Location-Based Social Media And Games - Motorola DROID Manual

406
CHAPTER 19: Finding Your Way With Maps
4. Once you're done adding an element, you can
add details to it. For instance, you could put a
shape around the area of a convention where
your company will locate its booth.
5. Once you've added the elements you need, tap the Edit button and choose
whether this is a personal, private, or public map.
6. Give your map a name, and tap the Save button.
All your maps will be available in the My maps layer, but only maps you've made public
will be visible to other people or available in search.

Location-Based Social Media and Games

We've focused a lot in this chapter on Google Maps specifically. However, one recent
trend worth noting is location-sensitive social media. There are restaurant and service
guides like Yelp and Geodelic, as well as apps that tag photos or messages with your
location. Your DROID camera can also tag your photos with the location they were
taken. See Chapter 18: "Photos and Video" for more information.
The Latitude and Buzz services use some of these geo-tagging features, and Twitter
has likewise enabled the ability to give location information. However, two rising stars in
this field are Gowalla and Foursquare. Both were created around the same time and
offer very similar features. App developers are also free to take advantage of the Google
Maps library and Android's location-sensing features.
In both the Gowalla and Foursquare services, the
object is to check into locations. You need to use a
phone or other location-sensing mobile device. You
can't just manually type in a location. The whole
point is to actually be there. You can share these
check-ins with nobody, your friends, your Facebook
page, or the whole world via Twitter.
Both Foursquare and Gowalla are working with businesses and cities to offer features
like coupons and specials for users who check in. This unique form of advertising may
become very popular because it gives you an obvious way to measure the effectiveness
of an advertising campaign.