I had been incensed by a cashpoint in Birmingham’s International Convention Centre. It charged £2.50, which at the time was almost a pound more than other charging cash machines. Yet I knew full well that there was a free cash machine just a few minutes’ walk away. I felt the ICC was taking brazen advantage of people’s ignorance and I wanted somehow to leave a note there giving directions to the free machine; but more than that I wanted a systematic way for anyone to do the same.

There were problems with this:

• how to find quickly the information you want to share;
• how to generate that information if it doesn’t already exist (eg, nearest free cashpoint on a map);
• how to impart that information quickly and accessibly;
• how to leave that information to hand without:
  • causing criminal damage;
  • requiring extra tools (eg Post-It Notes);
  • risking it being removed straight away.

We came up with a solution involving tagged Audioboos & an abstract symbol left nearby, but this had drawbacks:

• as it uses Audioboo an iPhone is required;
• it relies on the chosen tag being unique;
• it relies on digital tools & prior understanding of the system (eg the user must have gps & have enabled browser to broadcast their location);
• (in theory) it detects when someone requests tips for a given location, but doesn’t map the required information;
• it doesn’t solve the problems of finding the information in the first place.

But now we have foursquare. And foursquare works on more mobile devices than just the iPhone.

With foursquare we can add information about a place from the comfort of our living room (I just added a tip about the Brindleyplace cashpoint to the ICC entry) and people can see that in context. For example, if someone is in the ICC their mobile device will tell them there are tips for their location and they can see mine alerting them to the existence of a free cashpoint. Brilliant.

I get the impression that this wasn’t quite the intention of foursquare’s ‘tips’ feature, but I can see that if enough people use it businesses will have to sit up and take notice: they may have to start trying harder to fleece people than simply relying on ignorance.

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