Check-ins and Check-in Streams

The Web page for Geolorean answers the first question we had about this application: Is this new? The site reads: "What do you mean you've seen this? It's brand new."

Well, indeed it is.

Check.in only launched out of private beta yesterday and already here's an app taking advantage of the functionality it provides. The App Store, though, shows an "Update Date" of May 6th for Geolorean and the app itself launched back in late April. That means it actually launched even before Check.in went into public beta. If only we had known!

Geolorean (love the name, by the way) is a creation of two Chicago developers, Andy LaVoy and Max Beatty. With this $0.99 app you can view an aggregated stream of your friends' check-ins and you can locate your friends on a map where you can see the details of each check-in. And when you're out and need to check in somewhere, you can use the Check.in Web service, which is integrated into the application by way of a Web view. When selecting this option, Check.in launches within the app, not in an external Safari window.

The iTunes app description promises more "updates and expanded features soon," but apparently that won't include any additional location-based services for the time being. According to a Q&A on the app's homepage, it will add other services only "if another one gets popular." (Does no one use Loopt?) However, the site does mention that you'll soon be able to use the app to merge contacts across the three supported services into a single contact in order to better track their check-ins.

There isn't much more to this app, but I tried it this morning and it worked well without any crashes or noticeable bugs. Of course, I'm sitting here at home writing about it so I haven't been able to test the Check.in feature yet. But based on my previous experience with the standalone Web app, it should do just fine.

If you're interested in trying Geolorean for yourself, you can grab it from iTunes here.

So how did it fare? Not bad at all, if I do say so myself.

However, I'm not so old and boring (yet) that I can't see the appeal of these services. In my younger, more active days - before I was tied down to a life of diaper runs and other errands - an app like Brightkite or Foursquare would have been a blast to use. But sadly, I never got to experience those types of services back when they would have been the most fun for me - heck, I don't think any of my college friends even had cell phones. (You kids have it so good, you have no idea).

That being said, I really enjoyed using Check.in. It was incredibly easy to use, always found my location accurately and worked without error or crashes.

My only complaint was that the app was slow at times, even when I had a good signal, although that could be due to the fact that it was still in private beta. Perhaps they haven't thrown enough computing power behind it yet?

Sometimes this slowness, which often occurred during the "magical place matching" screen, was a major issue. When doing drive-by check-ins (a.k.a. "quick stops"), for example, I found myself leaving the venue before the processing was done. Curse you Starbucks drive-thrus and your speedy service! I will never be mayor!

We Need a Place-Matching Database

Another issue, and one that Brightkite has no control over, is the lack of a unified places database, as TechCrunch mentioned earlier this morning. Brightkite is on board with this idea, but the other major players need to agree, too, in order for it to work.

What this means in terms of app usability, though, is that you often have to tell it that Location X on this service is the same as Location Y on that service. Check.in, for what it's worth, walks you through this process with ease, but it can slow down check-in time even further.

In other words, if you feel stupid "checking in" to places and try to get it over with quickly before you have to explain yourself to your non-early-adopter friends and family, Check.in won't solve that problem - it makes it worse.

Solid, Well-Built App

Outside of these inconveniences, neither of which are necessarily Brightkite's problem, I can report that Check.in is a solid, well-built app. As you check in to the various services via Check.in, the app also returns relevant data, new mayorships, points, etc.

The app has also been improved during the beta period with better, tighter privacy controls, and sharing settings for posting to Twitter and Facebook.

Insights and Future Plans

The Brightkite team shared a few early insights from their beta trials, which involved 6,000 users and 135,000 check-ins. The average user checked in 20 times, more than 2.3 million places were queried and most users checked in to two or three services at once. Friday is the busiest day for check-ins and Sunday is the quietest.

The team now wants your feedback as to what needs to be added or improved next. They've asked Yelp to open up its API, but so far the company has said no. We suggest it consider adding another major LBS player, Loopt. According to the Brightkite blog, it appears that service is also considering Check.in integration into Brightkite's native apps, a decision that could easily make Brightkite the top LBS-based app across multiple platforms.

According to Jason Finkelstein, the director of product and marketing at LBS solution-provider WaveMarket, we are looking at a "truly horizontal market" that can be "applied to dozens of different types of businesses". But first, there are a number of hurdles to jump over.

LBS 101

"The peer-to-peer privacy model is complicated", he said, explaining that the solution is not simple.

A federal mandate in 2000 made it so that any time someone dialed 911 from a cellular phone, the cell tower used would have to be reported. In 2005, the requirements were made more stringent. It's those two things that became the background of the LBS market we see today.

"The future, which is more or less here", Finkelstein explained, referring to check-ins, Facebook widgets, notifications when friends are nearby, GPS-indexed local search, location-aware advertising and marketing, crowdsourced traffic systems, location-aware messaging applications and security prevention applications.

Market Fragmentation and the Future of LBS

"The downloadable app is not the entire universe," he said, explaining that SMS systems might be much more accessible to the 80% of the population that do not have GPS-enabled smartphones. "For most people, downloading something is a hurdle."

To get past some of these issues, Finkelstein said, and provide LBS to both smartphones and feature phones, developers can use "Assisted GPS", which is a "hybrid using GPS satellites and cell tower signals", triangulation and cell ID, with varying levels of accuracy and latency.

"If you want to address the mass market, you have to address all of this stuff," said Finkelstein. "You can't build a mass market service... really."

Between handset types, network and platform fragmentation and carrier coverage, the solution for developers is not clear. Location aggregators, such as Veriplace (a service provided by Finkelstein's company, which he admitted as "shameless self-promotion"), are one solution for developers looking to get beyond these complicating factors. But a constant theme throughout the panel was that with all of the hype over LBS, we are still in infancy stages in the LBS market.

From what we can tell, the folks over at Brightkite have the solution with Check.in, but have yet to release it to the achey-thumbed, smart-phoned masses.

"Check.in takes the hassle out of checking in on multiple services," the page reads. And at the bottom, we're told that the service is "made by Martin May, Brady Becker, and Jordan Harband of Brightkite after severe check-in fatigue."

When you take a closer look at the sole image on the page, which depicts a Check.in app on both iPhone and Android, we can see that the service appears to handle check-ins for Foursquare, Gowalla and Brightkite, and we would assume others are on the way. But we have to wonder how it would check in to Gowalla, as the company's API is currently read-only.

Check.in would be the first of its kind in the market and would surely co-opt a large amount of traffic and make the "severe check-in fatigue" that much more manageable.

When we first wrote about this at the beginning of the month, the only response we received was "no comment". We asked again today, but have yet to receive any comment. We've also asked the folks over at Gowalla and they had this to say:

"We currently do not allow write access to our API. For now we're excited to see creative use of the read API while we continue to polish our own native clients."

If this service is in the pipeline to be released soon, it looks like Gowalla would not be included in the check-in service and that would be a shame. It's only Friday and there are a number of days left to SXSW Interactive, AKA "Nerdfest 2010", but wouldn't it be that much more enjoyable if you didn't have to spend the first 10 minutes any time you arrived somewhere new checking in?

With that said, we have to wonder how much we would lose out on the features now offered by these services. Will Check.in also offer tips, photos, check-in commenting and all of that or will it just let us broadcast our location? For now, we'll just have to wonder, but either way, fear not, a solution looks to be on the way.

Using AR to promote vehicles with 3D models is nothing new, but this is one of the first versions to reach consumers on their phones. The automotive industry has been one of the leading areas pushing desktop webcam-based AR experiences that have allowed users to interact with 3D models of cars from their homes. This new promotion from Chevy is unique in that it allows customers to have the same experience on their iPhones.

According to the App Store, AR iPhone application developer acrossair has produced the application for Chevrolet. The interesting thing about this experience is the way it blends the dichotomous features of mobile and webcam-based AR. The 3D model manipulation we are used to seeing on the desktop is wisely mixed with the location-based map info seen in most mobile AR applications. By taking the best of both worlds, acrossair and Chevrolet have opened the door to a new breed of mobile AR advertisements.

Augmented reality isn't the only emerging technology Chevrolet is experimenting with at SXSW; quick response (QR) codes, which are like a technological cousin of AR, are a large part of the company's promotions as well. When investigating Chevrolet's latest cars, users can photograph QR codes placed strategically on the cars to learn more about specific parts of the car. A QR code placed on the hood, for example, will launch information about the car's engine. Christopher Barger, Director of Global Communications and Technology for General Motors, is excited about the future of QR codes and AR for the automotive industry.

"Imagine using Quick Response Codes to download the price and options for a vehicle on a dealer lot right to your cell phone. Or, imagine using augmented reality to virtually preview different colors of the Camaro in your own driveway," Barger says. "We are just scratching the surface of what's possible with mobile technologies and social media applications."

Chevrolet is also teaming up with Gowalla to provide location-based advertisements to people checking in at SXSW. One promotion they are offering is a shuttle ride from the airport in one of their new cars to select users that check in at the airport, so don't forget to fire up Gowalla when you land in Austin. For more information about mobile and desktop AR advertising, be sure to check out our report on the subject coming soon!

Both apps are showcasing new design features the companies are calling "fresh" and other such things, and while they surely are, some of these other features are what really stand out.

First of all, Gowalla is bringing photos to the location based game, allowing users to upload a photo after checking in. Users can also browse their friends' photos and look at any that have been taken at that specific location.

Next, it's bringing some interactivity to the game, with check-in commenting. When a friend checks in at a place down the street, you don't need to change over to your Twitter client and send them a DM, you can just comment on their check-in. And if you forgot to type a check-in message when you checked in to a spot, you can go back and add it.

In addition to these, Gowalla is bringing out new friend browsing features, enabling you to look through friends, friends of friends, and even their bookmarked spots and trips. With "spot details", including address, phone, Twitter name, Facebook page and website, Gowalla is adding that Yelp (or should I say Foursquare) aspect that was really missing - real world connection information.

And one more feature that may be overloaded next week or may be the talk of the town, "Hot Spots", tells you what the most popular spots near your location are. We haven't had time to really play with it yet, but it sure sounds interesting.

The updates just popped up in the App Store right now so go get updated and let us know what you think - who is going to win the location based battle of SXSW 2010? As far as this round goes, we're calling it for Gowalla.

First Step Towards Integrating LBS Analytics Into Sysomos' Main Services

As Sysomos co-founder Nilesh Bansal told us, the company plans to bring location-based sources - including Foursquare - to Heartbeat and MAP, Sysomos' professional social media and analytics and media monitoring applications. For Sysomos, launching a free service is just a first stop towards learning more about this space.

As services like Foursquare, Gowalla and others continue to gain momentum and slowly inch towards the mainstream, social media monitoring services like Sysomos or Radian6 need to give their customers to monitor these communities. If these services go mainstream, a bad comment on Foursquare about a restaurant could easily have the same effect as a negative Twitter message or Yelp review.

Gowalla and the Travel Channel announced today that the two companies will be working together to offer "the integration of proprietary Travel Channel content into Gowalla's social networking service." Along with another deal, Gowalla has started to connect the virtual with the real, a direction we think will be key in succeeding in the location-based app arena.

The first content integration will focus on the new series, Food Wars, a new Travel Channel offering where blindfolded participants choose sides to determine "Who Makes The Best Dish In Town." Food Wars pits the nation's most famous culinary rivals against one another for a final showdown, where a blind taste test will settle the debate. Locations used in the series will be integrated into the Gowalla platform and Gowalla users will be able to check in and find specific show information, along with the details of the culinary showdown that was filmed there, pick up Items specific to the show, and be awarded specially created passport stamps.

Gowalla also quietly released an Android version of its app this weekend, which is currently available for download in the Android Marketplace.

This comes just in time for SXSW Interactive, which is bound to have thousands of techies roaming Gowalla's hometown of Austin. As the CNET article on the deal points out, Gowalla has led rival Foursquare in the funding realm, with $8.4 million in Series B funding last year. And while we do like the look of Gowalla, Foursquare offers real-life incentives, such as discounts at certain locations for becoming mayor. Well, just in time for the aforementioned SXSW, Gowalla will have some real-life incentives too - Austin's homegrown Sweet Leaf Tea.

Now, the Sweet Leaf deal isn't quite up to par with a Zagat partnership, but it's one to keep in mind over the next couple of weeks nonetheless, as you're wandering Austin's streets and growing more dehydrated by the moment. (Yes, we know how much beer you really drink.) According to Gowalla's blog, there will be virtual Sweet Leaf Tea cans around town that will be redeemable for the real thing, so keep an eye out.

Gowalla's first foray into integrating its virtual collectibles with real-life goods came in early January, with its partnership with InCase, a maker of iPhone cases, among other things. As part of that deal, users could collect different InCase-branded virtual items and when they checked in at Apple stores, they had a chance of winning an iPhone case upon checking in. So just by going to a location, you were entering a contest for a real-world prize.

And really, it's this sort of thing that we think will keep apps like Gowalla afloat. Long after the shininess of "checking in" and collecting "virtual goods" for their own sake wears off, real-life incentives will be there. Whether they come in the form of information, as is the case with the Travel Channel deal, or in the form of tasty sweet goodness, as with a can of Sweet Leaf Tea, we're going to need something more than a virtual beatnik to keep us checking in everywhere we go. And of course, letting our friends know where we are, and vice-versa, is great, but if one company gets into the real-life game and another doesn't, guess which one we'll probably be playing.

Note: We've refreshed the format for our longest running feature, the Weekly Wrapup. It now focuses more explicitly on the key trends that ReadWriteWeb is tracking in 2010, as well as giving you the highlights from the leading story of the week. Let us know your thoughts on the new format.

• Can Brightkite Beat Foursquare & Gowalla With a Universal Check-in?
• Google Patents Location-Based Advertising
• 2 Services for DIY Mobile Social Networks
• Google Chrome Becomes Location Aware
• Can Geosense for Windows Help Kickstart the Development of Location-Aware Apps for Windows 7?
• Glow: Location-Based "Feelings" for iPhone

More coverage and analysis of location-based technology

Announcing the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit

Join us for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7 in Mountain View, California as we explore the latest mobile development trends, both the technology and the emerging business applications. Be a part of the discussion on geo-location services, augmented reality, native app vs. browser-based, commerce and marketing, mobile social networking and the Internet of Things. Sponsorship enquiries: sales@readwriteweb.com,

Register now for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit and get early bird rates - only $295.

Mobile Web

• Watch Out, iPhone Devs: One-Man Android App Nets $13K Monthly
• Netflix on the iPhone? Yes, Please!
• Can We Kick Our Keyboard Addiction by 2013?

More Mobile Web coverage

Historic Conversation in NYC: Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey & Richard MacManus

On March 15, at the prestigious Paley Center in New York City, a conversation will take place between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey, and yours truly, Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb founder and editor in chief. The moderator will be Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.

The topic of the event is the emergence of digital activism for fostering positive social change. The onsite event is invitation only, but it will be live streamed exclusively on ReadWriteWeb on Monday, March 15, at 6:30 PM EST (-5 GMT), from the Paley Center for Media, New York City.

Internet of Things

• McKinsey: Get Ready For Sensor-Driven Business Models
• Ads with Eyes: Keeping Digital Signage in Check
• Google Wants Your Lamp to Tell You How Much Power It's Using

More Internet of Things coverage

Real-Time Web

• Google Index to Go Real Time
• 10.5 Million Wordpress Blogs Get PubSubHubbub
• Beyond Twitter Search: Semantic Analysis of the Real-Time Web

More Real-Time Web coverage. Don't miss the next wave of opportunity on the Web supported by real-time technology! Get ReadWriteWeb's report, The Real-Time Web and its Future.

Check Out The ReadWriteWeb iPhone App

We recently launched the official ReadWriteWeb iPhone app. As well as enabling you to read ReadWriteWeb while on the go or lying on the couch, we've made it easy to share ReadWriteWeb posts directly from your iPhone, on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow the RWW team on Twitter, directly from the app. We invite you to download it now from iTunes.

ReadWriteStart

Our channel ReadWriteStart, sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark, is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs.

• The Startup Bus: Is This How Outsiders See Startup Culture?
• Picnik CEO to Startups: The M&As Are Out There
• Are Crowdsourcing and Outsourcing No-Nos For Startups?

ReadWriteEnterprise

Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise is devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' and using social software inside organizations.

• Will StatusNet Be Another Open-Source Star in the Enterprise?
• Drupal Founder Critical of SaaS and its Proprietary Nature

ReadWriteCloud

Our channel ReadWriteCloud, sponsored by VMware and Intel, is dedicated to Virtualization and Cloud Computing.

• Steve Ballmer: Microsoft's Future Is in the Cloud
• Weekly Poll: What is the Top Threat to Cloud Computing?
• How Many Enterprise Workers Will Work in the Mobile Cloud? Try 130 Million

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Shoutem: Niche Networks for Communities

Having recently exited its beta testing phase, Shoutem's globally available service lets users easily create private mobile social networks without needing programming and development skills. With their platform, anyone can control the access and the design of their network and launch it as a mobile application for the iPhone, Blackberry and soon, Android.

Shoutem recommends using their product to build specialist niche sites for sports fans, clubs and events. Already, some companies have launched their own small networks using the service. NFL Shouts, for example, lets game fans communicate with each other during football season. Ranch and Rodeo, meanwhile, connects an international audience to a destination site where fans can interact.

Socialight: Better for Brands, Businesses...and Mom?

The other company to recently launch something in this space is Socialight. With their new Socialight Community Platform, anyone can create networks which are accessible via the web, a WAP site or an iPhone app. The company seems to have more of an enterprise focus than Shoutem, noting how their tools have helped "companies and brands" create their own apps. However, the tools Socialight provides can be used by anyone, even individuals...even your mom as explained in this video on Vimeo.

Not Just Mobile, Location-Based

What's interesting about both launches is their focus on location-based services. In Socialight's case, they offer tools for sharing geo-tagged photos and other location-based community content, all of which can be viewed on a map interface. From the mobile application, users can upload and share anything - whether that's a photo, video or text - and have it posted to the network.

Shoutem does much of the same thing with tools that enable file and photo uploads. They also target their app to local communities like colleges, cities, restaurants, bars and clubs.

Why Niche Networks for Mobile?

Considering that there are already several popular mobile social networks out there, including Brightkite, Loopt, Gowalla and Foursquare to name a few, you may wonder why people would need to join yet another. The answer to that question is two-fold. One difference is access. These niche networks can be closed communities for just a select group of people working on an invite-only system. The second difference between those publicly available services and the ones designed with these new toolkits is that they are laser-focused on a single purpose. You may not want to spam up your Twitter account where you promote your business to discuss things related to your local book club for example, but you could easily do so via a niche network.

But perhaps an even better example involves how local businesses could use these tools in building apps for their customers. On Socialight's homepage, they're currently featuring "Socialight Concierge," a toolkit for the hotel and tourism industry which lets companies create "curated concierge experiences" where "guests access location-based information about restaurants, shops, and places to visit, together with city tours and historical points of interest, all in a branded environment." The richness of this mobile application goes far beyond anything we've seen with the simplified DIY mobile app building tools. These are no mere informational apps, they're comprehensive networks where some content is managed by the business, but the real value comes from the customers socializing within the community.

You can start building your own network today on Shoutem here or Socialight here.

Preparing for Chrome OS?

It makes sense for Google to enable geolocation for Chrome, especially given the impending release of the Chrome OS, which will also benefit from these new features. Mozilla already offers a built-in location API for Firefox and with Geosense for Windows, Windows 7 developers can now also make use of Google's Geolocation API in their native apps.

Location for Every Browser

Thanks to the current efforts by most browser developers, location APIs will soon become ubiquitous and hopefully more developers will make use of them. While a number of mobile apps for the iPhone, for example, now make use of the location feature in the mobile version of Safari, only a small number of browser-based apps are currently aware of your location. While using WiFi location isn't quite as precise as using a GPS, the precision is usually much better than relying on a user's IP address.

For more of our thoughts about location as a platform, also have a look at this post: The Era of Location-as-Platform Has Arrived.

Now, companies like Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla and BrightKite have to be wondering what this means for them, as do some of the established big-time players, like Facebook and Apple.

Cutler points out this could be a cause for concern or it could just be a bargaining chip, like in a cold war, writing "it's uncertain whether other start-ups should be alarmed by this. It's standard for companies to file patents on technology they have developed as a defensive practice, rather than as a tool for pressuring other companies to desist or pay license fees."

The patent, titled "Determining and/or using location information in an ad system", gives a fully detailed description of what we would expect of any advertising network, from the basic idea of serving an advertisement according to a user's location to analyzing resultant traffic and advertising success according to a number of factors.

Google further expanded its business in the direction of mobile advertising last November, when it bought the mobile advertising service AdMob for $750 million. We weren't all that puzzled by the move then, but now it makes even more sense.

While Windows 7 offers a built-in location API, Microsoft decided against integrating a default geolocation provider. Due to this, implementing location-aware features on Windows is a lot harder than integrating similar features on OSX or most mobile platforms and this API remains mostly unused. Mac and iPhone developers have long been able to use SkyHook's built-in, system-level services to triangulate a Mac's position based on local WiFi hotspots. Mozilla, too, offers built-in support for Google Location Services in the latest release of Firefox and a few sites are already making good use of this service.

How Geosense for Windows Works

Geosense for Windows was developed on top of the Windows Sensors and Location Platform and uses Google Location Services for WiFi and IP triangulation. Geosense for Windows does not support built-in or external GPS units, but the developers are looking into offering support for other location services like Skyhook and Navizon. The team is also looking at Google's Location Services for cell networks, which can use a computer's built-in wireless broadband hardware to triangulate location data based on the location of nearby cell towers.

Will this Kickstart the Development of Location-Aware Apps for Windows 7?

Only a very small number of programs currently supports location data on Windows 7. Rivera has developed a location-enabled Google Maps client for Windows 7 (you can download it from the Geosense homepage). The Sidebar Weather gadget and MahTweets can also access location data. Hopefully, we will soon see Windows twitter clients and other services (FourSquare for Windows?) that will hook into this service. Hopefully, Geosense for Windows will kickstart the development of native location-aware apps on the Windows platform in the near future.

When you first launch the app, five stars appear on the screen. Drag your finger across the stars to rate how you're feeling at the moment. As you move from one star to five, the colors change from a darker red to a bright blue. Five stars represents you at your happiest while one star means you're unhappy. Your feeling is then geo-located and tagged to a map. You can zoom in and out and around on the map to see how others in your area are feeling, too. If available, you can switch over to street view to see a sort of augmented reality view which superimposes feelings on top of the actual photos from that location.

For now, the application is limited to the iPhone. And because it was only released a couple of weeks ago, it suffers from the same problem that plagues most newly-launched social media websites: not enough users. That's unfortunate because the concept, though simple, is definitely intriguing.

But Where's the Sentiment Analysis?

That said, we wish the app would do even more. A sentiment analysis engine, for example, could analyze tweets and/or public Facebook updates to depict the overall feelings in a particular locale without having to rely on manual updates from iPhone users. These sorts of "feeling" algorithms are already in use on a number of services, including real-time Twitter search engines Tweetfeel and Tweet Sentiments, social media search platform SocialMention, Waggener Edstrom's trend-tracker Twendz and several others. While it's nifty that Glow lets you add real-time feeling updates to a map, not including an optional social layer that extracts feelings from social sites and services is an unfortunate (and potentially dooming) omission for what is otherwise a fairly clever concept and implementation.

However, despite its flaws, Glow is a great example of the new and unique types of applications that mobile phones and their location-awareness features make possible. We hope that future updates to the app will take this concept further and provide us with a true analysis of the feelings around us...even from those who don't use Glow.

If you're interested in trying Glow on your iPhone, you can download the app here. (Note that if you try to locate the app via the iPhone's search, you should use the company name "Heckacopter" as the keyword - there are just too many apps with "glow" in the title!)

This year, a new contender has appeared - Austin's native Gowalla. And Brightkite is still hanging on to the LBS community,

Which do you use now? And when your attention is at a premium during one of the year's most popular geek conferences, which app or apps will you use to collect badges, connect with friends, and find out where the party really is?

While many of us use the mobile version of the site and patiently wait for a native app for non-iPhone devices, Foursquare's been our go-to check-in service for quite some time. And their response to us on Twitter suggests they may see themselves as a comfortable incumbent at this point.

Both of the services we've mentioned also have special, built-in incentives for users at SXSW. Gowalla in particular has announced an interesting promotion. For their flagship "Tiki Room" event, the app will "be scattering hundreds of Tiki Room Digital VIP Passes around downtown Austin. The only way to get yours is to check in with Gowalla at other Austin venues and SXSW events."

Last year, Foursquare also had special badges for SXSW, such as "Panel Nerd", "Karaoke RV" and "Porky" (for BBQ lovers, in particular). They even made a custom badge for attendees of Digg's party and Diggnation live show.

And while Brightkite may not have the game mechanics and rewards of other apps, it does give us the ability to upload photos in addition to text when checking into various locations - a tool we've found very handy when screening new venues for ambience.

So, which app or apps will you be using during SXSW? Vote in the poll, and let us know the "why" of your choice in the comments.