.com it soothed my aggravations. After all that was an iPhone bluetooth headset all wrapped up to go with my cool new touchscreen. It never did work very well and iPhone dropped it from the lineup in less than 18 months.

The funny thing about all of my iPhone mania, appreciation, idolization or just plain love is that it wasn’t the first time I had done something like this. Just two years before in 2005 I had watched a cellular device become the hottest topic of discussion in the industry. In late 2004 for a whopping, unbelievable price of $379 you could have your very own Motorola RAZR V3. It was sleek, shiny, and bold. I had luminous outlines around its stainless steel like keyboard. With just a little tweaking of the firmware, you could enable the video camera. I knew I had to have it.

I wasn’t an early adopter in those days, but I was definitely one of the first. By the summer of 2005, these silvery streamlined beauties could be had brand new and contract free for $275 on eBay. I had to have it. I remember the feeling of satisfaction when I was the only person I knew with a RAZR. I remember displaying it to my friends at work and my students in the classroom to a resounding chorus of ooohs and aaaaahs. I showed off its email and internet browsing capabilities even though the 2G EDGE network was slightly slower than cold molasses being poured from the can.

I remember my disappointment when Cingular’s exclusivity arrangement ran out in October 2005 and T-Mobile started selling the RAZR with video capabilities right out of the box. Cingular quickly updated their V3’s firmware to include this feature. When Verizon released their CDMA version not long after, the RAZR wasn’t much of a trendsetter anymore. The prices dropped from $249 to $199 to $149 to $99. When the pink model came out at $79 with a 2 year agreement, I bought one for my daughter on her 13th birthday. The last price I saw advertized for a RAZR V3 was $0 with a 2-year upgrade. Everybody had a RAZR.

When the iPhone came out it changed the game. Blackberry jumped in with their clunky Storm, but it disappointed even steadfast RIM lovers. Google introduced its very capable Android OS and mobile manufacturers all jumped on board with very capable devices. They all recognized the need for a touchscreen device. The competition is fierce between Apple and its Google competitors. Motorola, HTC, Samsung, and LG all want Apple’s brand loyalty. But none have touched it just yet. An Android user will jump between a Motorola Droid to an HTC Droid Incredible and back to a Motorola Droid X in a heartbeat. When the Motorola Droid RAZR (yeah that’s right) came out one month and then just a month later a new and improved Droid RAZR Maxx came out with better battery life I rolled my eyes. MEH!

I do see the RAZR trend repeating though. Not in the fashion that Google and Motorola Mobility executives hoped, but in a very negative fashion. I see the Apple iPhone available in three generations at the moment. From the Siri-loaded 4S available for $199 and $299 to the still very capable iPhone 4 for $99 down to the $0 priced iPhone 3GS all for just the renewal of your AT&T contract for another two years.

I see all the administrators in my school district with their Verizon iPhones now instead of their old faithful Blackberries. I even see quite a few of my students using iPhones now. Though most still opt for the cheaper Droid renditions, the ones with the Clark Wallebees, Uggz, and Polos either have or want an iPhone. I sit at a table full of six teachers at lunch everyday and four out of six use an iPhone. The other two got a bargain-priced Droid version of some type.

I see the iPhone becoming the most ubiquitous item in our culture today. And if it’s not an iPhone, it’s an iPhone copy (Droid). I wonder what the next trendsetting device on the horizon will be. I wonder what will come along to send the iPhones and Droids to their unimportant ends. Surely in 2006 when the Motorola RAZR was the best selling mobile device in the world, no one at Motorola was concerned with this phone Apple was about to introduce. Maybe they were concerned to some degree. Maybe they weren’t. They certainly didn’t do much about it at the time except drain every last drop of blood out of the lifespan of the V3.

Will Apple and the iPhone suffer the same fate as the RAZR V3? I highly doubt it. Does the girlfriend that steals the roaming husband away from his first wife every really trust him afterward? Not on your life. Apple stole this industry. Steve Jobs knew that people only wanted to carry one device in their pockets and purses. He knew they were tired of carrying their cell phone, iPod, camera, and laptop around. He knew there was a better way. Tim Cook is another pitbull of a businessman just like Steve Jobs. And with the resources of the world’s most valuable company at his disposal, I don’t see him getting caught napping like the Motorola execs did in 2007.

Will something new come along that will end the reign of the iPhones and Droids? Most certainly! But it will be something so completely out of the norm that it will change the industry. It’ll be something so completely new that it will answer needs we can’t even imagine today. The RAZR rode its crest for a solid three years; the iPhone and Droids have been riding theirs for five. It might happen before we know it.

It’s Too Hot for Almost Anything, So I’ll Just Ramble

Ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner – Monicagate, strippergate, and now Weinergate. In a way I feel sorry for Anthony Weiner. I don’t think it’s completely wrong that people have their own little perversions as long as they keep them in the privacy of their own little worlds, but when weinergate broke it was obvious that it wouldn’t be staying in his own little world. Resignation was imminent. When the leader of your party makes it public knowledge that you should resign, then it’s time to go. I’m sure I’m not the only one that thinks that more and more lurid details of this scandal are still to come.

Auburn University Football Coaching Staff – Auburn coaches continue to ride the wave of last season’s success. Now they’ve parlayed that success into the highest salaries in college football. $7.6M in salaries puts them over Texas and Alabama. Chizik’s $3.5M makes him the 4th highest paid coach in the SEC, and Gus Malzahn’s $1.3M makes him the highest paid college assistant coach in the country. Not bad for a guy that was coaching high school just 7 years ago. They’ll certainly earn every cent of those raises this year. With the attrition they suffered in player personnel at the end of last season, it’ll be tough for them to eek out 8 victories. But Chizik had done that before with far less talent than he has brought in over the last three recruiting years. I’m betting they surprise a few teams this year. Coaching and raw talent can do that.

This Heat! – Well it was hot the last two weeks in Panama City Beach, FL, but at least down there you get the breeze off the Gulf to keep it somewhat bearable. Back in Columbus for a week now and it seems like everything’s on the verge of melting. I think it’s been over 90 and almost 100 for the last three weeks in Columbus. And the scary things is that it’s just beginning. Last year was terribly hot. I was hoping for a little reprieve this summer.

iOS 5 – Come on Steve! FALL! REally! I LOVE the new features dangled in front of us, and I like the fact you’ve sort of released the beta version of iCloud on iTunes, but FaLL?! Why not August 1 or July 29?

iPhone Water Damage – My son recently took his six-month old iPhone 4 for a swim in the community pool at his mom’s house. I know that was a bad call for him to make when he had to tell me about it. I hoped he would be mature enough at 19 years old that he would take precautions with his phone, but evidently it happens all the time. Water damaged iphone repairs have become a little cottage industry today in these iPhone-crazed times. I’ll be packing it up to ship it off for repair tomorrow. A place in Florida guarantees reasonably-priced iphone water damage repairs in the $50 – $100 ranged depending on the amount of damage. That sounds pretty good to me considering the unsubsidized replacement price through AT&T or Apple is $649. They even offer to buy the damaged phone if you decide not to do the repairs after they assess the damage. Check out ifixyouri.com if you or your child has done the same thing. I’ll definitely post a review after I try their service.

 

Verizon iPhone vs. Androids Everywhere

I recently had a pretty lengthy conversation with a Verizon user concerning the addition of the iPhone to their arsenal. This particular person thought that the iPhone was getting “killed” by Android. I tried my best to explain to him that comparing iPhone sales to Android sales was not an apples to apples comparison. The guy just couldn’t get it through his head that the sales of one phone made by one manufacturer and sold only on one carrier in the United States just wasn’t the same as several different phones manufactured by several different companies and sold by several different carriers. He had such a one-sided opinion that he couldn’t listen to reason.

The conversation started when this Android fanboy overheard me telling another friend that the iPhone was going to be HUGE on Verizon. I was explaining that all of the iPod Touch owners that for some reason or another couldn’t use an AT&T iPhone, were going to want to grab a Verizon iPhone so that they could seamlessly upload their music, videos, and apps to an iPhone just like they had been doing in the past with their iPod. Some argue that the Verizon V-Cast Media Player will pick up the iTunes media content and play it on their Android devices, but that’s just not the case. V-Cast doesn’t support the transfer of DRM protected files from iTunes to Android devices. So for all those Verizon users that have iPods, the iPhone is an obvious choice. For this reason, a week and a half before Verizon started taking pre-orders, I felt that the iPHone would be a smash hit on Verizon.

Last Thursday morning after only about 8 hours, Verizon and Apple had to shut down the pre-orders for the best selling mobile device ever offered on Big Red. Verizon alone pre-sold over 170,000 units. That’s not to mention the pre-sales directly through Cupertino. So Verizon iPHone pre-orders are closed until Thursday when they go on sale to the public at Verizon and Apple locations. Some of those lucky people that got through the jammed up servers last Thursday morning at 3AM received theirs today. Others that weren’t so fortunate will be standing in lines in front of Verizon and Apple Stores Thursday hoping they won’t get turned away empty handed. I wonder if that same loud-mouthed Android fanboy will see the lines and wonder what’s causing the commotion.

Motorola Droid X: Impressive, but not Perfect

Time for New Adventures

After almost two years of dating an iPhone junkie and constantly having to watch me navigate through the Facebook for iPhone and Foursquare apps, my girlfriend finally decided it was time to make the jump from flip phone to smartphone. Helping her upgrade to that new smartphone was an eye-opening experience. It was big jump considering the required additional monthly data plan and it was a very tedious decision considering the number of choices out there. If Verizon had offered an iPhone, the decision would have been much simpler, but regardless of all the rumors we heard back in the summer, that’s just not happened yet. Maybe next year Verizon users.

First Impressions

After searching the web for nearly every smartphone comparison out there, she  decided on the Motorola Droid X . Almost immediately upon arrival, she determined that it was much too big. When Steve Jobs compared them to Hummers, he was telling the truth, because these things are MONSTERS!! Being the techno-geek that I am, I did my best to convince her to give it a few days to see if it would grow on her. After all, no touchscreen smartphone device was going to be as compact as her old flip phone LG VX8350. She finally consented to try it out for a few days to see if she could live it.

Software

She and I both noodled around the Android 2.1 OS, with its MotoBlur UI overlapped, to finally figure out enough to get it set up to a usable fashion. I was impressed, but didn’t see anything that made me want to move away from iOS4. I’m sure I’m a little spoiled with three years of improvements for iOS, but Android has a little ways to go before it’s as easily navigated. For instance, it took me about two and a half hours just to get the phone to vibrate on incoming text messages. Now this might seem trivial to you, but she was going to SEND IT BACK the next day if we couldn’t get it to vibrate on incoming texts while set to silent mode. Wanting her to keep it so I could play with it some, I went to work right away trying to solve the problem. Why Motorola or Google didn’t have that setting included in the sound settings menu I’ll never know, but after finding nothing about the problem on Verizon’s or Motorola’s web sites, I finally found the answer after searching an online Android forum. I found several posts asking the same question, “How do I set my new Android device to vibrate only on incoming texts?” The answer was hidden in the text messaging settings menu which you have to navigate through the touch screen settings menus and then select a hidden menu by pressing one of the four physical buttons at the bottom of the phone. Sorry Google, but that’s way more complicated than the settings>sounds>vibrate>on/off with iOS. Regardless of the confusing configurations paths, my girl finally decided to give Droid X a few more days.

Performance Positives

The 1GHz OMAP processor was VERY snappy and the X jumped in and out of the different menus and apps. I noticed some lag when opening the camera, but it wasn’t really enough to be a deal breaker. The Verizon service was everything they say it is. I never saw her drop a call in the past week. Don’t kid yourself Big Red; there are spots where you don’t have service, but I know that it’s unrealistic to think you can get cell service EVERYWHERE. Also, regardless of Steve Jobs’s videos on different smartphones suffering from the same attenuation problems designed into iPhone 4, I couldn’t do anything to cause the Droid X to drop signal bars other than driving away from a cell tower. Glad you finally let that one go Steve. Win for Moto and Big Red!

Performance Negatives

The battery life is ATROCIOUS! She had to start carrying a plug in charger so she could charge her phone during the day at work. If by some unusual miracle it lasted through the afternoon, she was looking for an outlet early in the evening to charge. Sorry iPhone haters, but you can’t compare the battery of the Droid X to the new improved battery of the iPhone 4. Not even close! The battery on my iPhone 4 has never had to be charged before 10 or 11 o’clock in the evening. Big, GIANT, battery depleting FAIL!

The touch screen response also seemed very touchy and jerky even. If I tried to expand a picture to enlarge it for better viewing, it would expand in a choppy motion. Being the first Android device that I had ever really explored I thought it might be common to all Android devices, but after borrowing a friend’s first generation Motorola Droid I didn’t notice the choppiness nearly as much as I did with the Droid X. It might be something to do with the large 4.3″ display screen problems. But whatever the reason, it didn’t compare to the smoothness you experience when expanding a picture or web page on an iPhone. The screens and menus are equally touchy causing you to go into incorrect menus repeatedly and then having to “back out” using one of the four physical buttons at the bottom of the display. Another Fail.

The Final Straw

After visiting the Verizon store, buying a gel case, car charger, and screen protector film, she tested it out for the rest of the week and weekend. She finally decided that she just couldn’t live with the big phone because it wouldn’t even fit in her jeans pocket, and she didn’t want to leave an expensive device like that lying around on a restaurant table or on someone’s cabinet in their kitchen. To me it didn’t seem that large, but it was almost an inch taller and about 3/8 of an inch wider than my iPhone 4. Plus, the pockets on guys’ pants are much bigger than the pockets on girls’ pants (unless you’re a girl that wears momma jeans). Anyway, now she’s waiting two days for an HTC Droid Incredble just because it’s only about the same dimensions as the iPhone 4 and she thinks she’ll be able to carry it more comfortably in her pocket.  A more detailed review on that one will be upcoming in a few days after it lands tomorrow.

Final Thoughts

The Droid X is an excellent choice if Verizon is the best choice for you. The software my be a little jerky and choppy, but then it hasn’t really been improved over the last three years like that of the iPhone. The soon to be pushed Android 2.2 update could possibly improve the smoothness of software, the lag of the camera app, and maybe even the battery life (which could probably be slightly improved with a few settings tweaks). For a girl, I’m not sure you would ever get comfortable with Droid X unless you carry it in your purse all the time. But for a guy, I don’t think you’d notice the size difference much at all between it and most other touchscreen smartphones. It is in fact a very powerful and capable device. After all, Verizon is correct when they say “Droid Does“; I just think they could and WILL do even better.

Foursquare for Dummies

For months now you’ve seen the Foursquare links and status updates (with their cool looking mini google maps) rolling across your news feed on facebook or twitter. Now you’ve finally decided to see what it’s all about. You search in the app store and find the free Foursquare app for your iPhone, BB, or Android device and download and install it to your phone. What do I do next? In this blog I’m going to give you some easy instructions on how to get the most out of your 4SQ app, and hopefully save you a little frustration along the journey. The screen caps are from the Foursquare for iPhone app, so they may differ slightly from your Android app, and differ significantly from your BB app.

What is Foursquare? The web page aboutfoursquare.com has posted an excellent tutorial on foursquare and it procedures. Check it out to get the answers to most of your questions.

Why does my phone tell me I’m a little too far away from the place where I’m trying to check in? 4SQ is a location-based application. The phone uses its GPS capabilities to tell the app your location and then compares that to where the venue is where you’re trying to check in. If the venue was created incorrectly, then it doesn’t matter if you’re sitting at the bar inside the place, you still might get this error message. If 4SQ determines that you’re more than 150 meters from your check in spot then it won’t give you credit towards mayorships or the leaderboard. If you get this error, check the google map to see where the google pin is located. If you notice an obvious error, search for another venue by a similar name with a more accurately placed pin.

What if I don’t find the venue where I’m trying to check in? Sometimes when you’re out for dinner you might not find your venue in the search results. In these situations, you’ll want to double check the spelling of the venue name by checking the signage inside the place or the menu cover. In some cases you may have to add or create the venue. When doing this make sure to be as accurate as possible. Check the spelling of the venue name. Fill in the address and telephone info if possible. Remember the google pin on your newly created venue will be placed according to the address you enter in the address field, so try to be accurate. The more accurate you are, the more easily you’ll get credit for your loyalty in the future.

Find the “places” tab along the bottom of the Foursquare app home page.

Foursquare automatically searches for venues in your area. If you don’t see the venue you want, you can search specifically for the venue.

If you still don’t find any results, you can add it manually by scrolling to the bottom of the results list and tapping “add this place so others can use it too.”

Make sure to add accurate information in the name, address, cross street, city, state, zip, and phones fields. The more accurate your information, the more accurately the Google pin will be placed for future check ins.

Select the venue category.

Some categories have sub-categories.

Accurately enter the address and phone fields.

Remember, the more accurate the address information, the more accurate the Google pin placement. This makes it easier to check in for you and your friends in the future.

Where can I check the leaderboard? While Foursquare is a great way to find good restaurants, it is also a good-natured competition among your friends. You gain points for trying new places, leaving tips, and winning mayorships. Your points are compared weekly to the friends you’ve accepted in Foursquare. The points leaderboard is also available for the Top 100 Foursquare users world-wide, but with over 2 million users so far, this is a hard leaderboard to crack. Your 4SQ leaderboard is built into your 4SQ app on your phone. You find it by navigating from your user home page on the app (the tab with your name under the person icon). In the upper right hand corner you’ll see a small grey box with nine smaller white boxes inside.

At this point you’ll see an abbreviated leaderboard that includes the point totals for you and the foursquare friends you’ve accepted.

If you tap the abbreviated leaderboard you will get an extended leaderboard that shows the point totals of all of your friends.

Tap the underlined “all elsewhere” heading and you’ll get the Top 100 leaderboard.

Foursquare can be a value packed app by getting check in and mayoral discounts at some venues, but the real value is the impetus to get out and enjoy you local area. Leave tips for your friends when you find an extra tasty dish somewhere. Let them know if the bathroom was dirty, because if it’s nasty, then you know the kitchen is probably the same.  Now get out there and start checking in.