What Makes This Appealing?

So; what makes SCVNGR so appealing? We’re all pretty bombarded with applications for our smart phone(s) — especially with the hottest trend being the geolocation market. The biggest difference that I see between SCVNGR and the two current trend setters (Foursquare and Gowalla) is (1) the user interface and (2) how long it keeps me looking at the app. The interface is very clean and I find it much faster than Foursquare. Granted one can argue that the current speed is due to its lack of users, thus not a heavily burdened network.

As is the default – It integrates with Facebook and Twitter and makes it easy to see what you’re Facebook friends have checked into under the “Friends Feed” section. I’ve been using it for a number of weeks and I’m very happy with it. It’s using Google Places to pull the venues. That’s a plus for me, I’m still not comfortable with Facebook hosting that kind of data.

What’s Wrong with It?

I did notice, while cruising the Places screen for more friends, that I was able to view the activities of total strangers. It looks like sharing is totally open out-of-the-box. If you go into the Settings menu, you can change it to only share with your friends. Besides THAT the only thing wrong with SCVNGR is that my friends don’t know about it. It’s hard enough for me to get my immediate circle of friends into geolocation, but to have them switch to another app after finally getting them into Foursquare is going to be challenging.

Features

Once you load the application there are a couple of features accessible from the home screen: Friend’s Feed, Profile, Friends, Badges, Places, Rewards, Treks, and Social Map. There’s also a notification bar at the very bottom of the home screen.

Friend’s Feed

SCVNGR interface displaying the Friend Feed's screen.

The Friend’s Feed is pretty self explanatory, it displays a list of your friend’s check-ins. It has two tabs: Recent and Popular. To be honest I’m not sure what the criteria is for a check-in to be “popular.” The neat thing about the Recent tab is it mixes both your SCVNGR and Facebook friends. You can’t interact with the FB feed, but it’s at least nice to see where your closest buddies are.

Profile

This section really doesn’t have anything special compared to other geolocation application. It’s more or less a dashboard of how many points you have, challenges you’ve done, places you’ve visited, how many badges you’ve acquired, and how many friends you have. Your avatar is pretty big so if you really like looking at yourself, they built a function to satisfy that craving.

Friends

The Friends screen has three tabs: Find, All friends, and Leaderboard. The Friends feature is where you can expand your friend’s list by finding people in your Facebook circle that have linked their accounts to SCVNGR. You can also do a simple search for a user or invite friends by allowing the app to post a message through other social media applications you may have installed on your phone. The Leaderboard screen is where the competitive nature of a person comes out to play. Once you have a couple of friends to play with you can then compare how many points/challenges you’ve acquired. It doesn’t reset every week like Foursquare, it’s simply an overall score. So; you can be at a slight disadvantage if you friend someone that has been heavily using SCVNGR.

Badges

If you’re familiar with social media apps, badges is an aspect that these companies/apps use to exploit our loyal and competitive nature. These badges are acquired after reaching a certain status or completing a number of challenges. These badges are drawn nice so they are easy-on-the-eyes. This screen will list all the badges you’ve acquired in a four-column fashion. You can click on individual badges to get a little more detail as to what the badge is about and when you received it. My only issue with this feature is the irony that the app supports a good amount of text in order to explain what the badge is about, but the actual explanation of the badge is vague and confusing. There are many badges that I’m still unclear WHY I’ve acquired them.

Places

This is the meat and potatoes of the application. This screen will initially load all venues within your intimidate area. If a venue doesn’t show up you can do a search to add it.

Make sure you use propercase before submitting a search. If the system doesn’t find that venue it will use your submission as the entry name.

When you choose a venue to check-in to that screen has three tabs: Challenges, Activity, and Info. The default challenges with every venue is: check-in, social check-in, say something, and snap a picture. Each challenge has a certain amount of points associated with it. The social check-in is a pretty cool challenge. You and another SCVNGR user can bump phones to get twice as many points for that check-in. The more challenges you do, the more points you acquire. Once you’ve gained a certain amount of points you can then add your own challenges. I’m not sure why, but I have yet to create a challenge for the available venues. My creativity on creating challenges has proven to be limited. :-/

Rewards

The Rewards screen has two tabs: My Rewards and Nearby. This feature incorporates the growing Groupon-inspired trend of offering discounts from vendors. I haven’t tried this feature, so I can only theorize how it actually works.

Treks

This feature I believe was inspired from Gowalla’s Trips. For example the “Best of Atlanta” trek lists 8 challenges for you to complete. Once you visit one of the venues in the list, such as Georgia Aquarium, the trek challenge is to click on “Fish Face”. This particular challenge is to impersonate a fish and take a picture of your ugly mug doing it. Stuff like that is pretty cool and will certainly keep you motivated to explore.

Social Map

I was very excited when I saw this feature. It reminded me of a third-party web site a friend took me to in order to see a visual history of his Foursquare check-ins. The Social Map screen displays a map, most likely powered by Google Maps with pins of avatars showing recent activities, maximum of up to 24 hours. I can see that it shows both mine and friends’ activities. It’s got a bug or two once you start sliding that time line around and zooming in and out of the map, but it’s got a lot of potential.

Other Reviews

Initially I didn’t plan to write a detailed review of this app. I had a real hard time finding a significant Android post so I filled the gap. Below are other blog posts I found that might give you another aspect of this very intriguing app. You can find my SCVNGR profile at the following link — www.scvngr.com/fergatron — let’s stalk each other, it’ll be fun.

• SCVNGR Review – Could This Be the Foursquare of Real Estate [Tech Savvy Agent] – Video, focuses on iPhone
• SCVNGR: A check-in app with a fun twist [Android and Me]
• SCVNGR Launches Sophisticated Rewards Program [Mashable]

I’ve been meaning to get this analogy off my chest. That feeling has become more apparent when I try to explain this concept to my friends. My very first experience of the Internet was through American Online. I must have been 15 years old, living in my parents house, and not having very much money. My brother and I would spend hours on AOL surfing the web and playing mechwarrior within the safe restraints of the AOL application. “You Got Mail” would ring ever-so-often and we’d chat it up with our other cellmates in various child-predator-rooms chatrooms. It wasn’t until a coworker at Walgreens started referring to AOL as “the Play-play Internet” that I realized that I may have been in a Matrix and didn’t know it.

After some weeks of getting hackled about being on AOL, I started to ask him questions on what his internet experience was like. He told me that he connected to the Internet through an Internet Service Provider (ISP), opened Internet Explorer and went to town. I thought to myself, “That’s it!?” I tackled with the concept of using an email client, instant messengers, IRC chatrooms, and other things that didn’t come in some sort of bundled package. Well; I had enough knowledge to realize that AOL was NOT the route for me and convinced my dad to switch to Bellsouth. Till this day I’m not sure how I was able to convince him. Some little teenager whining about the restrictions of AOL verses the freedom of a real ISP.

How Does This Relate to Facebook

I’m glad you asked that question… I started out my social media adventure through Twitter, Identica, MySpace, etc. When Facebook finally opened up to the rest of the world I joined in, but didn’t really do anything with it. When Facebook picked up more interest from the world I noticed an increase in friend requests from my old high school friends. I began to chat with them and fell into the cycle of having one or two intense conversation and then the rest of the time just glancing at their latest status update and gaming spam.

Later on as my activity in Facebook diminished, I noticed that my news feed became more of a sermon from Sunday Chapel as more of my friends that found religion felt it to be their civic responsibility to encourage their followers with words of encouragement using the Word of God. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not an active or lazy (agnostic) atheist, but after a while I got real burned out with skipping those posts.

Seriously! How Does This Relate to Facebook!?

The more I’d start cross-posting from the various social media platforms I’m apart of (Ping, Seesmic, etc) I noticed that the replies I got from my Facebook friends could be categorized as social media noobs. Then I started seeing people putting hash tags in their posts and other twitter-related things. I found it cute.

I then noticed that if I wanted to get a comment or response on something I posted, I’d have better luck posting it on Facebook since most of the people in my friend’s list actually know me, compared to Twitter which consists of more Internet Friends. From those experiences I drew the conclusion that Facebook is a box, a social media Matrix of sorts. It’s safe and simple enough for grandma to join the social media revolution and it gives the user the impression that they are up-to-snuff on what’s hip and trendy in the vast, ever-changing world of social media (wow! that was a run-on sentence).

In the end; I don’t think I’m a social media expert by any means. Obviously; if I was truly THAT important then I’d have no problems getting my followers on Twitter or other micro-blogging platforms to interact with me on every single post I submit. Facebook is good for what it does. This is primarily my conclusion to an observation. My interest in Facebook fluctuates every quarter; that’s because I’m a fickle man.

So; today, May 6, 2010 is my thirty-first birthday. It started out pretty good; I even had lunch with some guys from work. We headed out to the usual spot — Mellow Mushroom for some good ol’ pizza. We all geek’d out a little bit by “checking in” with Foursquare. I realized finally experienced how fun social media could be when you’re actually participating with people you know. I’ve been socializing with complete strangers for years.

Once work was finished, I picked up Leeanne from school and headed home. My wife planned a small gathering with a neighbor and my mom. So; their kids came by and it was typical noise four children make… NOISE. I don’t think there is any other word to express… the… well… noise.

Facebook

To be frank; I’ve been pretty bad with wishing people “happy birthday” on Facebook. I seems like a chore… roughly every day is someone’s birthday. I barely log on or do a lot of interaction. So; I’d have to allocate time just to wish someone happy birthday… it seemed like too much work.

Well; I’ve changed my tune. I received a decent amount of birthday wishes today and to my surprise it warmed my heart. Since I’ve experienced it, I’m going to try a little harder to share the love.  So; thank you to all my friends and family that wished me happy birthday. It was well received.

Remainder of the Evening

After dinner, homemade ravioli, we had some cake and ice cream. I posted some pictures on Picasa and Facebook.

Wow, I am totally blown away by this task of getting the Facebook protocol to work on the instant messenger client, Empathy. I used to have it working on Pidgin, but lately it’s been a crapshoot. I went to IRC to get some help and low-and-behold, someone gave me a RTFM response. Just lovely, how helpful IRC. From the podcast world, I’ve heard that GNOME is shipping with Empathy as default instead of Pidgin. So; I thought I’d start using it… these desktop guys MUST know what they’re talking about.

Well; so far, I’m not impressed with Empathy at all! Pidgin looks a lot better and my SOUND actually works. Damn! I really wish SOUND wasn’t such an issue in Linux. We’re making heads spin with the amount of computing we can do, the available apps in x86_64 architecture, and the overall desktop stability… yet SOUND has ALWAYS been an issue since I started with Fedora 8.

Attempting to Install Facebook Plugin

So; I thought I’d really give it a go and install the Facebook plugin. I downloaded the same file that’s being used for Pidgin (at Google Code) and tried looking for an “Empathy” folder. After running a “locate” command, I noticed that Empathy really didn’t have a lib64 or some other home folder. It has a folder, but it’s only holding xml data nothing really concrete to the actual program. I saw some .so files but that wasn’t helpful to me. After researching some more, I realized that Empathy is really a client to Telepathy. Oh great, down that rabbit hole we go! So; I then did a “locate” for it and saw the same structure. “OK, this doesn’t make any sense to me! Where am I supposed to install this facebook plugin!?”

So; after some more research, I find myself at this really dated bug report. It’s basically saying I need to edit two files and put in the Facebook protocol. “Really!? Are we really in the early 2000s and I need to MANUALLY input protocols in Linux? Damn!” I did it anyway and after restarting Empathy, I got Network error. “OK, I’m done! I don’t need this kind of stress for a stupid IM protocol.”

So; in the end… I’m trying out ugly Empathy and we’ll see if it grows on me… Like a fungus! I posted something to an existing forum topic, let’s hope that gives me the salvation I’m looking for.

It’s about time I took my health into my hands and work on habits that will keep me around for a much longer time. I already made some changes, but now my dad is really concerned and checking up on me daily. I can credit that to social media. I posted a status update on Facebook the other day about my eyes being blurrier than normal and he caught whim of that. We have high blood pressure (HBP) in our family and my parents, my brother and I have it as well. My brother and I are straddling Stage 1. Lucky for me, I work at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and last year or so, I took a “Mastering Weight Management” course. It was eye-opening to me and I never looked at my diet in the same light again.

So; what do I do now!? I have a binder from that weight management course, which breaks their lessons down into weeks – so I’m going to start there. Yesterday; I started a food log, so I know what I’m eating and what to change, and I started an exercise program. Nothing big, it’s just walking for 15 minutes (5 min warm-up, 5 min of brisk walking/jogging, and 5 min of cool down). The goal is to make sure I can schedule at least 3 walking sessions a week – after I get more comfortable with walking I can increase the intensity of the exercise, etc.

My Own Electronic Medical Record

I’m using Google Docs to keep track of my health data. The course, suggested I keep track of the foods I’m eating, some realistic goals, and my weight. I’ve added a few more worksheets because of my HBP. I usually don’t have a problem sharing my personal information with the Internet, but for some reason… this day-to-day data of my personal habits seems a bit more valuable than “status updates” and “blog entries”. Here’s a general overview of the worksheets though:

• Overview (dashboard)
  I’ll put fancy pie charts of each worksheet here.
• Goals (goal, type of goal, due date, date accomplished)
  Make sure your goals are realistic. Also it’s best to start out with goals you can reach by the end of the week and then work your way to monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, and annual goals.
• Food Log (date, time, food item, amount, food type, location, audience, mood, hunger level, notes)
• Blood Pressure (date, time, systolic, diastolic, pressure category)
• Exercise (date, start time, end time, duration, type of exercise)
  Note that any exercise is good, but it’s also good to get some light weights into your pattern. Lifting weights helps to burn fat that walking or jogging alone can’t do.
• Weight (date, time, weight, difference)
  This should be done on a weekly basis. It’s too stressful, on your mind, to weigh yourself daily, weight fluctuates too often. When you do weigh yourself, though, make sure you weigh in at the same time as you did last week.

BMI… You Liar!

The next thing on my list is to make an appointment with my personal physician, even though I haven’t seen him in over a year. The last time I saw him, he gave me some sample drugs that should help lower blood pressure and he suggested I lose some weight. I started taking the pills, but I haven’t lost much weight – so I avoided him after that. My body mass index (BMI) states that I’m in the obese category. Compared to the average obese individual [pictures], in America, I’m far from obese, but according to my height and weight – I should be 178 lbs. Yah, I’m about 235 lbs – big difference. I got a lot of work. Personally; with my muscle mass, I think 190-200 lbs would be ideal.

In the end I really hope I can make this habitual change stick. I noticed that I take care of everyone else (wife, kids, work, business, etc), but I don’t look out for myself. It’s about time I became a little selfish (in that area). For the record, I am selfish in other areas, but who isn’t!? Let me know what you think about the way that I’m going about changing my health. Are you in the same boat? Are you and BMI friends?

I pretty much enjoyed the day and I was rewarded with our DSL package coming in the mail earlier that day – so we have Internet at our new house! Sweet!

There are a lot of things happening in my life, but it’s not time to broadcast them yet. The kids are fine (all 3 of them) and me and the wife are happy. My full-time job at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is becoming more stable since I made a very hard decision about my freelance work with Digital · Alias. One can surely guess what I mean based on that sentence, but since everything isn’t final – I’ll keep it vague.

In the world of Linux, I’m getting very tired of Firefox not working out the way I’d like it to. It’s always ran very slow on my desktop (Fedora x86_64). I’ve switched to Epiphany (a GNOME project) and boy does that web browser need some work. Good thing is, it’s fast, bad thing is it’s very immature and I miss ALL the convenient features Firefox has. I’ll stick with it because I need speed more than convenience.

Social Life

I’m on Facebook a lot more now-a-days, but playing their casual games, such as: Mafia Wars, YoVille, and Metropolis. Funny; I realize that these games are a complete waste of time and they are ONLY fun in the beginning when you are trying to balance out everything.  I also see that everyone needs something to fun to do, even if it doesn’t progress your life in any manner.  When you play Xbox or PS3 – those games really don’t add to your life.  The same can be said about these casual online games.

Google Calendar

I’m using Google Calendar a lot more these days.  I’ve got everything from birthdays, tv shows, podcasts and FLOSS events.  Web 2.0 Expo is taking place.  I can see that it’s in San Francisco, but I surely can’t go.  I have a Weekly Joomla conference call with a local group titled, The Atlanta Joomla Open Source Meetup.  And so much more…

Micro-blogging

I have been micro-blogging like mad lately.  Unfortunately; I’ve been interacting on Twitter more than the Laconica instances.  I’ve noticed that there are a lot more mobile and desktop apps for Twitter.  As soon as I pickup on Python, I’m going to make more apps for Laconica.  That’s the social media I’d like to use the most, it’s FLOSS at its best – it’s just under marketed.

Pet Projects

As soon as I can free up so time, I plan on finally taking up some opensource projects.  I am going to start out by learning Python and doing some offline applications.  When I’m comfortable enough, I might then join a GNOME project or be more active with the Fedora Websites group.

I wanted to make it known to the world, that I have officially given in to the “World of Responsibility” and no longer into the World of Warcraft.   Yes, sad to say – my three young kids (ages 3, 2, and newborn), wife, full-time job, and Internet consulting business has caught up with me – backing me into a corner and yelling into my face saying, “WE TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER VIDEO GAMES AND YOU WILL NO LONGER RUN YOURSELF INTO THE GROUND TO PLAY!”  This is the milestone in my life when I have completely converted from a hardcore video game player to a casual gamer (aka Old Man).

The only games I play now are Xbox (original) games with my son, on the weekends, and stupid Facebook applications.  I still have WoW installed, but it’s realmlist has been changed to a private server.  So whenever I do have some free time (like never) I can jump on with no commitment to a guild or to my wallet and kill about an hour or so.  IM me if you want to know which private server I’m on.

The only technological thing left in my life is Linux… oh sweet Linux.  I’ve been running Fedora for almost a full year now and it’s been a glorious-open-source-tech ride.  There are games there, like Urban Terror (it’s an FPS), and a lot of other casual games like: Chess, BlackJack, Mines, Tali, etc.

What’s Your Story?

I know I’m not the only guy to go through this transition in his life.  Share your story with me, post a comment and let me know how hard it’s been for you to finally, or forcefully, to be removed from the realm of gaming!  And now the only game you play, is The Game of Life.

Oh my friggin’ Hare Krishna!  I’m in the 3rd day of my 14-day trial with Stars Wars Galaxy (SWG) and I just saw some footage of the new Star Wars: The Old Republic MMORPG from BioWare and LucasArts.  I’m a Star Wars fanatic (with certain restraints, of course) and this new MMO looks like it will be the next biggest SCI-FI game to come.  SWG looks way outdated and the only reason why I’m playing is to get my “fix” of the Star Wars universe.  I normally play World of Warcraft, but if I can only (responsibily) pay for one MMO per month, it will certainly be SWTOR.

I really wanted to love the SWG game, but with all the things Sony is doing wrong – I can’t consciously put any more time into this dying game.  So; once my trial is up, I’ll go back to WoW and eagerly wait for The Old Republic to launch.

To my surprise the SWTOR forums are filled with people and they have already opened recruiting for guilds… the game didn’t even come out yet!?  I’ll comb it from time to time and join their Facebook group too.   Look for “Marfe Jokin” in the forums! The game looks beautiful… my mindset is even if the game sucks as bad as SWG, I’ll still play it because being in a Star Wars universe that looks this good – is worth it.