Not checked into Foursquare lately? Don’t worry, the latest development release of GNOME Maps is on hand to help, sporting integration with the popular location-based recommendation service (and some-time social network).
GNOME developer Damián Nohales, the driving force behind the feature as part of Google’s Summer of Code, detailed the fruits of his labour in a blog post this week.
There, he explains: “…integrating GNOME Maps with social networks [enables you to] share the place you are in Facebook and Foursquare.”
With location detection features enabled in GNOME and your Foursquare account set up in GNOME Online Accounts, you will be able to “check in” through Maps wherever you are, be it home, in a cafe, straddling a landmark, or eating pizza in a theme park, etc.
Also supported is ‘check in’ for Facebook Places, the social networking giant’s Foursquare-lite service.
Check In? I thought that was removed?
I have to confess that I’m not especially clued up on Foursquare. I’ve never used it, and my only “knowledge” of it comes from seeing ‘Mayor of {place}’ badges posted around the social networks I do use.
With Foursquare 8.0, the company relaunched its service as a metadata driven recommendations and discovery service. The “Check In” and location sharing features were removed from the main Foursquare service and spun out into a new app called ‘Swarm’ (where you can still become ‘mayor of {place}’.
GNOME Online Accounts
As with other social networks developers are free to build apps hooking into configured services in GNOME Online Accounts, thereby getting access to the requisite APIs. Nohales explains more about doing this on his blog.
Before the inevitable outcry about privacy, be aware that this “integration” is entirely opt-in. If you don’t use Foursquare you don’t have to use this. You remain entirely free to continue not announcing your location in the next version GNOME as much as in previous.
Takeaway:
- Support for Foursquare in GNOME Online Accounts
- Foursquare & Facebook integration in GNOME Maps
- Developers can build GNOME apps to make use of Foursquare
- Source: Damian Nohales